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June 28, 2012
Is There Any Point to an Atlantic Yards SEIS? You Bet
Prospect Heights Patch
by Gib Veconi
Picture this: You draw up plans for a new house. You find a well-known contractor who says he’ll need twelve months to build them. A few weeks before the project is supposed to start, you’re still finalizing an agreement with the contractor. One day, he calls up and says he’s got resource problems. Instead of twelve months, now he’s going to need two and a half years. Which would you do?
A. Agree to let the contractor have his way, and get somewhere else to live for the extra year and a half.
B. Find another contractor who can get the job done sooner.
Most of us would choose option B. Not the State of New York. In the summer of 2009, Forest City Ratner made just such an offer to the Empire State Development Corporation when it asked to extend the construction schedule of the Atlantic Yards project from ten to twenty-five years. Not only did ESDC agree to the extra fifteen years, it pretended that the schedule hadn’t even changed so it wouldn’t have to answer to the public or its own board.
Instead, for a change of such magnitude, ESDC was required to prepare a supplemental environmental impact statement (SEIS). Although it primarily focuses on environmental impacts, under State and City environmental guidelines, an SEIS also must consider alternatives to the proposed plan. In 2009, those alternatives surely would have included reducing schedule risk by bringing in additional development teams.
Posted by eric at June 28, 2012 11:30 AM