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September 10, 2012
Atlantic Yards and the Culture of Cheating
Atlantic Yards Report
This page launched on Sept. 10, 2012 and will be updated.
The Barclays Center opens Sept. 28, 2012. The parade of entertainment and Brooklyn's first arena surely will provoke much media attention.
The looming, metal-clad arena, unmistakable at the intersection of Atlantic and Flatbush avenues, forming a new node just past long-accepted downtown boundaries, has been enough to convince some journalists, like a New York magazine sportswriter who willfully puts on blinders when it comes to the political implications of sports, that the “battle is over, and Bruce Ratner won it.”
That, however, depends on amnesia, or ignorance: a dismissal of the enormous claims of Atlantic Yards benefits, and belief in Ratner's assertion that “Nobody will remember what we had to do to make it happen.”
But Atlantic Yards, announced in December 2003, approved in December 2006 and again in September 2009, will be remembered, not just for its promises of 16 towers and arena, "Jobs, Housing, and Hoops," but "what we had to do."
Atlantic Yards and the Barclays Center have provoked neither indictments nor investigations. It's not a crime--despite the metaphorical use of the term by those planning protests for the opening weekend.
It’s almost all legal--well, judges this year confirmed serious civil illegality: that the state had evaded the required environmental review. Though too late to affect the arena, that meant one official finding that the project is tainted.
There's no legal corruption. But Atlantic Yards relies upon what I'd call a "culture of cheating," a term inspired by The Cheating Culture: Why More Americans Are Doing Wrong to Get Ahead, a book by business ethicist David Callahan.
It's an ends-justify-the-means shamelessness and betrayal of promises that pervades the project, involving, at various times, project promoters, consultants, lawyers, and community partners. And that cheating has been too often ignored or papered over by the press.
Posted by eric at September 10, 2012 2:05 PM