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May 2, 2007
From UDC, rebuilding slums, to the ESDC, which "loves business"
Atlantic Yards Report
Boldly going where no journalist has gone before, Norman Oder looks into the history of the Empire State Development Corporation.
Amid all the arguments about the Atlantic Yards project, perhaps the most fundamental issue has never been raised. The Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC), in its original conception, was never intended to manage projects like Forest City Ratner's 22-acre megadevelopment of mostly luxury housing in the center of a rising real estate market.
That may not affect the legal cases, but the historical context is vital: the ESDC, founded as the Urban Development Corporation (UDC) in 1968, was granted "truly amazing powers" (in planner Alex Garvin's description) to override zoning and exercise eminent domain as a response to urban riots and what were commonly referred to as "slum conditions." (Graphic from Rutgers project on riots.)
Today, more than a quarter-century later, those goals have broadened, as the UDC grew to emphasize economic development as part of its mission and in 1995 formally began doing business as the ESDC, which incorporated other agencies.
The history gets a neat switch in legal papers filed in the Atlantic Yards eminent domain case. The original legislative effort to encourage "maximum" private participation in ESDC projects, cited as justification for embracing Forest City Ratner's Atlantic Yards plan without a look to rivals, was hardly focused on developments like Atlantic Yards.
Rather, it was intended to get the private sector to finally invest in the low- and middle-income subsidized housing. (Atlantic Yards would contain some of both, but they're hardly the raison d'etre.)
Moreover, the ESDC practices a neat maneuver in its legal papers. It credits a state appellate court decision as stating that the ESDC's “primary mission . . . is to encourage economic investment." A closer look shows that the language comes directly from the ESDC's own web site and in some ways distorts it.
Posted by lumi at May 2, 2007 9:44 AM