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September 9, 2012
WSJ: Public benefits for big projects like Atlantic Yards lag without "carefully drawn contracts;" actually, the AY contract was carefully drawn, just with provisions giving the developer 25 years
Atlantic Yards Report
The Wall Street Journal published a round-up yesterday headlined When Big Projects Stall: Brooklyn's Atlantic Yards, Like Others Across the Country, Brings Mixed Results. It's got some insight, but I have to think that when reporter Eliot Brown was writing for the New York Observer, he was allowed to be a wee bit more skeptical:
...But as the borough gears up for the brown, metal-wrapped arena's opening event, a Jay-Z concert on Sept. 28 before the Nets take court this fall, the surrounding neighborhood still is waiting for housing and other benefits once touted by the developer as part of a planned $4.9 billion real-estate project known as Atlantic Yards.
As one of the largest mixed-use projects under way in the country, Atlantic Yards was meant to transform a swath of Brooklyn. But the missing pieces of the project highlight the challenges many U.S. cities face with large-scale real-estate developments that have become stalled amid a slow economic recovery, leaving them without taxes, jobs and amenities once pledged to the public.
Historically, such delays or loss of pledged benefits have been common for large private and public projects alike, said Jerold Kayden, an urban planning professor at Harvard University. "Too often, without carefully drawn contracts, the project gets built without these things," Mr. Kayden said of public benefits to large developments, "and the public ends up with the short end of the stick."Well, there is a carefully drawn contract with Atlantic Yards. It was just carefully--and quietly--drawn so Forest City Ratner would have 25 years to build the project. The failure to study the impact of that buildout was ruled illegal, but nobody gets sanctioned for delaying the benefits.
Moreover, nobody gets sanctioned for providing cost-benefit scenarios that assumed a full buildout within a decade, rather than a range of scenarios, from optimistic to pessimistic.
Posted by steve at September 9, 2012 10:25 PM