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May 11, 2007
Judge: What is Yards benefit?
The Brooklyn Papers
By Ariella Cohen
Coverage of last week's environmental hearing:
“Can you tell me how a professional sports [facility] is a public use?” Justice Joan Madden asked Philip Karmel, a lawyer for the Empire State Development Corporation, at the three-hour-long hearing.
...
The lawsuit, filed last month by a coalition of 26 civic groups, argues that the ESDC overstepped its authority when it defined Ratner’s Atlantic Yards development as a “civic project” worthy of superceding local land-use laws that would have restricted its scale.“[Defining Atlantic Yards as a civic project] mocks the clear intent of the statute that ‘civic projects’ be operated by and for the benefit of the public,” attorney Jeff Baker argued in the 77-page complaint.
Madden’s line of inquiry appeared to come as a surprise to Karmel and the half-dozen other state lawyers in attendance.
“We believe that going to a ballgame is a recreational activity, and having a ball team is a civic event,” Karmel said.
Legal experts said that Baker’s arguments were counter to the laws that govern state-sponsored economic development in New York.
“[Private] office buildings are built under [the ESDC’s laws for ‘civic projects’],” said David Reiss, a professor at Brooklyn Law School. If that is the case, Reiss continued, “a good argument can be made that an arena is also a civic project.”
Project critics question the veracity of the environmental impact study:
Baker argued that the ESDC had failed to fully document the project’s massive environmental impacts, or properly study alternatives to the project — which is required as part of the state’s environmental review process.
“They lied,” he said, referring to ESDC insistences that planners had studied alternative sites, including a proposed area in Coney Island, before settling on the Prospect Heights site.
Posted by lumi at May 11, 2007 6:24 AM