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March 15, 2010
Atlantic Yards a "job creation" engine? Only if you believe the myths propounded by Bloomberg, Paterson, and Ratner
Atlantic Yards Report
Writes Norman Oder: This week and next I'll try to compensate slightly for the failure of any metro columnists to show up and glean insights from the rich spectacle of the Barclays Center groundbreaking March 11.
Here's some of the first installment.
For a project that the leaders of our city and state seem confident will help rescue the local economy, the numbers regarding jobs and tax revenues are awful fuzzy.
Not just fuzzy--but those conveying them offered very different numbers, at the very same groundbreaking event.
Would Atlantic Yards generate $5 billion in new revenues, as developer Forest City Ratner claimed, or $1.5 billion, as Governor David Paterson (at right, with Mayor Mike Bloomberg) asserted?
Would it bring "up to 8000 permanent jobs" (FCR) or 5500 (Paterson)?
Would it really lead to 25,000 total jobs, as Bloomberg claimed?
Would the project "have job creation the likes of which Brooklyn has never seen," as Paterson claimed?
It makes you wonder why they didn't get their ducks in a row.
It makes you wonder why virtually no one in the press did any math.
Yes, maybe it's too much to expect the press to do any fact-checking--I've looked at even the most conservative assumptions mentioned above, and found them unrealistic.
But couldn't they have noticed a few contradictions, or blatant exaggerations?
NoLandGrab: We assume that last one is a rhetorical question, since Oder knows as well as we do that most of the press was too busy going gaga over Jay-Z and Beyoncé.
Posted by eric at March 15, 2010 12:30 PM