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February 28, 2009
A Brooklyn Bailout?
The Indypendent
By Daniel Goldstein
This article provides an overview of the current state of the Atlantic Yards opposition. It also goes on to address the issue of having Federal stimulus funds be made available for this pork-laden project.
The community opposition is concerned that FCR will attempt to secure stimulus funds by claiming Atlantic Yards is a “transit project” because they are obligated to build a new rail yard. FCR received the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s (MTA) Vanderbilt Rail Yard development rights, despite a bid less than half the appraised value, because it had committed to building a new, “state-of-theart” rail yard. The sole purpose of the new yard would be to facilitate the construction of the arena, rather than any transit need the MTA expressed in 2005 when it accepted FCR ’s lowball offer — an offer which FCR has yet to pay. Now FCR wants federal taxpayers to bail them out of their commitment to build this rail yard to nowhere.
Most important, nearly all economists agree that arenas are not economic generators or cost-effective job creators. FCR has never even publicly announced the estimated number of new jobs the arena would create because it would be woefully few, especially in relation to the arena’s public cost. And the opportunity costs are dramatic.
The project, including the arena, is not “shovel-ready” by any stretch of the imagination, as FCR doesn’t own the land it needs to construct it and, according to the developer, it’s undergoing an extensive redesign. The proposed affordable housing is nowhere in sight and construction is highly unlikely to start in 2009, if ever.
The use of stimulus funds for this project birthed in opaque backrooms, and laden with non-competitive and no-bid contracts, would violate the bill’s accountability provisions requiring a transparent and competitive bidding process before contracts could be entered into. Atlantic Yards failed that test a long time ago.
Posted by steve at February 28, 2009 4:21 PM