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July 29, 2009
DDDB PRESS RELEASE: ESDC’s Atlantic Yards Public Hearing: A Sham Process for a Sham Project
Brooklyn, New York – Today Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn (DDDB), community groups, union members, elected officials and political candidates held a press conference outside of the Empire State Development Corporation’s (ESDC) public hearing on Bruce Ratner’s Atlantic Yards development plan. The hearing was ostensibly for the public to comment on a modified project plan.
But the public was asked to comment on the modified plan despite the complete absence of a site plan, a rendering of any part of the project, a cost-benefit analysis, a construction timeline, an affordable housing plan, and an NYPD security review. These glaring omissions, the ESDC and Ratner have said, will be available to the public (maybe) after the ESDC Board, controlled by Governor Paterson, meets to likely rubberstamp the modified project plan in September.
DDDB and many speakers at the press conference and the hearing repeatedly demanded that a Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS) on the project be undertaken as required.
“Atlantic Yards is a phantom project—there is no site plan or rendering and won’t be until after the public comment period is over and the project rubberstamped. With today’s public hearing the ESDC continues its sham process for Bruce Ratner’s sham project, which is why the only place we can turn to is the courts,” said Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn spokesman Daniel Goldstein. “It is clearly time for Governor Paterson and Mayor Bloomberg to step in and scrap this ludicrous, out of control development idea. If they do not, then the Courts will have to sort it all out.”
The ESDC held the hearing today before so much necessary and basic information—like what the project looks like—is available, because Bruce Ratner has a December 31st deadline to issue his tax-exempt arena bond. And the clock is ticking loudly. Bruce Ratner’s interest is being met by this premature, information-less hearing, while the public interest is…mocked.
City Councilmember Letitia James, on Ratner’s failing project, said, “The end is near. The days of excess are over. The time for transparency, accountability, democracy and a new vision are now.”
Goldstein concluded, “The Atlantic Yards project approved in 2006 no longer exists, and because of that the ESDC must undertake a Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement. If they do not, and they maintain that they will not, then they are making themselves vulnerable to litigation.”
Posted by eric at July 29, 2009 6:40 PM