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March 17, 2011

DDDB PRESS RELEASE: Jobs, Housing & Hoops! Touted Atlantic Yards “Benefits” Continue to Disappear

Construction Unions Latest Victims of Forest City’s Broken Promises

BROOKLYN, NY—First it was the promised “10,000 permanent jobs.” Then it was the “arena roof garden.” Next it was the “world-class Frank Gehry design.” Then it was the “2,250 units of affordable housing.” Then the “urban room.” And the “eight acres of publicly accessible open space.” Now comes the latest casualty among Forest City Ratner’s endless string of cynical, empty, broken promises – a large chunk of the relentlessly touted construction jobs.

According to a bomb-shell story in today’s New York Times, Forest City Ratner plans to build the first residential building on the Atlantic Yards site using modular construction techniques that will likely reduce significantly the number of promised Atlantic Yards construction jobs. Such a move seriously undermines one of the project’s prime selling points – the claimed provision of “17,000” (really 1,700 over 10 years) good-paying union construction jobs – and further imperils any potential fiscal benefits for the city and state, since many of the jobs would pay far less than what had been projected. According to The Times story, “a carpenter earns $85 an hour in wages and benefits on-site, but only $35 an hour in a factory.” Much of the work, The Times reports, would be done in a factory.

While Forest City once claimed, with disregard for reality, that the Atlantic Yards project would generate “$6 billion in new city and state revenues over 30 years,” the drop in tax revenue as a result of the lower employment figures will almost certainly render the project a net loser for the taxpayers. The New York City Independent Budget Office has already, in 2009, projected that the arena would cost city taxpayers $40 million, while estimating a paltry state tax-revenue gain of about $25 million. City and state taxpayers have already contributed nearly $300 million in direct cash subsidies to the project, and the eventual tab for total subsidies is expected to reach several hundred million more.

According to sources cited in The Times article, Forest City plans to construct a significant portion of what is being called Building 2, or B2, off-site, which would result in sharply lower wages for workers. That would be a major blow to New York’s construction unions, which have been among the biggest backers of the Atlantic Yards project, frequently demonstrating their support vocally – and emphatically – at public events.

“Unfortunately, our friends in the building trades are learning the hard way that Bruce Ratner can’t be trusted,” said Candace Carponter, legal director for Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn. “Jobs and affordable housing accounted for nearly all of the Atlantic Yards project’s promised benefits, and with Ratner’s selling-out of the unions, shelving of any office space, and the scarcity of subsidies for housing, the community is left with the arena as the primary “benefit” – if you believe a traffic-choking, noise-generating, taxpayer-money-losing white elephant is somehow beneficial.”

Union leaders, like Gary La Barbera, president of the Building & Construction Trades Council of Greater New York, and scores of rank-and-file union members, have been fixtures at pro-Atlantic Yards rallies orchestrated by Forest City Ratner. However, La Barbera told The Times that Ratner’s interest in modular construction “could be of great consequence to the building trades,” adding they “have never been supportive of prefab buildings.”

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Posted by eric at March 17, 2011 1:33 AM