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April 4, 2008

Readers respond to Bruce Ratner’s Yards failure

The Brooklyn Paper published three letters in response to news that Atlantic Yards has been significantly delayed:

Affordable housing deferred?

To the editor,

Your article about the demise of Atlantic Yards (“Atlantic Yards Dead; Ratner kills Miss Brooklyn, KOs 11 buildings; vows to build publicly financed Nets arena,” March 29) makes it seem like Bruce Ratner’s promised 2,250 units of affordable housing might never get built.

One scenario is that Ratner builds the stadium and then sells off the rest of the 22-acres to private developers.

So when does ACORN, which supported Ratner and signed the Community Benefits Agreement, say, “Bruce, you’re breaking the deal”?

Bertha Lewis has to have major egg on her face now.

P.S. I hope the editor’s ankle is healing nicely.

Steve DeSève, Brooklyn Heights

Betrayal of Public Trust

To the editor,

Your editorial, “Take Back the Rail Yards” (March 29) was right on. The whole Atlantic Yards project has been a huge betrayal of the public trust, and a reversion of the yards would help at least a little bit.

Your coverage of the whole debacle has been most welcome, and your jeremiads are being vindicated.

Let’s hope the several public officials do the right thing now, and move from (tardy) outrage to (early) action. Get on it, lawmakers. Make it happen. Take the rail yards back. And work on legal relief for those adjacent neighborhoods, which are not being developed but destroyed.

Daniel Meeter, Park Slope
The writer is the pastor at Old First Reformed Church on Seventh Avenue

Beginnings of Blight

To the editor,

Bruce Ratner didn’t create this blight. It has been a blight created by 60 years of political neglect. Even when the all-powerful speakers of the state Assembly were from Brooklyn, nothing was done to improve the area.

That is where the blight and neglect started — and remains.

Al Pankin, Downtown

Posted by lumi at April 4, 2008 5:38 AM