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January 9, 2010
Atlantic Yards Saturday Morning Report
Atlantic Yards Report
The office market continues to tank, casting further doubt on AY revenue projections
Tax revenues from Atlantic Yards office buildings are pretty unlikely if the buildings aren't even in the planning stages.
As DDDB points out, a front-page article in yesterday's New York Times cites enormous vacancies in Manhattan commercial office space, casting further doubt on plans for a flagship office tower at the Atlantic Yards project.
A turnaround isn't predicted until 2014, which means an office tower wouldn't come until later, but the Empire State Development Corporation already anticipated the possibility of a delayed project buildout. The question--in yet-unveiled master closing documents--is what penalities and incentives there might be.
And, as I wrote November 9, Bruce Ratner's acknowledgment that the office tower was indefinitely stalled undermined the ESDC's rosy claims of new tax revenue.
As I pointed out, those tax revenues aren't offset by costs--an irresponsible and thus inaccurate practice. Also, they depend crucially on an office tower that doesn't appear in any renderings and thus hasn't even graduated to "vaportecture."
What would be a good way for the state to determine blight? Whether you use the vague "substandard and insanitary" standard or prefer the "capuccino test", it's obvious that the there's no need to flatten any part of Prospect Heights in order to improve it.
So, there's no checklist to help us define blight, according to the Empire State Development Corporation's (ESDC) testimony at a hearing Tuesday, just a report that ESDC board members--lay people who don't visit the neighborhood at issue--uses to conclude that the conditions are "substandard and insanitary."
That's pretty vague, dangerously so, according to attorney Norman Siegel, who represents plaintiffs challenging eminent domain for the Columbia University expansion.
I prefer a different definition of blight, from urban planning professor Lynne Sagalyn: "When the fabric of a neighborhood is shot to hell."
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But a friend suggested an easier measure: "If you're within five minutes of getting decent capuccino, there can be no blight."
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In testimony Tuesday, ESDC General Counsel Anita Laremont said the statute refers to an "area [that] is determined to be substandard and insanitary."
Yes, an area.
In other words, lay people should understand that the area is not defined by the specific parcels coveted by developer Forest City Ratner but should be looked at a bit more holistically.
And then, a reasonable person might conclude that other measures less extreme than eminent domain--like a rezoning (a suggestion that, when proposed, led the ESDC to punt)--might have been effective in removing blight.
Democratic mayoral candidate Bill Thompson "just doesn't get it, does he?" observed No Land Grab's Eric McCLure in October. "Let us offer up some free political advice — criticizing Bloomberg for being an underdeveloper, no matter the audience, is not a recipe for a November 3rd upset."
This week, the Village Voice's Wayne Barrett writes of Thompson, "He was no doubt more mayoral understudy than overseer," and explains why, in an expose that would be all the more shocking if the daily newspapers took it seriously.
The article is headlined Bloomberg and Thompson: The (Really) Odd Couple: Now it can be told: The surprising ties between the billionaire mayor and the poor slob who ran against him. The whole thing is well worth a read, but here's the gist:
If voters had a vague sense that this was a mirage of a mayoral election, what follows is a damning set of facts that shows that these two supposed opponents were actually far more connected than we ever knew. They shared a very personal and subterranean agenda, the funding of a project dear to Thompson's heart....
The mayor has directed or triggered between $43 million and $51 million in public and personal subsidies into a museum project led by Thompson's current wife and longtime companion, Elsie McCabe-Thompson, dumping $2 million of additional city funding into it as late as September 30, in the middle of the mayoral campaign.
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Why did Thompson look like an understudy? Because he didn't criticize Bloomberg on issues like development or Atlantic Yards. Barrett notes that, as a member of the city's Industrial Development Agency, Thompson almost always supported Bloomberg's projects. Nor did he post many tough audits, thus leaving little distinction between them.
Posted by steve at January 9, 2010 9:17 AM