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April 20, 2009
What's the Senate hearing about? The definition of blight and a cost/benefit analysis, among other things
Atlantic Yards Report
Norman Oder cautions against rehashing old arguments for and against Atlantic Yards and recommends that a State Senate Committee hearing on the project cover important ongoing questions and issues, specifically the determination of "blight" and a real cost-benefit analysis:
[T]he [Courier-Life] article did emphasize, in the lead, that [State Senator] Montgomery said that the hearing would include testimony from both supporters and opponents of the project.
And it closed with a quote from James Caldwell of Brooklyn United for Innovative Local Development (BUILD), a Community Benefits Agreement (CBA) signatory: "This project needs to start already, because people need to go to work."
But the hearing is about oversight of the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC) and other agencies, so it shouldn't be a do-over from the environmental review process in which supporters and opponents state their views.
The hearing should address issues like blight, given that a state judge called "ludicrous" the ESDC's contention that it could only look at conditions contemporaneous with the study, which was conducted years after the project's announcement.
...
The ESDC's fiscal impact analysis addressed costs, not benefits. (The Independent Budget Office was the only entity to do a partial cost-benefit analysis, but it related only to the arena, not the project as a whole, and now the IBO thinks it's time for at least a partial look.)Despite what the ESDC said in court papers regarding the pending state eminent domain case, the state made no attempt to quantify the benefits due to Forest City Ratner.
Posted by lumi at April 20, 2009 6:07 AM