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October 6, 2006
Many problems with Atlantic Yards
The Brooklyn Papers
The 73-day public comment period for Bruce Ratner’s Atlantic Yards project ended after we went to press last week — and the Sept. 29 deadline brought about a flurry of reports, analyses and submissions from project opponents and supporters.
Below are summaries of some key points of disagreement between opponents of Atlantic Yards and the Empire State Development Corporation.
For those of you in a big hurry, we've provided excerpts below. However, there's a lot we left behind. We suggest reading the article instead.
The project’s hidden costs
The state analysis of the Atlantic Yards project ignored hundreds of millions of dollars in additional costs to taxpayers, including property-tax exemptions, sales tax exemptions, tax-exempt financing, publicly financed infrastructure improvements, taxpayer-furnished affordable-housing subsidies and mortgage recording tax exemptions for developer Bruce Ratner, according to an analysis commissioned by a coalition of Brooklyn neighborhood groups.
Even the Beep sees flaws
Last week, Borough President Markowitz, a strong supporter of the project, said he was concerned that the project could displace existing residents of Prospect Heights.
“The draft environmental impact statement analysis of neighborhood income levels uses medians and averages and thus fails to accurately show the distributions on either side of middle,” the project’s biggest booster said.
Bruce’s green acre
But lost in the shuffle was another demand by the City Planning Commission: that Ratner add one acre of open public space to the project, which currently includes seven acres of publicly accessible greenery.Here’s one possible reason why few New Yorkers noticed the demand for an additional acre: Few New Yorkers know what an acre even is.
Group: City said Coney was best
Just before the close of the public-comment period last week, Jeff Baker — an attorney for Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn — said the state’s draft environmental impact statement also “audaciously ignored” prior discussion of Coney Island as the city’s “preferred location” for an arena.“Empire State Development Corporation … consciously mischaracterized the ability to locate the arena there,” Baker said.
Little open space
Bruce Ratner’s Atlantic Yards project will result in less, not more, open space per person in a community already underserved by park and recreational land, several community groups said last week.
Posted by lumi at October 6, 2006 7:36 AM