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September 9, 2011
Arana Hankin, navigating Atlantic Yards (and FCR relationship) for the state, after one year: some successes, some "work in progress," and more responsiveness when new staffer starts
Atlantic Yards Report
Norman Oder recently scored an exclusive interview with Empire State Development's Atlantic Yards point-person. Here it is.
After one year overseeing Atlantic Yards, Brooklyn's (and perhaps the city's) most controversial project, Arana Hankin sounds enthusiastic about the job, that she's helped solve problems. But it's tough to call her position a comfortable one.
On the one hand, Empire State Development (ESD, aka Empire State Development Corporation) clearly needed a point person for all things AY. So Hankin, Director, Atlantic Yards Project, has done some worthy work, helping lead responses to the "rat tsunami" and illegal parking around the project site, among other things.
On the other hand, the state agency has the inherently conflicted role of shepherding Forest City Ratner's project while overseeing the developer, leaving Hankin--more a coordinator/good soldier than policy maker--in a tough spot, though it's not one to which she'd cop.
After all, the agency, before Hankin joined it (though she was involved in overseeing it), withheld a key Atlantic Yards document, the Development Agreement, thus gaining initial victory in the lawsuit filed by citizens' groups challenging the professed ten-year timetable.
The state lost after the document was finally allowed into the record, and we should know by September 16 whether the state will appeal a judge's order to conduct a Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement, or SEIS.
Hankin, a longtime aide to former Gov. David Paterson in his various governmental posts, is relatively young--she earned her undergrad degree in 2000--but she's no political naif. She's clearly confident in controlled settings, and, though occasionally discomfited in less congenial meetings, has grown steadier. She's received good reviews from allies but also prompted pushback from those who fear she's more lip service than action.
Some people involved with Atlantic Yards wouldn't comment when I asked them to weigh in on Hankin. That may say less about her than the inherently fraught issue that is Atlantic Yards, given the ongoing lawsuit and the effort by some to wrest the project from the ESD's direct control and establish an oversight body.
(Photo by Tracy Collins, from 9/29/10 public meeting on the arena plaza.)
Posted by eric at September 9, 2011 9:01 AM