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April 10, 2011
Add To Bloomberg’s Other Mistakes: Mistakes In NOT Acknowledging Mistakes, Including A Certain Ratner Mega-Monopoly
Noticing New York
Everyone knows that the first step in correcting a mistake is recognizing when you've made one. Mayor Mike Bloomberg should take a step back, recognize his error in supporting Atlantic Yards and do what he can to fix his mistake.
Atlantic Yards is probably Bloomberg’s supreme mistake. . . . Atlantic Yards is a spectacular example of a decision that was rushed through with improperly forced haste and it is a spectacular example of just how bad the consequences of such thoughtless haste can be.
The Bloomberg administration has implicitly acknowledged the ignominy of its failure with respect to Atlantic Yards. It did so in the way it handled the departure of Deputy Mayor for Development Daniel Doctoroff (see: Atlantic Yards As Political Hot Potato.)
However disgraceful all its lapses, the Bloomberg administration has done nothing to correct the misreckoned Atlantic Yards course it is on. Correction could be made with less difficulty than continuing through the bog in which the city is now steeped. It would be relatively easy to do what is needed which is to take the project back to the drawing board and bid it out to multiple developers. (Yes, this time the megaproject, currently 17 separate building sites, should actually be bid out.) The project is adrift, amorphously ill-defined and the developer repeatedly transgresses with unacceptable behavior that should long ago have disqualified the developer from Bloomberg’s ongoing accommodation and indulgence.
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Bloomberg still has the opportunity to walk away from the Atlantic Yards mega-project and declare it a recognized mistake. Bloomberg’s recently departed housing commissioner Rafael Cestero said that Atlantic Yards is not deserving of additional housing subsidies (it, "was not a good public investment"). Such subsidies would be disproportionate and greater than the subsidies that other more deserving projects would be eligible for elsewhere in the city. Nevertheless, given Bloomberg's very recent defense of the megadevelopment (immediately after talking with Bruce Ratner), Atlantic Yards Report is predicting that we should all gird for the awfulness of yet more subsidies for Atlantic Yards courtesy of Mr. Bloomberg. Atlantic Yards Report has an excellent record in making such calls.
Posted by steve at April 10, 2011 8:42 PM