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March 3, 2011
Teachable moment? Downtown Brooklyn Partnership, LIU, BAM offer gushing, unfounded affidavits supporting FCR in timetable case
Atlantic Yards Report
Here's the latest addition to the list of great works of Atlantic Yards fiction.
"Atlantic Yards will be many things to many people," Forest City Ratner has long stated (as in screenshot from original AY web site, right, complete with misleading fisheye photo).
For the Provost of Long Island University's Brooklyn campus, the project appears to be a mystical mirage, promising an astonishing array of indispensable benefits.
It should be a teachable moment: the question of whether and how Atlantic Yards could provide such claimed benefits could occupy a good number of academic researchers.
Instead, it's a moment for (take your pick) irresponsibility, delusion, or power politics.
In a sworn affidavit, LIU's Gale Stevens Haynes (see p. 47 of the first document embedded below) simply takes the most optimistic scenario on faith.
She claims, without evidence, that students and faculty are "very supportive" of the project, and suggests that the project would offer "housing, jobs, and transit and infrastructure improvements to our students."
And she praises Forest City Ratner for being "genuine in its concern and efforts to understand and address the needs of this community."
Apparenly, CEO Bruce Ratner, who served on the university board's "Buildings and Grounds Committee, offering his expertise to the construction of the Zeckendorf Health Science Center and the Wellness, Recreation & Athletic Center," has won some friends.
Court case pending
Haynes's affidavit, as well as two others, accompany a motion from the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership to file a "friend of the court" brief in the last lingering Atlantic Yards court case, regarding the impacts of and the need for the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC) to study a delayed timetable.
It should go to oral argument March 15 at 2:30 pm, as should a linked case regarding a request for legal fees). I'll look at the broader legal arguments in depth next week.
Posted by eric at March 3, 2011 11:30 AM