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March 28, 2008
Take back the rail yards!
The Brooklyn Paper, Editorial
The Brooklyn Paper calls for a complete "do over:"
The news that Atlantic Yards developer Bruce Ratner has abandoned his plan to build most of the 16-skyscraper arena, office and residential project is no surprise to anyone who has been paying attention to this ongoing city- and state-subsidized debacle.
The project was always too big, too reliant on public subsidies and too much a betrayal of sound urban planning to ever be built.
Ratner now blames the souring of the economy as the reason for his failure to get Atlantic Yards done — but our current economic malaise is not entirely to blame; indeed, Ratner was unable to secure an anchor tenant for his Frank Gehry–designed Miss Brooklyn tower going back to 2003, when the economy was booming.
...
More important, we are troubled by new state documents that show that Ratner could leave the rest of the 22-acre site vacant for decades, thereby creating the urban blight that state officials said he would eliminate.The state must not let him. The state must take back the development rights over the rail yards and put them out for bid. Doing so would not only cleanse state officials of the Original Sin of Atlantic Yards (namely selling Ratner the air rights for $100 million less than their appraised value), but it would also set right Bruce Ratner’s very wrong project.
Posted by lumi at March 28, 2008 5:44 AM