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March 7, 2009
A Hole Grows in Brooklyn - The local economy should have been left to develop on its own.
The Wall Street Journal
By Juila Vitullo-Martin
One purpose of the proposed Atlantic Yards project was to remove blight from Prospect Heights. This opinion piece shows how, in the rush to force the development on Brooklyn, Bruce Ratner and his tool, the Empire State Development Corporation, have done just the opposite.
The ill-fated project in Brooklyn reflects a breakdown of the state and city's strategy of favoring big-government, centrally supported, highly subsidized projects over the kind of small, privately funded, unsubsidized, incremental development that was already occurring in Prospect Heights, as the area is officially known.
It seems that smaller scale redevelopment wasn't happening fast enough for government officials, eager to jump-start Brooklyn's economy. They leapt to support the developer's contention that the neighborhood was blighted, and that its property owners were therefore vulnerable to the state's exercise of eminent domain.
Now officials have a mess on their hands. The development got just far enough to do considerable damage to the neighborhood without progressing far enough to do any good. Atlantic Yards has razed 26 buildings, with government help, creating the blight its developer had argued was there all along. Now there are gashes where late-19th century and early-20th century buildings once stood.
NoLandGrab: The Vanderbilt Yard (a working railyard) is at a lower elevation than the surrounding area, so the project footprint is sometimes referred to as a "hole in the ground." Otherwise, it's refreshing to see an understanding of the Atlantic Yards boondoggle in a well-known publication such as The Wall Street Journal. Any chance that New York papers like The Times could now rethink their endorsements of the project?
Posted by steve at March 7, 2009 7:10 AM