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December 8, 2011
The Observer finds support and skepticism regarding Forest City's modular plans, ignores some lingering questions raised by company's announcement
Atlantic Yards Report
So, does the New York Observer's 12/7/11 article, The Mod Squad: Will Bruce Ratner Transform the Way New York Builds, or Is Prefab Another Project Too Far?, address some of the issues I raised last month, such as:
- the curious timing of Forest City Ratner's modular announcement (to distract from a lawsuit)
- the fact the permit application for the first building doesn't indicate modular
- the possibility the announcement was meant to achieve union concessions (on a conventional building)
- the diminished totals of project wages and tax revenues, with a modular plan
- the amount of time it takes to get a factory up and running
- the seeming disavowal of a pledge to build larger apartments
- Ratner's astounding claim that "existing incentives" don't work for high-rise, union-built affordable housing
No.
That said, the article does gather a reasonable range of opinions on a plan that, given the total of 16 towers (nearly all of them housing), might justify factory start-up costs. And here's a tidbit that explains how the prefab plan was chosen:
Indeed, SHoP, the architects behind the arena and apartment towers, had two separate design teams working on the project at once, walled off from each other. They used different engineers and everything, had a mini architecture competition, and the prefab team came out on top.
Posted by eric at December 8, 2011 11:23 AM