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April 12, 2007
Fighting Atlantic Yards on a Second Front
Brooklyn Downtown Star
By Norman Oder
This article covers the substance and implications of the environmental lawsuit filed last week in State court:
Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn (DDDB), with allies, is now fighting the Atlantic Yards project on a second front, in state court. As DDDB waits to see whether a federal judge will agree to let a suit challenging eminent domain to proceed, last week, 26 co-petitioners-some broad-based organizations, some block associations-filed suit in State Supreme Court to annul the Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) and the approval of the 22-acre project, which would include a basketball arena and 16 towers in Prospect Heights.
Candace Carponter, co-chair of petitioner Council of Brooklyn Neighborhoods (CBN) and legal chair of fellow petitioner DDDB, suggested that this case was different from other challenges to environmental impact statements, which generally fail.
"This isn't a sole-issue challenge," she said at a press conference held at the Brooklyn Bear's Garden at the corner of Atlantic and Flatbush avenues. "We're saying they forgot to take a hard look at 13 issues." Among them: a failure to examine terrorist impacts and a finding of blight "in one of the hottest real estate markets in New York City."
Posted by lumi at April 12, 2007 8:19 AM