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February 15, 2007
Spin City Roundup
Atlantic Yards Report
Nothing gets to Norman Oder like public officials and community leaders who are into spin:
Spin city #1: Burden calls AY “a gaping hole in the heart of Brooklyn”
City Planning Commission Chairperson Amanda Burden, speaking yesterday before a development-friendly audience at a Crain’s New York Business breakfast, declared that “Atlantic Yards was a gaping hole in the heart of Brooklyn,” a statement either deceptive or naïve.
The "hole" is a working railyard, the 8.5-acre Vanderbilt Yard, while Atlantic Yards is the name of a 22-acre project. In casual discussion and press accounts, the two are often conflated, but a public official like Burden should know better, right?
I caught up with Burden (right) after her presentation and said, “You’re calling the project, the whole thing, a gaping hole.”
“The yards are a gaping hole,” she responded, unwilling to acknowledge that she had bought into the developer’s branding.
Spin city #2: Lewis says AY would be "totally luxury" without ACORN
Norman Oder analyzes and fact checks Bertha Lewis's interview yesterday on WBAI.
Lewis's version of events seems to contradict the record:
Lewis continued:
And when Atlantic Yards came up, we stepped in and we said, “Whoa, wait a minute, if this tide is going to wash over us, we’ve got to be able to affect it.” There was no plan to do anything affordable in that project, whatsoever.
While it's possible that when the developer began conceiving of Atlantic Yards there was no plan for affordable housing, affordable housing was a component of the project plan when first unveiled on 12/10/03.
The developer and ACORN did not sign the affordable housing Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) for 17 months, until 5/17/05.
Spin city #3: Doctoroff says AY had "enormous level of community input"
In this week's New York Observer, in a Q&A headlined Modern-Day Robert Moses, Deputy Mayor for Economic Development Dan Doctoroff first seems to acknowledge that the Atlantic Yards project received too little community input, then reverses himself, claiming--against strong evidence--"an enormous level of community input."
Posted by lumi at February 15, 2007 8:20 AM