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January 15, 2009
The Brooklyn Paper mailbag
The Brooklyn Paper, Letters
Prospect Heights resident Alan Rosner, no stranger to the BP's letters section, warns that Atlantic Yards developer Forest City Ratner, and its political backers, are sure to be on the stimulus-handout line.
Thank you for your front-page timetable of five years of Forest City Ratner’s efforts to gain control of 22 acres of Brooklyn real estate (“Atlantic Yards at five: What went wrong,” Dec. 13).
Of course, after five years we know there is no reason to believe this is over yet. Mayor Bloomberg is getting a shot at staying on, while Gov. Paterson and the daily papers remain silently complicit.
For now, Forest City’s treading water makes good sense. Come January or February, the feds will make stimulus money available to the states, creating an opportunity for the Atlantic Yards promotional team to pronounce that Atlantic Yards is a shovel-ready project with jobs, jobs, jobs and more jobs.
Forest City’s demolition created blight and stopping work on the Carlton Avenue Bridge only makes Borough President Markowitz and Forest City’s argument that much more convincing. Still denying federal financing for this project would be more consistent with what President-elect Obama meant when he spoke of government from the ground up.
Atlantic Yards has always been a top-down, developer-driven project. Opposition to Atlantic Yards, on the other hand, is very much the story of community organizing; of individuals, community groups, blogs, The Brooklyn Paper and local electeds attempting to get the state and the developer to take community concerns into account.
Posted by eric at January 15, 2009 10:06 PM