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September 10, 2012
When Big Projects Stall
Brooklyn's Atlantic Yards, Like Others Across the Country, Brings Mixed Results
The Wall Street Journal
by Eliot Brown
We covered Norman Oder's coverage of this Journal piece this weekend — here's the source article.
Partially-built mega-projects dot U.S. cities.
In New London, Conn., a piece of land once eyed for a sprawling waterfront development with a hotel, office space and residential, is still fallow seven years after a landmark U.S. Supreme Court upheld the use of eminent domain to take homes on the site. The new mayor, Daryl Finizio, says now the city is hoping to start on a residential development on a portion of the 90-acre site by mid-2013, but for now the site is without the new neighborhood and the envisioned tax revenues.
In downtown Los Angeles, developer Related Cos. hasn't been able to build a set of skyscrapers proposed at the market's peak that were planned on lots in the downtown area in a $3 billion development known as Grand Avenue. The developer recently opened a park, and has said it is considering changing the project to get it going beyond a mid-sized building it plans to soon begin. But public officials are still contending with ownership of the vacant lots.
In New Jersey, the $1.9 billion mega-mall previously named Xanadu has been stalled for three years, and a new developer working with the administration of Gov. Chris Christie is trying to restart work and enlarge the project to include more entertainment. Officials were counting on thousands of jobs and improvements to a swampy area of the Meadowlands.
In the case of Brooklyn's Atlantic Yards, benefits were crucial to tempering a vocal community opposition when the project was approved in 2006. As the centerpiece of the development, the arena was supposed to be designed by famed architect Frank Gehry with a roof adorned with grass and a running track. The New York-based developer, Bruce Ratner, also pledged to reserve nearly one third of 6,400 planned apartments for low and middle-income families, along with a community health-care center and other givebacks.
But these and other selling points have been deferred, or in a few cases scrapped, as the company has struggled to get the larger project off the ground amid a chilly climate for new development.
...Changes such as the decision to drop Mr. Gehry, were necessary given the decline of the real-estate market during the recession, Forest City executives say. "You need to be flexible and to be nimble," says MaryAnne Gilmartin, an executive vice president at Forest City. "The alternative would be to let the project die of its own weight."
Related coverage...
Willets Point United, When Big Projects Fail
The WSJ has a fascinating article on the failed promises of the Atlantic Yards project-and Eliot Brown's take on this is a cautionary tale for all of the grandiose promises still swirling around the Willets Point development.
...That gets us to the affordable housing pledge the city has made over at Willets Point-and why we have called it a "Wimpy" deal-the likelihood of any of the original promises being kept is closer to nil. This means that, when all is said and done, the city will be taking the property of small owners and handing it over to Sterling Equities and Related to build a lucrative mall for the crony capitalists-shafting not only the property owners but the public as well.
Posted by eric at September 10, 2012 10:42 AM