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September 10, 2009
Say it Ain't So, Lombino
Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn
This is what happens when former reporters take up spokesman work—they look silly.
Dave Lombino used to report on Atlantic Yards, and other things, for the NY Sun, now he is a spokesman for NYC Economic Development Corporation. The Times has his response to the IBO study concluding that the Atlantic Yards arena is a money loser for NYC:
...In addition, our investment was based on benefits that aren’t easily quantified, like job creation, affordable housing, school construction and open space — and all of this on a site that is now an open railyard without any public benefit,” he said. “That’s not in the report.”
(Emphasis added.)Perhaps that is not in the report because the site is not an open rail yard and the part that is a rail yard has a benefit, just ask the LIRR and its riders. Lombino knows better than that. He used to report, often skeptically, on the project.
Here is Lombino writing for The Sun in 2006 clearly acknowledging that the site is much more than an "open railyard." Maybe he just forgot.
Furthermore, why on earth would a fiscal analysis study non-quantifiable, illusory "benefits."
Posted by eric at September 10, 2009 6:22 PM