« MTA report updated; note that Forest City Ratner's arena financing drives deal timing; questions about FCE's credit rating raised | Main | Atlantic Yards Developer Agrees To MTA Payment Plan »
June 23, 2009
DDDB PRESS RELEASE: Empire State Development Corporation Continues Atlantic Yards Charade
Decision Makes Agency Vulnerable to Litigation
New York, New York – Today the unelected members of the Empire State Development Corporation board voted with a straight face to adopt a Modified General Project Plan (GPP) for Bruce Ratner’s failed Atlantic Yards development proposal in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn.
The adoption of the plan triggers a sixty-day comment period and a public hearing, followed by an ESDC board vote likely to come in the Fall.
During the public board meeting none of the board members asked a single question once the summary of the Modified Project Plan was introduced. None asked if the “affordable” housing could be funded, if there was a cost-benefit analysis. Especially noteworthy was the complete absence of any renderings of the proposed arena or any of the 16 skyscrapers Forest City Ratner insists it will build. None of the board members asked to see what the project looks like.
ESDC claims the project has not changed substantially and that it will be built in ten years as originally planned. But in April the outgoing head of the ESDC Marisa Lago stated publicly the project would take decades to construct.
“The ESDC engaged itself in a charade today that the project it approved in 2006 would still be built. It won’t be. What is planned now, in the middle of a housing crisis, is an $800 million arena that will be a money loser for New York City and sit empty most of the time, one skyscraper and a handful of ‘affordable’ housing units, while the rest of the site stagnates under Ratner’s land speculation,” said Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn spokesman Daniel Goldstein.
Posted by eric at June 23, 2009 5:33 PM