No Land Grab

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NoLandGrab: The ESDC, tool of developer Bruce Ratner, has managed to win for us Atlantic Yards, a project nobody wanted, in the name of providing benefits that grow smaller and less likely to appear as time goes on.

Posted by steve at 8:52 PM

March 30, 2011

Reconsidering Jane Jacobs: a program tomorrow at the Museum of the City of New York

Atlantic Yards Report

No direct Atlantic Yards angle here, but a nice discount for readers of Atlantic Yards Report for what sounds like an interesting event.

Tomorrow, Thursday, March 31 at 6:30 pm, the Museum of the City of New York will host a panel titled Reconsidering Jane Jacobs.
...

Reservations required: 917-492-3395 or e-mail programs@mcny.org
$6 museum members; $8 seniors and students; $12 non-members
$6 when you mention Atlantic Yards Report

Museum of the City of New York
1220 Fifth Avenue at 103rd Street

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Posted by eric at 12:29 PM

March 7, 2011

New book, "The Invention of Brownstone Brooklyn," an interview with the author, some AY echoes, and some AKRF duplicity

Atlantic Yards Report

Do you think Atlantic Yards was the first community clash regarding such things as gentrification, affordable housing, and "Manhattanization" of Brooklyn?

It may be the largest, but it sure wasn't the first. Such tensions have been threaded through the remarkable transformation of the borough's row-house neighborhoods, as chronicled in Suleiman Osman's new book, The Invention of Brownstone Brooklyn: Gentrification and the Search for Authenticity in Postwar New York.

I have an article about the book today in Patch. Also see an excerpt from the book's introduction and an interview in Dwell (and discussion on Brownstoner).

The book is a reminder of how much changed in Brooklyn without government intervention, and also how that spirit made those who changed Brooklyn suspicious of such intervention.

That said, the resistance to Atlantic Yards has gone well beyond knee-jerk and NIMBY, since many of those sympathetic to government intervention draw the line at this version.

Remember AKRF?

The book is also a reminder of--as I wrote more than four-and-a-half years ago--how the ubiquitous environmental consultant AKRF, in its very selective history for the Atlantic Yards Draft Environmental Impact Statement, emphasized governmental investment in urban renewal, including condemnation, without acknowledging the parallel process in Brownstone Brooklyn of mostly private reinvestment and revival via historic preservation, which was hastened by the city's Landmarks Preservation Commission.

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Posted by eric at 11:47 AM

March 4, 2011

City Limits on Defining Brooklyn: image does not quite meet reality, but borough is surely in flux

Atlantic Yards Report

The March/April issue of City Limits, Defining Brooklyn, is out, with a few pieces on the web, and offering a challenge:

What does it mean to be "Brooklyn?" No borough in the city—perhaps no other urban place in America—has the kind of name recognition that Brooklyn enjoys. From Neil Simon plays to Jay-Z songs, Brooklyn has long had a prominent cultural profile. And in the past 10 years, Brooklyn has embodied New York's boom, from the boutiques that dot once-gritty Red Hook to the luxury high-rises of Fort Greene. But does Brooklyn's cultural mystique—or the view from Red Hook or Fort Greene—reflect reality throughout the borough?

The answer, you might expect, is no, as indicated by the few articles posted.

(While the cover references the coming Nets arena, the articles posted so far barely mention Atlantic Yards.)

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Posted by eric at 10:13 AM

March 1, 2011

The Downtown Brooklyn rezoning produced housing (& the DBP is happy), but shouldn't landowners who got a gift have been required to share the wealth?

Atlantic Yards Report

In a 2/27/11 article headlined Downtown Brooklyn's residential growth: Downtown, slated for office space, got a residential boom, Crain's reports how the downtown Brooklyn rezoning approved in 2004 has produced far less than the "forecast 4.5 million square feet of new office space and accompanying 18,500 jobs."

Rather, 1.3 million square feet of office space has been produced--no job total announced--and a lot of new housing: 23 residential buildings, and 4300 units.

The designated cheerleader is happy:

“One of the components of a healthy downtown is having a 24/7 community with a vibrant residential sector,” said Joe Chan, president of the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership. “We're delighted.”

What about the change?

Yes, that's a component, but then again there's the record:

“We were supposed to get the third-largest business district in the city [behind midtown and lower Manhattan],” said Robert Perris, manager for Brooklyn's Community Board 2, which includes downtown. “What we've gotten is a high-rise residential neighborhood.”

Affordable housing

The article notes:

City Councilwoman Letitia James, who represents large sections of the downtown area, argued that the boom has excluded low- and middle-income families. She also noted that the neighborhood lacks schools, food stores and other necessary services and amenities.

“We were sold a bill of goods,” Ms. James said. The residential component should have more affordable housing, she added, but what she most wants to see is the thriving commercial center that the city initially proposed.

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Posted by eric at 10:38 AM

February 27, 2011

Zimbalist issues guiding principles for successful arena in Edmonton; guarantees of revenues and ancillary development absent in Brooklyn

Atlantic Yards Report

In an Edmonton Journal article headlined Case for new arena no 'slam dunk': Leading analyst says such plans can work - if conditions are right, sports economist Andrew Zimbalist, who claims he turns down 70 percent of consulting gigs offered, offers a mixed opinion on a new downtown arena:

Success, he says, comes down to a few guiding principles.

These include: thoughtful planning and design; a solid financial model that places most (roughly 80 per cent) of the financial burden on the private-sector partner; upfront, iron-clad guarantees from the developer to protect local taxpayers from projected future revenue shortfalls or project cost overruns; and a binding upfront commitment by the team owner and his developer-partners to proceed with ancillary projects, such as hotels or condos.

What was missing in Brooklyn

Funny, but Zimbalist didn't say that in the "study" he conducted for Forest City Ratner. (He was hired before the project was unveiled in December 2003.)

Protection from future revenue shortfalls? No, Zimbalist provided the best-case scenario, which assumed a full buildout of the original configuration, and at the announced ten-year timetable.

The timetable is long gone, as is the configuration, and a full buildout is questionable, given that it's not required by the Development Agreement.

Binding commitment to proceed with ancillary projects? The Development Agreement allows a much smaller project. Office space (jobs and tax revenue) was swapped for condos.

Here's a prescient criticism, from the 5/4/04 Daily News:

"This document is a self-serving document," said Councilwoman Letitia James (D-Fort Greene). "This document is a ruse. We should line our wastebaskets with it."

And that's not even getting into other contradictions and willfully naive statements.

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Posted by steve at 6:59 PM

February 19, 2011

Other northeastern cities move ahead to lower mandated parking in developments; will New York replace PlaNYC 1950?

Atlantic Yards Repot

In December 2007, I described how Mayor Mike Bloomberg's much-praised PlaNYC 2030 contains a glaring omission, a failure to address the antiquated anti-urban policy that mandates parking attached to new residential developments outside Manhattan, even when such developments, like Atlantic Yards, are justified precisely because they're located near transit hubs. I called the current situation PlaNYC 1950.

In Building a Greener Future: A Progress Report on New York City’s Sustainability Initiatives, released in May 2008, The New York League of Conservation Voters Education Fund recommended, among other things, a comprehensive study of the parking requirements in the Zoning Resolution. Last July, the Department of City Planning was said to be rethinking parking minimums in new developments in western Brooklyn and elsewhere.

Others move ahead

But nothing's happened yet, while others move ahead. Streetsblog reports, in New York Falls Behind Big Northeast Cities on Parking Policy :

The city of Philadelphia recently released a draft of its new comprehensive plan, Philadelphia2035]. The plan’s release makes New York the last city in the four largest Northeastern metro areas that hasn’t so much as stated a commitment to cutting back on off-street parking.

Philadelphia2035 calls for controlling congestion by adding parking maximums into the zoning code and pricing on-street parking high enough so that 15 percent of spaces are always free. Here in New York, we still pretend that adding off-street parking reduces traffic congestion.

Posted by steve at 4:16 PM

February 10, 2011

The Just City: tensions between democracy and equity, heightened scrutiny for megaprojects, and a public share in the profits (and new taxes?)

Atlantic Yards Report

The Just City is Harvard planning professor Susan Fainstein's effort to "to apply abstract arguments concerning justice to actual planning situations," as she said during a panel at the New School on Tuesday, and "to respond to the triumph of neo-liberalism"--thinking dominated by the free market--"in planning doctrine."

While New York has seen substantial growth in the last 40 years, it has also seen the widening of inequality. So there's reason to dispute the argument that benefits of growth will trickle down, she said.

She's long been a critic of the Bloomberg administration. In an article, The Return of Urban Renewal: Dan Doctoroff’s Grand Plans for New York City, in the Spring/Summer 2005 issue of Harvard Design Magazine, Fainstein wrote:

For planners who do not believe that the market always produces choices best for the city, seeing the city once again engaged in planning that makes explicit the changes to come is welcome. Thus, in one respect, the current thrust toward comprehensiveness and public investment is a step forward in making visible and contested a process that otherwise remains hidden. But the methods by which the plans are developed, the emphasis on sports complexes, the encumbrances on the city and state’s fiscal integrity, and the sheer magnitude and density of the proposed projects can only cause serious misgivings.
...

Fainstein seemed to lump in Atlantic Yards with Yankee Stadium. The latter, she said, exemplified "a style of promoting growth that has been going on in New York... Bloomberg came in and said he wasn't going to give big subsidies to sports teams but in fact has done so... So all the teams got their stadiums, or their arenas."

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Posted by eric at 11:25 AM

February 9, 2011

Two views of planning and zoning: the official city perspective (via Amanda Burden) vs. City Limits (City Without a Plan)

Atlantic Yards Report

From the 2/6/11 New York Times Real Estate section, A New City Handbook Demystifies Zoning:

Since becoming New York City’s planning commissioner in 2002, Amanda M. Burden has presided over the rezoning of wide swaths of the city.

Some changes have served traditional zoning goals — encouraging higher density on commercial thoroughfares (particularly near transit hubs) while lowering density in residential neighborhoods. And some have served goals not usually associated with zoning — improving food choices (by encouraging grocery stores to open in underserved neighborhoods) and promoting nonpolluting transportation (by requiring bike parking inside new residential buildings, for example).

“It turns out that boring old zoning, when used creatively, can be used to solve a whole lot of problems,” Ms. Burden said in a telephone interview...

That the [zoning] resolution is “impossible to understand,” Ms. Burden said, has taken the tool of zoning out of the hands of the public. She hopes to change that, with a new handbook, available Monday, that she said not only “demystifies zoning, but I think is entertaining — it’s fun to read.”

...Ms. Burden says she will be happy when residents start attending meetings with dog-eared copies of the new book. “Planning,” she said, “is most effective when it’s in the hands of the community.”

From City Limits

In the January 2011 issue of City Limits, City Without a Plan (p. 16):

Unfortunately, the way New York City plans is largely broken.

Unlike many major American cities, New York has never compelted a comprehensive plan for its future. Instead, it has passed zoning laws to try to constrain the private market... Under Mayor Bloomberg, more than 100 neighborhoods have been rezoned, but it is not clear that those changes follow a logical, equitable or comprehensive plan for how to accommodate the hundreds of thousands of new residents the New York of 2030 will have to house, employ, and move.

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NoLandGrab: And let's not forget, sometimes an entire area is rezoned so the City's Planning Commissioner can find a suitable white-tablecloth place to eat after attending a concert by The Magic Lady.

Posted by eric at 11:34 AM

Meeting marks a step toward a broad-based Brooklyn civic organization, with AY activists playing a role

Atlantic Yards Report

In my New York Times Complaint Box essay last month, Powerless in Brooklyn, I wrote, "We lack meaningful local government, as well as broad-based media and civic organizations."

In a comment, Raul Rothblatt of the Four Borough Preservation Alliance (and an Atlantic Yards activist), wrote, "We are currently working on facilitating cooperation between groups in Brooklyn..."

Indeed, a meeting was upcoming, as I had been told. (I learned of it after I'd written my essay and had it approved.)

First meeting

Now the Courier-Life reports on the first meeting, in New group would 'take back borough' Brooklyn-wide civic group sought
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Can it work? The agendas of civic groups vary--it's not all land use--but, at the very least, talking might lead to a platform of priorities.

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Posted by eric at 10:51 AM

What’s New in NYC DEP’s Strategic Plan?

Aqueous Advisors

Pretty sure this is the first time we've posted a link to Aqueous Advisors.

Today, NYC DEP released its 78-page Strategic Plan for 2011-2014, with 100 initiatives. My question here is:

What’s new in those initiatives? What’s announced here for the first time?

Below, I’ve identified the 10 items that were newest to me.
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Initiative #41: Build out and replace critical water mains

DEP will construct new 72″ water mains “to ensure the vibrancy of the Manhattan central business district, support the growth of Coney Island’s amusement district, and make the thousands of housing units and offices at Atlantic Yards possible.” In other words, new condos near the Hudson Yards, Atlantic Yards, and Coney Island will need more water. Will this be paid for by the new development charge in #14?

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Posted by eric at 10:33 AM

January 31, 2011

Catching up: on declining manufacturing jobs, uncounted vacant lots (that could support new housing)

Atlantic Yards Report

The Bloomberg administration may gain respect for pursuing illegal gun sales, but there are lots of lapses when it comes to land use.

In a post January 15, I quoted the Village Voice quoting City Limits on the decline of manufacturing jobs, but here's Sarah Crean's original piece, dated January 3, headlined Did City's Industrial Policy Manufacture Defeat?

She wrote:

According to research conducted by the New York Industrial Retention Network, 23.4 million square feet of industrial space was lost to approved rezonings between 2001 and 2008, impacting some of New York’s most populated manufacturing districts. Significant portions of Greenpoint-Williamsburg, Long Island City, the midtown Garment Center, and Port Morris in the Bronx were rezoned during this period, mainly for residential development.

Repeated attempts by community groups, labor unions, industrial advocates and others to promote alternative plans that would not place as much pressure on manufacturing clusters met with limited success. We were particularly unsuccessful in reaching any sort of a conceptual common ground with the Department of City Planning. They generally ignored the argument that permitting residential development in industrial areas would lead to conversion pressure because owners of industrial buildings could generate higher returns with residential tenants. The Department of City Planning made repeatedly clear its belief that manufacturing jobs were not integral to New York’s future, while residential development, of course, was. Now as we struggle through double-digit unemployment in many of the city’s low income neighborhoods, the logic of ignoring our industrial sector seems more questionable.

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NoLandGrab: But where is one going to find a nice poached turbot in beurre blanc and a lovely Pouilly-Fuisse in a manufacturing district?

Posted by eric at 11:08 PM

January 29, 2011

MAS announces 2011 Livability Watch List, including Moynihan Station, Coney Island, NYU expansion; AY is not included but said to inform MAS thinking

Atlantic Yards Report

The Municipal Art Society (MAS) has announced the 2011 Livability Watch List, "a compilation of the 11 initiatives that will have the most significant effect on livability in New York City this year. As the leading organization dedicated to creating a more livable New York through intelligent urban planning and design, MAS will call attention to these 11 through advocacy work, public programming and issues monitoring."

The list, which leads with Moynihan Station & Hudson Yards, and includes Coney Island and the expansion of NYU, surely includes some major topics. It's tough to argue that any should be omitted, and it'll be a challenge for the MAS to keep track and galvanize interest.

That said, Atlantic Yards is a conspicuous omission, given that the issues it raises--a megadevelopment in a very tight spot, questionable design, indefinite interim surface parking--surely galvanized MAS for a while, leading it to help found "mend it, don't end it" BrooklynSpeaks, then to withdraw about a year ago once the latter finally went to court, a tactic with which MAS disagreed.

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Posted by steve at 8:21 AM

January 28, 2011

Planner Garvin on the importance of parks; his checklist explains why publicly-accessible open space (as in AY) doesn't measure up

Atlantic Yards Report

On Monday I attended a lecture by planner Alexander Garvin, academic, consultant (self-described "public realm strategist"), former Dan Doctoroff aide, and author of the recently-published Public Parks: The Key to Livable Communities.

While Garvin wasn't addressing publicly-accessible, privately-managed open space like that planned for Atlantic Yards, it's clear that it doesn't measure up to the standards of public parks.

AY open space comes later

It also should be pointed out that the Atlantic Yards open space would not come until Phase 2 of the project, and then in increments as each building is finished, which means the full eight acres would not arrive for ten years, under the non-credible official timetable, and more likely 25 years, the official deadline.

By contrast, at Battery Park City, much of the park space was built first. Indeed, as Garvin described using examples from Paris (boulevards, parks, small parks) and San Antonio (the Riverwalk), such public investment stimulated investment, rather than was portrayed as a reward after allowing new development.

Garvin, as I've reported, stresses investments in the "public realm," streets, squares, parks, transportation systems, and public buildings, which, he said Monday, provides the most leverage in capturing and guiding public investment in the public interest.

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NoLandGrab: The MetroTech rules sign could've been a lot smaller if they'd just listed the things one is allowed to do.

Posted by eric at 11:57 AM

January 27, 2011

New Betaville, based on gaming technology, could equalize the information gap in urban design and enhance public participation

Atlantic Yards Report

Public presentations of projects like Atlantic Yards have relied principally on self-serving, often misleading renderings produced by the developer's architect, frequently from a helicopter view rather than street level.

Indeed, even New York Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff got religion in April 2008, pointing out, in relation to the Hudson Yards plan, that misleading and incomplete renderings produce a "distorted picture of reality" that "stifles what is supposed to be an open, democratic process."

With Atlantic Yards, some citizen activists and outside professionals produced alternative renderings of the project in neighborhood scale, which in turn led to a new and better renderings from architect Frank Gehry, which were released by the Empire State Development Corporation, the state agency shepherding the project.

Still, New York's daily newspapers failed to present a rendering of the project in neighborhood scale.

So, as I told Urban Omnibus, Betaville, described as a new “open source, multi-player environment for real cities” offers great promise in equalizing the information gap and helping present, from the start, a more honest perspective on development projects big and small. Such a service is only fair, and long overdue.

Urban Omnibus has an fascinating video interview with Betaville developer Carl Skelton, director of the Brooklyn Experimental Media Center (BxmC) at NYU Poly, in which he describes, using Betaville, how you can "fly around, like Robert Moses, and walk around, like Jane Jacobs" and how expertise can meet "local competence."

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Related coverage...

Urban Omnibus, Betaville

Posted by eric at 9:09 AM

January 24, 2011

The Vanishing City: film focuses on the fruits of a corporate-friendly mentality and the "luxury city"; AY gets a cameo

Atlantic Yards Report

Trying to understand the arc of the city that led to such projects as Atlantic Yards, I've been writing recently about the loss of manufacturing. That's part of a larger story, told intriguingly--if incompletely--in the 55-minute 2010 documentary, The Vanishing City, by Fiore DiRosa and Jen Senko.

The overview:

Told through the eyes of tenants, city planners, business owners, scholars, and politicians, The Vanishing City exposes the real politic behind the alarming disappearance of New York’s beloved neighborhoods, the truth about its finance-dominated economy, and the myth of “inevitable change.” Artfully documented through interviews, hearings, demonstrations, and archival footage, the film takes a sober look at the city’s “luxury” policies and high-end development, the power role of the elite, and accusations of corruption surrounding land use and rezoning. The film also links New York trends to other global cities where multinational corporations continue to victimize the middle and working classes.

Opening with the voices of neighborhood residents who fear they are being pushed out, the film pivots on the insights of anthropologist and urban historian Julian Brash, author of Bloomberg’s New York: Class and Governance in the Luxury City and subject of this 10/22/08 Q&A on Jeremiah's Vanishing New York blog.

The "luxury city" quote, as noted at the bottom, reflects Mayor Mike Bloomberg's framing of the city as a luxury product for corporations to choose as a location--a philosophy, as the film points out, that's belied by the tax breaks targeted for big employers.

But the film, not inappropriately, points to an emphasis on building luxury housing, with the attendant shift in the character of neighborhoods, as small businesses close.

The question, echoed in the 2007 and 2008 discussions of Jane Jacobs and Robert Moses, is whether that was simply the market at work. As the film reminds us, it wasn't.

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Posted by eric at 9:04 AM

January 20, 2011

Two from The Onion the Brooklyn Daily Eagle

Brooklyn Broadside: Is a Major Office Building a Prospect for Brooklyn?

First up is Dennis Holt, who after all these years, still doesn't know where "downtown" Brooklyn begins and ends.

Would it be called the Panasonic Building? It just might if it were within the Atlantic Yards development. But it might not were it to go into existing MetroTech space. What am I talking about, for Pete’s sake, or the phrase might be for Bruce’s sake?

Last Friday’s Wall Street Journal broke a story that has very much been kept under wraps for all the obvious reasons. Credit reporters Joseph Se Avila and A. D. Pruitt.

Under wraps? They're not close to making a decision, and our bet is that the unwrapping was done by Forest City.

Here’s the grabber: Panasonic Corporation of North America is headquartered in Secaucus, New Jersey. For reasons not spelled out, it wants or needs to move someplace else. The state of New Jersey is moving heaven and earth to keep it there, probably in a new building in Newark.

Guess where Panasonic is looking? In Downtown Brooklyn, of course, either as part of MetroTech (NYU Polytechnic is there, remember) or as part of the Atlantic Yards development. (Remember Frank Gehry’s Miss Brooklyn?) Bruce Ratner controls both sites. The numbers may change, to be sure, but it appears that Panasonic would need about 250,000 square feet for about 800 jobs. Those are numbers that call out for an anchor tenant and the building of a respectable office building.

Back in the real world, Norman Oder pointed out on Tuesday that nearly three times that much space is vacant at MetroTech.

Next up is Henrik Krogius, who must be talking about some other Atlantic Yards.

Review and Comment: Idea for Gowanus?

We live in a changing Brooklyn that tries to cling to its (not always so sweet) past, in a time when the speed of technological change has unsettled many people. Reaction against innovative planning has marked the new millennium on matters like Atlantic Yards and the financing and design of Brooklyn Bridge Park, and yet individual towers not part of any considered community framework have sprouted willy-nilly. It’s not the same old Brooklyn. But facing up to the need for more considered and innovative approaches to development comes hard.

Say what? "Innovative planning?" We'll let Norman Oder take that one.

Atlantic Yards Report, Daily Eagle columnist: "Reaction against innovative planning has marked the new millennium on matters like Atlantic Yards"

He's right that individual towers have sprouted thanks to the Downtown Brooklyn rezoning, but the lack of response--and anticipation--is at least partly because the rezoning was supposed to bring mainly office towers, not residential ones.

But Atlantic Yards as "innovative planning"?

Audacious design, maybe.

The planning was non-existent; the project was imposed from on high, with the state overriding local land use review.

Posted by eric at 10:25 AM

January 16, 2011

Made in Brooklyn: a 1993 warning about the loss of manufacturing for housing, more poignant today; is real estate really economic development?

Atlantic Yards Report

The documentary Made in Brooklyn, about the importance of manufacturing and the shortsightedness of trading industrial space for housing and offices, was made in 1993, but the message remains valid, if ever more poignant.

(The filmmaker is Isabel Hill, known for her subsequent Brooklyn Matters documentary on Atlantic Yards.)

After all, Made in Brooklyn was filmed before this decade's real estate boom, and some of the manufacturers featured in the documentary, notably the Domino Sugar plant in Williamsburg (right), have closed, and the Domino site is slated to become the New Domino, a development second in size to Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn.

The reviews and comments were mostly laudatory, though one critic pointed out Hill could have asked about salaries and benefits, and noted that some small manufacturers are sweatshops. Still, manufacturing has long been a source of good jobs for immigrants and others who may lack book learning but can use their skills.

There's an argument for local manufacturing, one that remains for such things as immigrant food services, the garment industry, and support for live theater: Brooklyn offers proximity to consumer markets and access to a large pool of labor.

Author Pete Hamill, who rose from manufacturing work to a writing career, gets some zingers in on the value of labor.

The conventional wisdom

Academic Mitchell Moss offers the standard, not implausible, explanation about the loss of manufacturing: factories left for land designed for mass assembly, access to highways, and locations with low-cost labor.

What's the future for low-skilled workers? Building services and building maintenance.

But you can't build yourself out of a recession, right?

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Posted by steve at 10:57 AM

January 15, 2011

The decline in manufacturing is the worst eight-year drop in NYC history; one reason is rezonings

Atlantic Yards Report

Remember how Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz said the country needs to get back to manufacturing?

Well, New York City has its niche manufacturing, but that niche is narrowing. Tom Robbins, soon to depart from the Village Voice, reports:

This month, City Limits magazine reported that under Mayor Bloomberg's watch, manufacturing jobs in the city disappeared twice as fast as in the rest of the country. Almost 64,000 blue-collar positions vanished, a decline of 46 percent. It is the worst eight-year slide in city history, says Sarah Crean, who has kept an eye on these statistics for the New York Industrial Retention Network. Land rezoning is one reason, says Crean. Indifference is another.

It might be added that, when rezonings were passed, the city didn't always predict things well, as with Downtown Brooklyn. And sometimes, as with Atlantic Yards, the city let the state override zoning.

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Posted by steve at 11:42 AM

January 1, 2011

Los Angeles Times architecture critic, aghast at a stadium proposal, thinks New York, by contrast, doesn't embrace developer-driven projects

Atlantic Yards Report

Los Angeles Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne yesterday offered Critic's Notebook: Los Angeles needs a game plan: AEG's plans for a new football stadium in downtown Los Angeles point to bigger problems: The city follows, not leads, and allows developers to shape Los Angeles one mega-project at a time.

He lamented:

One is that City Hall finds itself in the familiar position of reacting to, rather than guiding with any real foresight, a major development proposal that seeks to rewrite the planning rules downtown.

New York leads the way?

Dismayingly, Hawthorne suggested New York offers a counterpoint:

By contrast, other cities, notably New York under Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Portland, Ore., have breathed new life into the public sphere not by chasing giant developer-driven projects but by tending carefully to transit, bike paths, parks and other human-scaled improvements.

I posted a comment:

That's ridiculous. Along with appointing an innovative director of the Department of Transportation and others concerned about human-scaled improvements, Bloomberg has backed to the hilt developer-driven megaprojects such as the West Side Stadium (killed), new stadiums for the Yankees and Mets, and the Atlantic Yards project (arena plus towers) in Brooklyn.

Distinguished planner Alexander Garvin said this past June, "Atlantic Yards: what kind of public realm is there? None,” he responded rhetorically. “A single site rezoned for a single owner with a set of towers and an arena. That's not a public realm. If you're going to increase what you can support on the site, you need to be able to support them with something, such as community facilities, mass transit, and streets, and I have a problem when the upzoning isn't related to that.”

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Posted by steve at 9:03 AM

December 22, 2010

Moses, Jacobs And You: The Battle For Gotham

A history of the philosophical battle between Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs, told by an author who, wisely, took it personally.

City Limits
by Jarrett Murphy

City Limits reviews Roberta Brandes Gratz's The Battle for Gotham: New York in the Shadow of Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs.

But the problem with the Moses project of 2007, as Gratz observes, was that it stretched reexamination into rehabilitation. Suddenly Robert Moses was the reason New York had become a modern city, as if there had been no plausible way for the New York of 2010 to be created without, say, the Cross-Bronx Expressway cutting through the heart of the Bronx or Lincoln Center obliterating a West Side neighborhood. “The physical achievements, whether judged good or bad, are undeniably mighty in breadth, scale and obstacles overcome,” Gratz writes of Moses. “But the danger in a revisionist view of history is that it takes on a life of its own.”

Worse still was the timing of this Moses revival, coming at the end of a development boom that was Moses-esque in its scale and deafness to public outcry, from Atlantic Yards to Yankee Stadium to Willets Point. Community plans were pushed aside to meet developers' demands. Huge public subsidies were proffered and the threat of eminent domain brandished repeatedly. The defense of Moses was easily repurposed as a defense of the city's new power brokers, whose excesses Gratz details.

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Posted by eric at 11:10 AM

December 14, 2010

Development, Zoning Fights Fuel Push For NYC Roadmap

City Limits
by Jarrett Murphy

It was hard not to be impressed by the December 2006 rollout for Mayor Bloomberg's PlaNYC 2030 initiative. Guests who took the subway out to Flushing were carted via trolley-bus to the stunning Queens Museum of Art. The crowd of dignitaries, advocates and reporters packed the floor of an exhibition hall and flowed onto a mezzanine above. A slick multimedia presentation accompanied the mayor's remarks, and the former NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw oversaw a panel discussion after Bloomberg spoke. The mayor himself was masterful, weaving together civic confidence, moral purpose and self-deprecating humor. And how sweeping his vision was: carbon emissions reduction, affordable housing, new parkland, better transit and cleaner water.

There was just one problem: PlaNYC wasn't actually a plan. Nor was it meant to be one. "It's supposed to be an agenda, and that's what it is," says one former PlaNYC staffer. "We made a mistake by calling it a plan."

No shock there. As the new issue of City Limits magazine reports, real planning is not something New York City has ever done. Other major cities have drafted comprehensive plans that linked land development to transit improvements and government services. But New York has always relied on zoning, which creates rules for what the private market can build, rather than planning. Some attribute this to the city's political complexity, others to the power of the local real estate industry. Many argue that New York is too spontaneous a place for a plan.

But there are growing calls to re-examine those assumptions. Pitched battles over recent redevelopment plans—from Atlantic Yards to Manhattanville—have fueled a fervor for more community input into how the city grows. Developers face lengthy environmental reviews that can increase the cost and alter the marketability of a project. Deals in which builders offer benefits in exchange for community groups' support are under increasing legal and political scrutiny. New York, with a transit system strained by growing ridership and crumbling finances, is struggling to compete with other cities in offering a greener and more efficient commute.

In "City Without A Plan," City Limits looks at the past, present and possible future of planning in New York, with reporting from the South Bronx to the Brooklyn waterfront to suburban Staten Island.

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Posted by eric at 5:04 PM

December 11, 2010

Prospect Heights: Slope Appeal With Edge

The Wall Street Journal
By Joseph De Avila

This overview of Prospect Heights tries to gloss over the disaster of placing an arena near a residential area.

The character of the neighborhood is in for a big change. The controversial Atlantic Yards project, being built by developer Forest City Ratner, has begun construction. The Barclays Center, the sports arena that will become home for the Nets, is slated for completion in 2012. Forest City Ratner also has rights to build 16 buildings of commercial space and some 6,000 apartments.

The construction is causing headaches at Atlantic and Flatbush avenues, already one of the busiest intersections in Brooklyn, said Terry Robison of Prudential Elliman, who lives in Prospect Heights. But once the construction is finished, he thinks having an arena where residents can walk to concerts and basketball games could have positive impacts on home values.

"Getting used to that will take some adjustment," Mr. Robison said. But "prime Prospect Heights is close enough yet far enough away that it won't have a detrimental effect."

link

NoLandGrab: Yes, all of the tonier neighborhoods are clamoring to have an arena built near them.

Posted by steve at 9:17 AM

November 24, 2010

The Amanda Burden Open Space Award sets a new standard; could the Atlantic Yards plaza be a "signature public space"?

Atlantic Yards Report

Honestly, we thought this story had to be from The Onion.

The Urban Land Institute (ULI), a developer-led organization, this year gave its first Amanda Burden Urban Open Space Award, named for and supported by the Chairperson of New York City's Department of City Planning. (The brochure is embedded below.)

The winner: Campus Martius Park in Detroit, described as "heart of downtown Detroit’s development story and its signature public space. Surrounded by offices, residential space, and restaurants, it is a magnet for everyday visitors and high-profile events."

Would the Atlantic Yards plaza serve similarly? I doubt it.

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Posted by eric at 9:46 AM

November 23, 2010

New Brooklyn open space maps call parts of AY site well-served, but don't factor in expected new population; what's the open space ratio?

Atlantic Yards Report

New open space maps from the Parks Department, via the Mayor's Office of Environmental Coordination, provide an apparently accurate but ultimately misleading picture of the Atlantic Yards site.

Sections of the map delineated in red are considered "well-served areas," perhaps because of their relative proximity to Prospect Park. However, should Atlantic Yards be built as planned, the ratio of open space to population will decline, raising questions about the level of service.

Only parts of the Atlantic Yards site destined for Phase 2 are currently considered "well-served areas." The arena block, which would be the first phase developed, is not.

Remember, as I wrote November 16, the delay in project timetable means the "temporary significant open space impact" could last twice as long as the period studied in the Final Environmental Impact Statement.

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Posted by eric at 12:21 PM

November 22, 2010

Japanese developers tour Jersey City's Newport as example of transit-oriented smart growth

The Jersey Journal
by Amy Sara Clark

Atlantic Yards must be the example of how not to do things.

A delegation of 16 Japanese developers toured Newport Wednesday to get ideas on how to successfully develop residential and commercial properties around a railroad station.

The stop was part of a weeklong tour that also includes Grand Central Terminal, Queens Center Mall, the Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn, the Potomac Yard Project in Alexandria, Vir., and the Wisconsin Place shopping center in Chevy Chase, Md.

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NoLandGrab: In Japan, real estate developers are known as "Yakuza." Here, too.

Posted by eric at 8:34 AM

November 9, 2010

From "Intractable Democracy": the revival of Myrtle Avenue required leadership, investment, and neighborhood involvement, not eminent domain

Atlantic Yards Report

In Intractable Democracy: Fifty Years of Community-Based Planning, a new collection of articles and interviews by and with people associated with the Pratt Institute City and Regional Planning Program, there's a fascinating account of the revitalization of Myrtle Avenue in the Fort Greene and Clinton Hill section of Brooklyn.

The bottom line: while Myrtle Avenue, once dubbed "Murder Avenue," had declined, its revival stemmed from prudent investment, strategic leadership, and neighborhood involvement, not by any declaration of blight and the attendant use of eminent domain.

In other words, Myrtle Avenue was seen as something that could bloom if carefully tended, not as something that should be cleared by the state, as with the Atlantic Yards site.

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NoLandGrab: You can be sure that if Bruce Ratner had wanted Myrtle Avenue, it would have suffered a very different fate.

Posted by eric at 10:27 AM

November 8, 2010

Cuomo's Urban Agenda: vague regarding housing and transportation, but rhetoric about community development promises local consultation

Atlantic Yards Report

New York Governor-elect Andrew Cuomo has an Urban Agenda (details in PDF), which sounds good in places, but is also vague and cautious. He was been criticized for issuing it too late and not grappling with big challenges like the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

Interestingly enough, when it comes to affordable housing, Cuomo says nothing about mega-projects and suggests, with perhaps more hope than anything else, that the federal government could play a much bigger role.

While the little press coverage focused on the politics of the agenda (e.g., outreach to the black community), the MTA, and housing, the document contains some impressive boilerplate in the direction of good planning.

Should such rhetoric be followed and Community Development Blueprints be created, projects like Atlantic Yards would be much more difficult to achieve, given the rhetorical importance given to community consultation.

But that's not necessarily how development gets done, especially when developers like Bruce Ratner have given campaign contributions and have the governor's ear.

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Posted by eric at 10:55 AM

November 6, 2010

Fulton Mall is not there yet

The Brooklyn Paper
By Faith Hope Consolo

This article gushes about changes coming to the Fulton Mall (ahem, "luxury retail corridor") in downtown Brooklyn. This view includes the idea that the introduction of more chain stores will then lead to the opening of hip restaurants. It's difficult to predict the future will be for this shopping strip, but the author makes a pretty big stretch by predicting significant pedestrian traffic from the office workers of Bruce Ratner's soul-numbing Metrotech Center as well as from the arena goers of Atlantic Yards, about a half mile away.

The concentration of the youth-market stores will easily attract buyers from the entire borough. Add to the mix the proximity to Metrotech Center and the Atlantic Yards, and a constant flow of foot traffic in the pedestrian mall is almost a guarantee.

link

Posted by steve at 8:26 AM

November 3, 2010

MAS Summit: Moynihan Station seen as transformative project (not AY)

Atlantic Yards Report

The Municipal Art Society's (MAS) Summit for New York City October 21-22 featured a panel on a project all participants deemed transformative to the city.

Atlantic Yards? No, Moynihan Station, the transformation of the Farley Post Office into a train station worthy of the city's biggest commuter hub, the underground and much-maligned Penn Station, and the attendant development of the Far West Side of Manhattan.

Sure, the summit was held at a venue adjacent to Penn Station, so a Moynihan Station panel--especially given the groundbreaking that week--made sense.

But had the summit been held in Brooklyn, they could not have made the same arguments or predictions. It's simply impossible to see Atlantic Yards as transformative in the same way. There would be, at most, one commercial building, not dozens.

In fact, it's more likely that Atlantic Yards will linger, as it takes far longer than initially promised for most or all of the planned apartment towers to be constructed.

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Posted by eric at 10:20 AM

November 2, 2010

MAS Summit: City Vitals shows New York's strengths (talent, innovation) and weaknesses (percentage of voters, separation of rich/poor)

Atlantic Yards Report

A couple of years ago, I remember asking a couple of then-colleagues whom they were voting for in local elections. They had no interest in voting.

Indeed, while New York certainly comes out high in several lists of key urban attributes, it's quite low--43rd out of 50--when ranking the number of votes cast in the November 2004 presidential election divided by the voting age population of the metropolitan area.

That's one intriguing finding in City Vitals, a report that documents four key elements-- talent, innovation, connections and distinctiveness-- that drive prosperity in urban environments.

So it gives some perspective on how New York City can in many ways thrive even as citizens and communities feel a disconnect with government, such as when projects like Atlantic Yards are "done deals" despite formal opportunities for public input.

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Posted by eric at 3:57 PM

October 28, 2010

MAS Summit: the dominance of NYC EDC in planning, the value of green space, and the importance of sharing the bounty across the boroughs

Atlantic Yards Report

While the livability survey revealed at the Municipal Art Society's (MAS) Summit for New York City October 21-22 suggested that most New Yorkers were satisfied, there were significant pockets of discontent, notably (and unsurprisingly) among poorer residents in the outer boroughs.

So there was a good deal of discussion about how to improve things. After all, suggested Robert McNulty, founder and president of Partners for Livable Communities, "livability should be defined by the least advantaged member of your community."
...

Blame NYC EDC

Paul Steely White, executive director of Transportation Alternatives, blamed the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYC EDC) for thinking that parking garages and big development like the East Side Gateway Mall or Yankee Stadium were the key to development.

"I think EDC needs to undergo a revolution," he said. "This stuff isn't window dressing." Such "stuff" includes things like parks and transportation.

Indeed, in a 10/4/10 Gotham Gazette column headlined The Real Power in City Planning, Hunter College planning professor Tom Angotti wrote:

Name just about any big and controversial development project in New York City -- the new Yankee Stadium, Bronx Terminal Market, Willets Point, Coney Island, Metrotech -- and behind them stands a single powerful dealmaker that makes them possible, the New York City Economic Development Corp. or EDC.

His conclusion:

Whether EDC does better planning and development because of its special position and powers is an open question that we might all disagree on. But EDC has assumed critical government planning powers that the City Charter and local law give to city agencies. By negotiating and making decisions in the shadows, EDC can avoid the sunlight that helps citizens understand what is getting developed and decide whether they want it or not. We may know what EDC's executives say to the public through their public relations office but little is know what is said in their exclusive discussions with developers.

Note that NYC EDC has supported Atlantic Yards, though the lead role went to another not quite transparent agency, the Empire State Development Corporation, controlled by the governor.

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Posted by eric at 8:58 AM

October 25, 2010

MAS Summit: Bloomberg administration's Jacobsian efforts are highlighted, but embrace of "cataclysmic projects" shouldn't be ignored

Atlantic Yards Report

While the big news at the municipal Art Society's (MAS) Summit for New York City October 21-22 concerned the livability survey commissioned by the MAS, there was much more worthy of discussion, and I'll address some of those issues this week.

Notably, one moment crystallized the ongoing tensions--as provoked earlier in the week by the Jane Jacobs Medals celebration--between the Bloomberg administration's worthy, Jacobsian efforts, and its less defensible affection for megaprojects.

Author and Landmarks Preservation Commissioner Roberta Brandes Gratz spoke on a panel titled Vibrant Neighborhoods.

"I think it's wonderful that members of the Bloomberg administration thought this summit important enough to appear here to catalog the wonderful things agencies are doing to make the city more livable," she said, a reference to Cultural Affairs Commissioner Kate Levin, Department of Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan, who spoke at the event, along with Deputy Mayor Patti Harris.
...

"What is interesting is many of these things are not what we hear most about," Gratz said. "They are creative initiatives, spread in small doses, very Jacobsian, not the big cataclysmic projects that we hear most about that are not the creators of a livable city."

"Real economic development nothing to do with real estate, and this is something Jane taught us in The Economy of Cities," Gratz said. "Economic development is an activity that comes first. The buildings to house it comes second. Jane used to say you cannot build the ovens and expect the loaves to jump in. What we've been hearing about, and talking about, are the loaves. That's why it's been such a stimulating discussion."

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Posted by eric at 10:51 AM

October 22, 2010

MAS Survey on Livability: people say they're satisfied, but dismay regarding (over)development seeps out

Atlantic Yards Report

Though a Municipal Art Society (MAS) survey on livability released yesterday garnered headlines for its seemingly counter-intuitive conclusion that most New Yorkers are happy and find the city livable, it also contains signs of significant discontent regarding development.

And that wariness--72 percent seemingly oppose new housing or housing beyond existing scale in their neighborhoods--suggests a tension between those who like neighborhood scale and the Bloomberg administration's expectation of another 1 million people here by 2030.

Results of this initial poll were not particularly subtle--it would be important to understand attitudes toward development teased out by type of neighborhood, zoning, and transportation options, because the key question is fitting increased density to neighborhoods that can handle it.

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Posted by eric at 11:40 AM

October 21, 2010

Reflections on What We See: Advancing the Observations of Jane Jacobs, and the lessons for New York and beyond

Atlantic Yards Report

Norman Oder takes a second look at What We See, the compendium of essays reflecting on Jane Jacobs and her work published this spring, and, no surprise, Atlantic Yards makes an appearance or two.

Note that, when the book was published in May, [Stephen A.] Goldsmith (former Planning Director in Salt Lake City) told Gothamist in an interview:

Large scale projects such as transit infrastructure aside, what we see today are developers who like to fake authenticity at a large scale, who appropriate front porches or mixed-use development as though these ingredients will salvage bad ideas. The ability to design and build large scale projects such as Atlantic Yards has not been stopped, and as as result the people of Brooklyn will have to endure still-unknown consequences of these poor choices.
...

In an epilogue titled Jane's Cup of Tea, civic and social organizer Mary Rowe reflects:

Jane was not sentimental. I had always understood the word to describe a kind of saccharine-sweet, closing fondness for something in the past, but Jane corrected my misunderstanding of the term. To be sentimental was to remember something in an idealized way, which was anathema to her. Many of Jane's reflections about why government policies (and their makers) were so often anti-city were rooted in her observations of this culture's penchant for rural sentimentality.

Were some Atlantic Yards opponents sentimental about not changing neighborhoods? Yes. But they also came up with practical potential solutions.

Are some Atlantic Yards supporters sentimental? Isn't attachment to 10,000 phantom jobs sentimental?

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Posted by eric at 3:38 PM

October 20, 2010

The Bloomberg administration and Jane Jacobs: the consonance and the disconnect

Atlantic Yards Report

It was a convivial, heartfelt event on Monday night, October 18, when the Rockefeller Foundation awarded the fourth annual Jane Jacobs Medals for new activism and career activism.

Both categories of awards were richly deserved. Elizabeth Barlow Rogers, founder of the Central Park Conservancy, helped revive the city's jewel, once shockingly deteriorated and neglected.

Josh David and Robert Hammond, founder of Friends of the High Line, saw civic possibilities in a long-neglected piece of infrastructure slated for demolition.

And the presenters of each award, Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe and City Planning Commission Chairperson Amanda Burden, respectively, could proudly, affectionately claim mayoral endorsement for both projects.

And the disconnect

But we shouldn't be misled into thinking that the administration of Mayor Mike Bloomberg and followers of famed urbanist Jane Jacobs are always on the same page.

Consider that, in a video shown to attendees, New Yorker architecture critic Paul Goldberger expressed his amazement--as he has written--that backers of the West Side Stadium portrayed the gargantuan project as expressing Jacobsian mixed-use ideals because it contained retail elements at the street level.

Bloomberg, of course, backed the West Side Stadium to the hilt.

Consider that, in one of her last public statements, Jacobs, who had long lived in Toronto but maintained affection for and attention to New York City, wrote a tough open letter criticizing the Bloomberg administration's plans for rezoning Williamsburg and Greenpoint.

Such criticisms have even more weight today, when those neighborhoods face a disproportionate share of stalled construction sites.

And consider that Benepe and Burden, however committed they are to the Jacobsian ideals, have had to swallow and endorse some very questionable moves by the mayor who appointed them, such as the loss of parkland for a new Yankee Stadium, or the creation of superblocks and surface parking on behalf of the Atlantic Yards project.

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Posted by eric at 10:31 AM

October 2, 2010

Comptroller's Task Force Releases CBA Report Based Partly On Lessons Learned From Bronx Projects

Bronx News Network

This review of this week's report issued by Comptroller John Liu's office includes the Atlantic Yards CBA as an example of a poorly-done community benefits agreement.

While strong CBAs, including some with living wage guarantees, were being signed in other big cities around the country, developers in New York City, backed by it's pro-development (with no string attached) mayor, was late to the game. Some CBAs were signed -- at Atlantic Yards (Brooklyn), the new Yankee Stadium (Bronx) and the Gateway Center Mall (Bronx) -- but they lacked teeth and true community involvement, community and job advocates charged.

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Posted by steve at 8:19 AM

September 30, 2010

Brooklyn Tornadoes and a Cool-Headed Appraisal of Weather Weirding in New York

Noticing New York

Only Michael D.D. White would even think about trying to tie together tornadoes, blizzards, rising sea levels, hydrofracking and Atlantic Yards, but wouldn't you know, he pulls it off.

First, his own warning:

Get ready: This is going to be about New York and the environment in some very, very big-picture terms.
...

We confess we found ourselves initially irritated by the “apocalyptic thinking” of the “Rising Currents: Projects for New York’s Waterfront,” show at the Museum of Modern Art.

Its grand scale thinking made us uncomfortably ill at ease, reminding us of the kind of from-on-high it-is-easy-to-replace-everything planning arrogance* that is, for example, associated with Coney Island’s destruction.

(* Sure, its easy enough to tear down a portion of Prospect Heights, including newly renovated buildings, to construct the murkily unparticularized “Atlantic Yards” but the ability to actually fill in this hole developer Bruce Ratner created in the neighborhood becomes a theoretical maybe-someday exercise when the developer says of replacement construction: “it's really market-dependent as to when it will really be completed.”)
...

Storm Surge Barriers?

I was at the New York City Council during little reported hearings where the possibility and expense of buildings storm surge barriers was discussed. It’s done in the Netherlands. The cost was estimated at $5 billion and possible because there are only a few choke points in the harbor that would need to be addressed. Naturally, any public work estimated to cost $5 billion will probably cost more: The Brooklyn Bridge (built during the reign of Boss Tweed) cost more than twice its original estimate. But $5 billion is not much more than all the public subsidies we are putting into the Atlantic Yards project; money spent on such barriers would be for infrastructure of benefit to all rather than subsidizing one development firm’s private profit at the expense of others and wouldn’t even $10 billion likely be a small cost compared to the cost of a catastrophic storm surge?

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Posted by eric at 12:52 PM

Liu’s CBA task force recommends reforms; dissenters say it will foster too many CBAs; report buffs AY CBA but guidelines might have reined it in

Atlantic Yards Report

Norman Oder offers an in-depth report on

In a report issued not without dissention, the Task Force on Public Benefit Agreements (PBAs) yesterday delivered to Comptroller John Liu “a proposed framework for public benefit agreements in New York City that would create clear expectations, encourage broad-based participation and result in enforceable public benefits that comply with legal standards.”

Included is an increased opportunity for community input by community boards, local elected officials, and small businesses; by contrast, the Atlantic Yards CBA was negotiated very quietly. Also, given that CBAs like the Atlantic Yards CBA are essentially unenforceable (except by signatories with no incentive to go to court), the Task Force recommended several enforceability mechanisms. Such CBAs also would be monitored by the Comptroller.

Notably, the report (PDF and embedded below) states that “the primary purpose of a benefit agreement is to mitigate project-related impacts”--a rationale absent from the Atlantic Yards CBA, in which the single largest component is affordable housing, a provision that could have been incorporated into any upzoning but which is not a specific response to the loss of housing on the AY site.

Still, the report’s rather rosy view of the Atlantic Yards CBA, the first in the city, may have contributed to the willingness to endorse CBAs.
...

Rosy view of AY CBA

As discussed below, the report makes no mention of the payments developer Forest City Ratner has made to its CBA “partners”--a practice CBA experts warn against, nor FCR's bail-out of ACORN.

Nor does it cite the criticism by three local community boards that FCR overstated their involvement.

Among the Task Force Members were Bruce Bender and Scott Cantone of Forest City Ratner, and Darnell Canada of Real Economics Building Unity and Innovative Local Development (REBUILD), notable for his public threats at a hearing on AY environmental impacts. Task Force member Bettina Damiani of Good Jobs New York in 2005 publicly criticized the AY CBA as diverging significantly from more transparent ones in Los Angeles.

Vitullo-Martin added, "Part of the problem is that Atlantic Yards is now so embedded in how people think about CBAs that it can't easily be ripped away--and once you start, you're likely to conclude CBAs aren't a good idea."

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Related coverage...

Crain's NY Business, Controversial benefit-agreement report aired

According to the city, the first benefit agreement was executed in 2005 between Forest City Ratner Cos. and a coalition of eight organizations in connection with a large mixed-use development at Atlantic Yards. Since then, local benefit agreements have been used for other major projects across the city, including Yankee Stadium and Columbia University's Manhattanville expansion.

NoLandGrab: What do all those projects have in common? The crappy "community benefits" can't begin to make up for seizure of private property or public parks.

City Hall News, Liu To Release CBA Report, Positioning For Greater Role In City Development

The task force evaluated the four CBAs that have been signed in the city: Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn, Yankee Stadium and the Gateway Center in the Bronx and the Columbia expansion in upper Manhattan, as well as 14 CBAs from elsewhere in the country.

The Wall Street Journal, Liu Task Force In Disarray

A task force charged by New York City Comptroller John Liu with examining what the city can and should demand from developers of publicly subsidized projects ended its work mired in dissension, with frustrated panel members resigning or refusing to sign the final report to be released Wednesday.

The flurry of resignations and the level of discord on the panel cast a dark shadow over an initiative that Mr. Liu and his aides heralded as one of the hallmarks of his first nine months in office. Mr. Liu, a former city councilman, is a potential candidate for mayor in 2013.

In response to an inquiry from The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Liu's office disclosed late Tuesday that four members of the task force have resigned and another four members are refusing to sign the final report. The report has 29 signatures attached to it.

Posted by eric at 12:20 PM

September 23, 2010

Public information meeting on plaza design for arena will be held September 29 at Borough Hall

Atlantic Yards Report

Well, there won't be the Urban Room Frank Gehry promised, but there will be an "urban plaza" or "urban experience." And we'll learn more about it next Wednesday.

(There's also a formally unrelated--but conceptually related--meeting next Tuesday about streetscape improvements on Flatbush Avenue, from Atlantic Avenue to Grand Army Plaza.)

From a notice distributed by Community Board 6:

Senator Velmanette Montgomery, Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, with Council Members Letitia James, Brad Lander and Stephen Levin, Empire State Development Corporation, Brooklyn Community Boards 2, 6 and 8 present a PUBLIC INFORMATION MEETING for the Plaza Design at the Barclays Center.

Wednesday, September 29, 2010, 6:00pm-8:00pm
Brooklyn Borough Hall
209 Joralemon Street (at Court Street)

Representatives will be present from Forest City Ratner Companies to brief interested residents on plans for the public plaza in front of the arena. There will be a Q&A session.

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Posted by eric at 10:42 AM

Public information meeting on Flatbush streetscape improvement project will be held September 28 at CNR

Atlantic Yards Report

The progressive and conscientious North Flatbush Avenue BID is kicking off a major streetscape improvement, a process that won't be made any easier by Bruce Ratner's mega-construction project.

The North Flatbush Avenue Business Improvement District (BID) has secured close to $3M is capital funding for its streetscape project, and the New York City Department of Transportation will present scoping and conceptual designs to the Transportation Committees of Community Board 6 and 8.

All neighbors, businesses, and organizations are invited to view the plans for Flatbush Avenue and to offer input or comments. The plans include a remake of the Triangle Parks at Carlton, 6th, 7th, and 8th Avenues.

Tuesday, September 28, 2010, 7:00PM
Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation
727 Classon Avenue

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Posted by eric at 9:36 AM

September 21, 2010

PlaNYC guru plays West Village; gig sold out

Capital New York
by Katharine Jose

Behind Michael Bloomberg’s long-term plan for the city is a Danish professor and urban planner named Jan Gehl, who for several years has been quietly, if not slowly, guiding the remaking of New York.

Gehl is a legend in his field. Events at the Center for Architecture in the West Village are always well-attended, but Wednesday night there were, among other signs of something remarkable, a line to get in the door that stretched halfway down the block, overflow seating on the first floor that would beam the lecture from the gallery two floors down, and reserved seating for the press, almost all of which was occupied.
...

It's the “Brasilia Syndrome,” he said, referring to the capital of Brazil, which was built from a master plan in the late ‘50s. “It looked fantastic from a airplane,” but “at ground level, it was shit.” Gehl said much the same thing about Dubai, where he felt as if he were at “an exhibition of perfume bottles.” (He also showed a slide of Atlantic Yards, which drew audible approval.)

Gehl called the authors of these developments “birdshit architects,” because they are “planning from high above and dropping their things down.” Building towers, he said, makes “a collection of towers." The prospectus drawings are filled with “happy people” milling about and carrying out “unspecified” public activities.

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NoLandGrab: "Approval" as in they agreed about how horrible Atlantic Yards is, or because they're out of their freakin' minds?

Posted by eric at 10:36 AM

September 12, 2010

How did the Ward Bakery go unprotected? "The key is what the [Landmarks Preservation] commission avoids doing."

Atlantic Yards Report

There's an important clue regarding the fate of the Ward Bakery, now demolished, in The Battle for Gotham: New York in the Shadow of Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs, by Roberta Brandes Gratz.

Writes Gratz, a member of the Landmarks Preservation Commission:

The fundamental dilemma of the Landmarks Preservation Commission is the conflict between preservation and new development in a city where real estate ownership trumps all else in access to power and influence… But when a site does get put on the commission calendar to be considered… the public hearing process is quite admirable.. The measure of the commission is not just what gets designated a landmark or a landmark district. The key is what the commission avoids doing.

Indeed, the commission, which is controlled by the mayor, avoided considering the Ward Bakery in its map of the new Prospect Heights Historic District.

Today's panel

Gratz will be on a panel at 1 pm today at the Brooklyn Book Festival:

Change Is Gonna Come: The Fluid Life of New York City. In a city like New York, change is constant. Yet with that change comes numerous and oftentimes competing interests. Sharon Zukin (Naked City), Roberta Brandes Gratz (The Battle for Gotham), Jonathan Soffer (Ed Koch and the Rebuilding of New York City) and Martin Lemelman (Two Cents Plain) consider the perpetual ebb and flow of the Big Apple and how it affects us all.

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Posted by steve at 10:57 AM

A Downtown Hub Is Missed, and a Replacement Is Stalled

New York Times
By Abby Goodnough

The Times seems to be able to summon up regret for the destruction of Filene's Basement in Boston for a project that may never happen. Where is the concern for the Prospect Heights blocks that will be destroyed for the Atlantic Yards project which will only bring an arena and acres of parking lots for decades?

Two years have passed since the demolition of Filene’s Basement, where generations of Bostonians tussled over cut-rate designer clothes in a dingy but fiercely loved downtown store.

It was razed two years ago, and a $700 million tower, with a replacement store, was to rise at the site. The project was halted by the recession.

In its place, a $700 million tower was to rise with offices, condominiums, a hotel and a new Filene’s for the bargain hungry. But the recession halted the project, possibly for good, leaving Boston with a deserted construction pit in one of its busiest neighborhoods.

...

While such scars on the landscape are common these days, cities that gave up iconic buildings or businesses for outsize projects that may now never happen are suffering from a rising sense of regret.

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Posted by steve at 10:19 AM

September 9, 2010

From "Intractable Democracy," the tension between regional and local; also, RPA's Marshall sees power imbalance as source of (discredited) superblocks

Atlantic Yards Report

In Intractable Democracy: Fifty Years of Community-Based Planning, a new collection of articles and interviews by and with people associated with the Pratt Institute City and Regional Planning Program, there's an intriguing article by Michael Flynn, director of capital planning at the New York City Department of Transportation.

As a community planner turned city bureaucrat, Flynn knows well the tension between bottom-up planning and municipal power, and knows that it's not easy to resolve.

He muses:

One thing that's become clear to me over time (and I can hear the cries of "Sellout!" now) is that there is an interesting tension between the concept of community-based planning and the institution of government in general. It's the same tension we're all familiar with between the archetypes of Jane Jacobs and Robert Moses. We humans clearly organized ourselves into societies, and evolved government to tackle problems that must be addressed collectively and to look out for the common good. As planners we understand from experience that some issues are too spread out, too interlinked, or to "acute costs, diffuse benefits" to be tackled at a granular level. Sometimes the good of the many must trump the good of the few, or the regional must trump the local.

On the other hand, what good is government if it's not responsive to the needs of communities. What good is power without a grounding in real hopes, real concerns, real lives? At least when it comes to local issues, who better to decide the fate of a community than the locals themselves? The question is, where is the proper balance between community-based planning and getting things done for the greater good? For example, is it more important that the city have a citywide, interlinked network of bike paths, or should communities who don't want bike lanes have the final say? Should we price on-street parking higher because it's been proven to improve turnover and reduce congestion, or acquiesce to local businesses who think cheaper parking will improve foot traffic?

These are questions that localities everywhere face not just New York City. I sure don't know the answer--like most things, it probably lies somewhere in between the extremes.

The AY angle

These questions came up, of course, with Atlantic Yards. Issues like affordable housing and the siting of a major sports facility are not merely local issues. But they have disproportionate local impact, so a planning process should take into account local considerations, as well the balance between public and private benefits.

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Posted by eric at 10:54 AM

September 4, 2010

"Stealing the common from the goose": Henry Stern's compelling case against 15 Penn Plaza (and the glaring Atlantic Yards blind spot)

Atlantic Yards Report

Former Parks Commissioner Henry Stern was absent during the Atlantic Yards fight. He is now arguing against a variance being requested in Manhattan using much of the same reasoning as opponents of Atlantic Yards used.

Henry Stern, the former Parks Commissioner and founder of the watchdog group New York Civic, has written a compelling column, Gargantuan Tower Approved Two Blocks From King Kong, regarding the city's approval of 15 Penn Plaza, Vornado's fat skyscraper near Penn Station. (It's also on HuffPost, as The Great Giveaway.)

His point, relying on Community Board arguments, is that the issue is not accepting "change" or blocking a view from the Empire State Building, but whether a connected developer gets a set of variances to build 56% bigger than officially allowed.

(I referenced this point as well when I wrote about the issue on August 24, but could have emphasized it more.)

And his rhetoric is firm:

We believe that what happened in this case is a textbook example of unsound public policy, favoritism to a particular extremely well-connected developer, and lack of regard for the future of the commercial neighborhood around Penn and Moynihan Stations. To grant a massive upgrade to a property owner with no tenant, no financing and no immediate plans to build is premature and irresponsible.

...It is a top-down decision, clearly made at City Hall and not by the Planning Commission, which should have been embarrassed at the tricks they had to turn.

The blind spot

Sounds like... another top-down decision, the approval of Atlantic Yards, that had even less process, because the state, not the city, is in charge.

Remember, while Forest City Ratner very much wanted to build an arena, given the New Jersey Nets' losses at the Izod Center, the main tower, Building 1 (aka Miss Brooklyn), has no financing or tenant, the affordable housing depends on scarce subsidies, and the officially-stated plan to build the 16 towers in a decade is chimerical.

And remember, Forest City Ratner promised not to block the clock of the Williamsburgh Bank tower, but then it did, even after Miss Brooklyn was made a foot shorter than its neighbor, at the ostensible behest of the City Planning Commission, which should have been embarrassed at the tricks they had to turn.

But Stern is Bruce Ratner's old mentor, and Ratner has contributed to New York Civic. So Stern's critical scrutiny has reliably bypassed Atlantic Yards.

link

Posted by steve at 7:54 AM

August 29, 2010

Our Cities Ourselves: 10 Principles for Transport in Urban Life (and the AY contradiction)

Atlantic Yards Report

Norman Oder takes a look at issues urban planning.

A nifty exhibition,Our Cities Ourselves, is on view until September 11, 2010 at the Center for Architecture in Greenwich Village (Mon-Fri: 9am to 8pm; Sat: 11am to 5pm).

It shows ten architects' treatment of potential changes in ten world cities--nearly all in developing nations.

Accompanying the exhibition is a publication titled "Our Cities Ourselves: 10 Principles for Transport in Urban Life," written by internationally famous Danish urbanist Jan Gehl and Walter Hook, Executive Director of the Institute of Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP).

"Cities of the twenty-first century should be lively cities, safe cities, sustainable cities and healthy cities," said Gehl in a news release. "All of these qualities can be achieved if we embrace these ten principles, which means putting people first."

The principles and Atlantic Yards

Notably, two of the ten principles of sustainable transport don't quite work when it comes to Atlantic Yards.

The project would not have "small-size, permeable buildings and blocks" that enhance pedestrian life, as suggested above. In fact, it would create two superblocks.

And while the project would involve density around transit, as suggested at right, that won't necessarily make it a desirable urban district, given the level of density intended, the parking included, and the attendant traffic.

Read the full blog post to see the complete listing of 10 Principles for Transport in Urban Life.

link

NoLandGrab: An exhibit like "Our Cities Ourselves" might elicit groans from those who realize how a great opportunity for urban planning was lost when Atlantic Yards was approved by the state.

Posted by steve at 9:52 AM

August 12, 2010

A caution on Hong Kong envy, an Atlantic Yards cameo, and Jane Jacobs

Atlantic Yards Report

I have an essay in the online publication Urban Omnibus (a project of the Architectural League of New York) this week headlined A Caution on Hong Kong Envy, pointing out the tension between the enthusiasm of New York officials for Hong Kong's rational, high-rise development and the dismay Hong Kong residents feel at top-down planning, as shown at two recent conferences.

Yes, there's a happy medium to be sought, and New York--where density is unevenly distributed both within the city and within the region--is coming from a different direction than is Hong Kong, which went high-rise at warp speed in the mid-20th century.

The AY angle

And yes, there's an Atlantic Yards angle. As I write:

Or consider how the Port Authority’s [Executive Director Christopher] Ward, at the New York conference, suggested that the resistance to the massive Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn stemmed from locals’ discomfort with a dramatic shift in density. While that shift surely generated dismay, an equal measure of discomfort derives from the perception that Atlantic Yards has been a sweetheart deal, with a single developer anointed public land before any planning process, and with public amenities such as open space coming late rather than early.

...as in Hong Kong, it’s important to get the balance right between the development business and the central authorities entrusted with the public interest.

After all, Atlantic Yards opponents did wind up supporting the Unity Plan, which would have high density, though not as much, and essentially limited to the railyards.

article

Related content...

Urban Omnibus, A Caution on Hong Kong Envy

Posted by eric at 10:41 AM

July 22, 2010

Creating Open Space Takes Politics and Planning

Gotham Gazette
by Anne Schwartz

In the 1970s, who could have predicted that in 2010, New Yorkers would take yoga classes on a lush lawn in Bryant Park, enjoy a lunch break in the middle of Broadway or bike to work along the Hudson River? With the restoration of so many parks and the creation of new ones like the High Line and Brooklyn Bridge Park, outdoor public spaces have become central to life in New York City in a way that hardly could have been imagined just a few decades ago.
...

The key to success is a fair, inclusive and transparent master planning process based on an assessment and analysis of current conditions, needs, benefits and public interest and willingness to pay. "It doesn’t do any good to have an open process for soliciting input if the process for making decisions is then secretive, biased or preordained," [park expert Peter Harnik] writes.
...

"As seeds for regrowth, parks are key," Harnik writes. "But they must be reserved, designed and placed in advance of the built environment that will surround them," which, he notes, doesn't come naturally in this country -- or, one might add, in New York City. The city's development-driven culture has led to missed opportunities to create large areas of new parkland around which housing and commerce can grow.

One example is the Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn, where an arena and 16 apartment towers are being built partly on a deck covering the Metropolitan Transportation Authority railyards. The green space between the apartment buildings is slated to be added last, leading many to fear it will never exist. And even if the project and its parks are completed as planned, a neighborhood with a severe shortage of parks and sports fields will end up with a slightly lower ratio of parkland to resident than it now has.

Harnik's book inspires a momentary fantasy of what downtown Brooklyn might have looked like with a new central green space -- one that could have been funded with part of the nearly $300 million subsidy the city and state provided for the arena. A park might even have generated a greater economic return than the arena.

article

NoLandGrab: In the case of Atlantic Yards, the "publicly accessible private open space" is not a park in any sense of the word, but rather Ratner's cost of doing business — the bare minimum cost, we might add.

Posted by eric at 10:55 AM

The land use issue won't go away, even if the Charter Commission won't get to it this year

Atlantic Yards Report

After spending the day today at Land Use and Local Voices, a conference co-sponsored by the Municipal Art Society and Manhattan Community Board 1, I can safely say that both experts and engaged citizens know there's something wrong with the current process.

There's a significant need to give local voices more credence (though not a veto), while recognizing that land use has borough-wide and city-wide implications.

And while the Charter Revision Commission doesn't have time this year to address land use, if it's reappointed, it should--though some at the conference were doubtful the commission would go beyond the promised issue of term limits.

(I'll have a report on the conference, in which Atlantic Yards was again invoked as an example of a Community Benefits Agreement gone wrong, at a later date.)

link

Posted by eric at 10:44 AM

July 21, 2010

Jane Jacobs vs. Robert Moses: some (Doctoroff, Burden) say you can have it both ways, and some (Gratz) say you can't

Atlantic Yards Report

There are two kinds of people in the world of urbanism, apparently: those who think you can meld or navigate the difference between Jane Jacobs and Robert Moses, and those who think you can't.

Former Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff is among the former groups. Asked July 8 if there was a simplistic either/or divide or a continuum, he replied, "“I don't think it is true any more, and I certainly think that the way we went about things, which was by no means perfect but we learned a lot along the way, is evidence that you can have it both ways."

CPC Chair Burden

Last night, at the third of the Architectural League's Conversations on New York, City Planning Commission Chairperson Amanda Burden sounded a similar note. Discussing the legacy of the Bloomberg administration, she observed, "I would say we've been able to have the city grow in place," able to accommodate new New Yorkers and access the waterfront.

She said it was her personal emphasis to "focus on the public realm... to end up with a vibrant street life." In that way," she continued, "We plan on a Robert Moses sort of scale, at least a number of these rezonings, but we judge ourselves by a Jane Jacobs scale."

In the age of Jacobs

Her interlocutor, critic and author Paul Goldberger, was too busy and/or polite to point out that, as he wrote in his 2004 book Up From Zero, about the contested process to rebuild the World Trade Center site, that it's never simple:

We may well be living in the age of Jane Jacobs, as opposed to the age of Robert Moses, but we also live in the age of marketing, and it is common today to see large projects presented as if they epitomized the small-scale, naturally occurring urban values Jacobs espoused.

article

NoLandGrab: "Vibrant street life?" Like Brooklyn's 4th Avenue?

Posted by eric at 11:50 AM

Jane Jacobs, esthete? (or why the High Line belongs in the Metro section)

Atlantic Yards Report

While urbanism certainly encompasses questions of design, it equally involves politics, policy, and economics. So it was a little jarring to see, in today's New York Times, news that High Line Founders To Get Jane Jacobs Medal appear in the Arts section.

The High Line is a spectacular new park and, while it's spurred inventive architecture, it belongs in the Metro section. Last week, a front-page Times article about the High Line's notable ripple effects, After High Line’s Success, Other Cities Look Up, began on the front page, but jumped to the Metro section.

Oddly enough, online that article is assigned to the arts desk.

link

Posted by eric at 11:31 AM

July 19, 2010

Doctoroff, updated, with video: was there really any "citywide planning"

Atlantic Yards Report

Had there been citywide planning, then Winston Von Engel, Deputy Director of the Brooklyn office of the Department of City Planning, wouldn't have said in March 2006. "We concentrated on the Downtown Brooklyn development plan for Downtown Brooklyn. Forest City Ratner owns property across the way. And they saw the yards, and looked at those. We had not been considering the yards directly."

Had there been citywide planning, there would have been a fair bidding process for the railyard and for the project rather than one developer with an inside track.

Had there been citywide planning, some agency would have been responsible for the weeds that meant the railyard appeared blighted.

Had there been citywide planning, the project would have--as Doctoroff agrees in retrospect--gone through the city's Uniform Land Use Review Procedure.

Had there been citywide planning, there would have been much less parking approved.

Had there been citywide planning, public transportation would be enhanced.

Had there been citywide planning, there would have been a real cost-benefit analysis.

Had there been citywide planning, Bruce Ratner would not have been able to say, as he did at the groundbreaking in March, that, when he met with Mayor Mike Bloomgerg in July 2003, some five months before the project was publicly unveiled, that the mayor declared, "Let's get this done."

article

Posted by eric at 11:18 PM

Citizens Union: "there is a need to integrate 21st century security concerns into land use decision-making"

Atlantic Yards Report

Remember the issue of security?

The good-government group Citizens Union (CU), in its lengthy comments to the Charter Revision Commission on land use and other issues (more here), says "there is a need to integrate 21st century security concerns into land use decision-making."

Oh. The CU was never out front on Atlantic Yards, and its comment do not specifically invoke AY, but they essentially back up concerns by AY opponents and critics that terrorism and security should have been considered not merely--as they surely have been--by the developer and the police, but in the environmental review.

As of now, no streets are supposed to be closed outside the Atlantic Yards arena, even though--at least in a previous incarnation--the distance to the arena was no greater than at the Prudential Center in Newark, where streets are closed.

(Given the re-orientation of the arena, the distance from the street, at least on Flatbush Avenue, likely would be greater.)

article

NoLandGrab: Norman Oder might be correct about the Flatbush Avenue setback, but this Michael D.D. White photo of the Barclays Center model makes it look like the arena will virtually overhang Atlantic Avenue — surely a security no-no.

Posted by eric at 1:21 PM

Citizens Union to Charter Commission: some sharing of power needed, but not fundamental change (hearing tonight)

Atlantic Yards Report

The venerable good-government group Citizens Union (CU), as I wrote in March, has played it carefully regarding Atlantic Yards, in December 2006 calling for a “limited delay” but saying it “does not align itself with those who oppose the project"--and never speaking out further.

Now the CU, which has a special role in the Charter Revision Commission's work, is also playing it carefully, proposing reforms--some of which (land use review regarding security and architectural character) could affect future Atlantic Yards-like projects, at least if they are be subject to city review.

But those reforms would not fundamentally change the power balance in the city.

CU will present its 49 recommendation to the Commission at a hearing tonight at 6 pm at Brooklyn College, the first of five hearings [PDF] in response to a preliminary staff report.

That report scanted issues of land use and concerns about local decisionmaking (as pointed out by Brooklyn representative Carlo Scissura, Borough President Marty Markowitz's Chief of Staff), but stressed term limits and instant runoff voting (IRV)--the latter of which apparently has already been dropped.

article

Posted by eric at 12:34 PM

July 14, 2010

Virtually ignored by the Charter Commission report: a strong mayor, weak Borough Presidents, and the fact that there's "no real local government"

Atlantic Yards Report

Norman Oder files another report on the review of New York City's Charter.

The news from the city's Charter Revision Commission is that a vote on term limits (and maybe Instant Runoff Voting) are apparently on the agenda, but more substantive change, regarding issues like more public input into land use and expanded power of Borough Presidents, is not.

That's plausible, given the tight schedule to get measures on the November ballot, but the commission's staff report was dismissively brief, ignoring many legitimate criticisms posed by the Borough Presidents and others.

As the Staten Island Advance reported yesterday, that ticked off one Commission member:

"The fact the conversation on borough presidents and community boards warrants maybe two paragraphs, to me is utterly disrespectful to the communities," said Carlo A. Scissura, who is chief of staff to Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz.

Almost as disrespectful as the sham Atlantic Yards "process" that his boss so heartily embraced.

The fundamental problem

The failure to address the BPs' concerns reflects a larger issue, one that doesn't get traction in the Commission report, and one that explains the hundred successful rezonings under Mayor Mike Bloomberg and his ability to get agencies to march in lockstep to support projects like Atlantic Yards.

"The fundamental principle in this city is that there’s no real local government," suggested Gerald Benjamin, a professor at SUNY New Paltz, speaking at a June 10 hearing of the Commission.

article

Posted by eric at 9:57 AM

July 13, 2010

Charter Panel's Narrow Scope Stirs Concerns

When the Charter Revision Commission meets Monday night, it will weigh its staff's recommendations against advocates' calls for a wider vision.

City Limits
by Jarrett Murphy

The site of the Atlantic Yards development, the biggest land use battle in recent memory. Advocates and developers both want changes to the city's land use process, but the staff of the Charter Revision Commission has recommended that those questions be put off to a later day.

link

Photo: Marc Fader/City Limits

Posted by eric at 11:03 AM

July 12, 2010

At Charter Commission hearing, most invited panelists support ULURP; Angotti, BPs, civic groups, call for planning, not zoning; AY gets a cameo

Atlantic Yards Report

The New York City Charter Revision Commission hearing on June 24 aired some important testimony on land use reform, to relatively little coverage, and though land use is not on the agenda this year, the issues deserve discussion.

The gist of the expert testimony--four of five those invited--was that the city's Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP) pretty much works, and shouldn't be amended. (There was also a lot of criticism of Community Benefit Agreements, as I've written.)

The one outlier, urban planning professor Tom Angotti of Hunter College--also an advisor to the Council of Brooklyn Neighborhoods on Atlantic Yards issues--disagreed, laying out in great detail the flaws in ULURP.

He suggested that greater weight (though not a veto) be given to the advisory opinions of local Community Boards and arguing for greater transparency in the pre-ULURP negotiations.

Also see Angotti's essay in the July Gotham Gazette, headlined Charting a Better Way for Planning and Community Boards, which questions for example, the continuing validity of a side agreement between then-Deputy Mayor Daniel Doctoroff and then-City Council Member John Liu regarding the Flushing Commons project in Queens.

(Coming July 21: a free conference titled Land Use and Local Voices: Is the City’s Land Use Process in Need of Reform?, sponsored by the Municipal Art Society and Manhattan Community Board 1.)

The Atlantic Yards exception

Barely mentioned was that state projects like Atlantic Yards avoid ULURP completely, with no weight at all given to the Community Boards; one expert, Vishaan Chakrabarti of Columbia University's real estate program, said it was "inappropriate" for the state to control such projects.

(The three affected Community Boards all expressed opposition or significant concern.)

Atlantic Yards did play an awkward cameo role in a question from a commission member, who wondered--without recognizing how AY avoided ULURP--how the charter might allow for community participation in discussions about the "horrific" traffic generated by the arena.

article

NoLandGrab: While many Atlantic Yards opponents and critics called for the project to go through ULURP, it was because some process was better than no process. Clearly, it was not an endorsement of what is, as Professor Angotti pointed out, a deeply flawed mechanism.

Related coverage...

Atlantic Yards Report, CB 8 Chairperson to Charter Commission: "Too often developers seek loopholes to avoid the input of the community they are attempting to infiltrate"

In the Charter Revision Commission hearing June 24 on Land Use, Nizjoni Granville, Chairperson of Brooklyn Community Board 8, was the second public speaker after the expert panel (covered here), appearing at about the 2:20 mark (webcast).

Like some other commentators, she asked for Community Boards to have more than advisory power in the city's Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP).

And while Granville didn't name any names, and some of her testimony referenced supportive housing projects, her statements that "developers seek loopholes to avoid the input of the community they are attempting to infiltrate" and "developers are able to circumvent the process if they receive government funds that are not obtained from New York City" sure sound to me like references to Atlantic Yards.

As I wrote 10/1/06, Community Board 8, which takes in part of the proposed Atlantic Yards footprint at its western tip, didn't take a harsh official stance toward the project as did Community Board 6, but it did submit numerous letters of concern from Executive Committee members and area residents to the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC).

Granville, who is something of a skeptic regarding Atlantic Yards, was elected Chairperson in June 2009 over a project supporter, though it can't be said AY was the deciding issue.

Posted by eric at 11:44 AM

July 11, 2010

A caution on public-private partnerships when it comes to parks

Atlantic Yards Report

Atlantic Yards is supposed to be a public-private partnership (or, more likely, a private-public partnership), but developer Bruce Ratner famously told Crain's last November, "Why should people get to see plans? This isn't a public project."

So the public-private balance is tough to navigate--and not just with development projects. And it tells a story about city mayors, including Mike Bloomberg.

Read the rest of this blog post to see how, despite claims by the city that "private investment allows it to target limited taxpayer resources to the parks most in need," showplaces like Central Park prosper while much city parkland is neglected. Lack of city funding is cited. Spending by the city for parks maintenance and operations has dropped from 1.4 percent of city funds in 1960 to 0.37 percent in the latest budget.

link

Posted by steve at 8:42 AM

June 27, 2010

Greg David of Crain's: Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff "orchestrated" Atlantic Yards

Atlantic Yards Report

Within a 25th anniversary retrospective headlined New York City: Then & Now: Whether in a real estate boom or fiscal bust, NYC revolves around Wall Street's siren song, Greg David of Crain's New York Business offers a section about former Deputy Mayor for Economic Development Dan Doctoroff, with a paragraph about Atlantic Yards:

Even without the Olympics as a rationale, he made remarkable progress. At the end of 2006, he conceived of a way for the city to finance a subway-line extension to Hudson Yards on the West Side, where he envisioned a multibillion-dollar residential and commercial neighborhood. Behind the scenes, he orchestrated the approval of a massive mixed-used project at Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn, anchored by an arena for the New Jersey Nets basketball team.

Well, he helped orchestrate the approval--it's a state project, not a city one--and, more likely, orchestrated the package of city subsidies and the city's unswerving commitment to the project.

Note how David concludes that Atlantic Yards is and was a place, not a project.

link

Posted by steve at 8:04 AM

June 23, 2010

Charter Revision Commission hearing Thursday on land use

Atlantic Yards Report

The New York City Charter Revision Commission meets tomorrow night, June 24, to hear testimony on whether land use reform should be part of the charter revision on the ballot later this year.

It will begin at 6 pm at the Flushing Branch, Queens Borough Public Library, 41-17 Main Street, Flushing.

As with previous hearings, it will begin with expert testimony but later accept brief public testimony (with time limits). The hearing will be streamed and archived.

Many commentators have suggested that the commission--which, despite outreach, has been pretty much under the radar--stick to very simple proposals, such as term limits, given the complexity of such issues as land use.

link

Posted by eric at 9:18 AM

June 21, 2010

Smart growth bill passes, suggests that public infrastructure be prioritized for downtown developments--but with community-based planning (unlike AY)

Atlantic Yards Report

Both the state Assembly and Senate last week passed a bill establishing a state smart growth public infrastructure policy.

On one level, the bill--which offers guidance rather than anything enforceable and does not apply to projects already in process--seems to argue for projects like Atlantic Yards, high-density developments near transit.

But a closer look suggests some contradictions.

article

Posted by eric at 10:58 AM

June 18, 2010

Planner Garvin on Atlantic Yards: “A single site rezoned for a single owner with a set of towers and an arena. That's not a public realm."

Atlantic Yards Report

Architect, planner, and educator Alexander Garvin is hardly an anti-development NIMBY. He calls himself pro-development and is proud of his work steering the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation (LMDC) and serving as managing director of the NYC 2012 Olympics effort.

But Garvin, stubbornly enough, is a believer in the public realm--streets, parks, transit system--and thinks that’s where government investment should go, and the private development will follow.

He believes in clear rules and an even playing field, rather than a governmental attempt to pick winners.

And that means that he can’t avoid taking shots at Atlantic Yards as an example of where things went wrong, a project where the public realm was scanted in favor of a single developer and the city's land use review process was circumvented.

Last night, he discussed the major planning ventures with which he’s been involved, part of “Conversations on New York,” sponsored by the Architectural League, in conjunction with its exhibition The City We Imagined/The City We Made: New New York 2001-2010 (which will move to Governors Island next month).
...

Criticizing AY

“Atlantic Yards: what kind of public realm is there? None,” he responded rhetorically. “A single site rezoned for a single owner with a set of towers and an arena. That's not a public realm. If you're going to increase what you can support on the site, you need to be able to support them with something, such as community facilities, mass transit, and streets, and I have a problem when the upzoning isn't related to that.”

Actually, Atlantic Yards is not an upzoning but an override of zoning. There might be some new facilities, but the timing of a school and a day care center is unclear, and dependent on public money. Meanwhile, streets have been subtracted, rather than added, and there’s no opportunity for multiple developers to bid on separate sites.

article

Posted by eric at 10:19 AM

May 14, 2010

Stephen Goldsmith, Editor of What We See

Gothamist
by Jake Dobkin

It's been more than four years since urbanist and activist Jane Jacobs passed away, but the issues she focused on during her life seem more pressing than ever: how to build successful neighborhoods and cities, the economic survival of small business in the face of development, and the effects of mega-projects like Atlantic Yards. This month, New Village Press published "What We See: Advancing the Observations of Jane Jacobs"- we asked Stephen Goldsmith, one of the books editors, about Jane Jacobs' life and legacy.
...

Jane Jacobs' urbanist philosophy seems to have largely been embraced by the current generation of city planners. Where do you think her ideas have had the greatest physical impact here in New York? One way to observe how her ideas are having the greatest impact, and there are many examples to be sure, are in projects such as Majora Carter's efforts with Sustainable South Bronx , and Alexie Torres-Flemming's work with Youth Ministries for Peace and Justice. One might even make the case that the High Line project is an outgrowth of her sensibilities.

Consider the reclamation of these abandoned, neglected places and the new life they have, the way these places have learned to become something new. Jacobs ideas have catalyzed ways of thinking about preservation, about integrated uses that even manifest themselves in such things as local manufacturers capturing downstream waste for new materials, such as Ice Stone in Brooklyn. The integrated way she viewed cities, economies, ecologies and people encourages creative responses to complex problems.

In fact, her ideas seem so dominant that only very rich or foolhardy developers would try to get a Robert Moses scale project done in the city now. Do you think we've lost anything because of that, like the ability to design and build large, necessary projects? Books like The Battle for Gotham by Roberta Brandes-Gratz and Tony Flint's Wrestling With Moses have addressed these questions in ways that are stirring public debate about this once again. Large scale projects such as transit infrastructure aside, what we see today are developers who like to fake authenticity at a large scale, who appropriate front porches or mixed-use development as though these ingredients will salvage bad ideas. The ability to design and build large scale projects such as Atlantic Yards has not been stopped, and as as result the people of Brooklyn will have do endure still-unknown consequences of these poor choices.
...

If Jane Jacobs was alive today, what issues do you think she'd be working on? What fights would she be fighting? We know from conversations we had with her that she was very concerned about how we can support the the businesses of immigrant communities long-term, making sure that their efforts to support themselves did not ultimately lead to the gentrification of their neighborhoods and force them out. This was happening in Toronto and we know it is occurring elsewhere, so this was an issue of concern that she would have continued to work on with us.

As for fighting, it is easy to imagine her raising hell about the fate of Atlantic Yards for many reasons, and about wholesale proposals for what she referred to as cataclysmic changes in any community, especially places that suffer like New Orleans.

article

Illustration by Robert Cowan

Posted by eric at 11:14 AM

April 3, 2010

The Future of Fourth Avenue, Atlantic Yards traffic, and the lessons of top-down planning

Atlantic Yards Report

I only attended part of last month's The Future of Fourth Avenue Forum sponsored by the Park Slope Civic Council (PSCC), so I missed the tangential discussion of Atlantic Yards.

In the PSCC's Civic News, Ezra Goldstein reports:

[The Department of City Planning's Purnima] Kapur came under mild fire later in the forum, when several audience members asked why the city had not mandated storefronts as part of 4th Avenue’s upzoning. Kapur responded that the city had offered incentives encouraging storefronts instead of blank walls or worse—the street level garage vents at the Crest, at the corner of 2nd Street, have become the poster child for callous development—but that it was not normally city policy to make such demands of builders. Shouts of “Why not?” could be heard from several places around the crowded room.

In answer to that question, 39th District City Council Member Brad Lander, who spoke briefly at the end of the forum, pointed out that the way things have been done in the past is not necessarily the way they need to be done in the future. Policy can be changed, he said.

He cautioned, however, “It is easy to come up with good ideas, but harder to organize and build a broad base of support.” If people take that next step, he said, “I would love to work with an active community group on the future of 4th Avenue.”

Lander was echoing a sentiment that pervaded the forum: not only that changing 4th Avenue will require getting organized from the ground up, but that it’s better to do things that way. That sentiment extended very much to the Atlantic Yards project, whose impending presence at 4th Avenue’s northern terminus came up in several questions from the audience.

Atlantic Yards is widely seen as a throwback to the top-down planning of 50 years ago and as the antithesis to the kind of community-based planning espoused at the forum. Lander and [Community Board 6 District Manager] Hammerman both argued, however, that if the battle against the project is indeed lost, there is still much that a well-organized community can do to mitigate its worst effects. Atlantic Yards, for example, would be an impetus for even more traffic along 4th Avenue, increasing the difficulty of its transformation from thruway to livable street.

“The key,” said Hammerman, “is to make sure that we are a strong community that can stand together.”

It won’t be easy getting organized, getting political, building a community. After Atlantic Yards, it won’t be easy convincing some people that it’s worth the effort, that the grassroots stand a chance against the powerful and connected. But there was inspiration in the air at the forum on the future of 4th Avenue, and a definite sense that an important step had been taken toward the transformation of our neighborhood’s troubled roadway into something worthy of our love.

link

Posted by steve at 9:39 AM

March 24, 2010

Vanderbilt Avenue: Prospect Heights' destination for foodies and booze hounds

NY Post
by Carrie Seim

With a knack for transforming barnwood into bar tops — and Manhattanites into hipsters — Vanderbilt Avenue in Brooklyn is blossoming into New York’s new star strip.

“It’s the big kids’ Park Slope,” explains Weather Up bartender Gabe Harrelson. “Less strollers, more bars.”

Indeed, at least eight new bars and restaurants have popped up on the Brooklyn boulevard in the last two years alone.

Wait, don't they know the area's blighted? Vanderbilt Avenue is the eastern border of the Atlantic Yards footprint.

“It’s starting to gel in a very exciting way,” says Ellen Fishman, who’s lived in Prospect Heights for a dozen years and co-owns longtime Vanderbilt restaurants Aliseo Osteria and Amorina with her husband, Albano Ballerini.

“It’s urban, obviously, and yet it’s so amazingly small-town at the same time,” she says of the ’hood. “It’s like the Village of 30 years ago."

article

NoLandGrab: And now, close your eyes and imagine if, 29 years ago, someone had dropped a basketball arena into Washington Square Park. Got the picture?

Posted by eric at 10:49 PM

March 5, 2010

Whither parking maximums for large developments near transit? DCP is moving slowly to implement some obvious recommendations

Atlantic Yards Report

Noah Kazis of Streetsblog has written an important three-part series on the reshaping of New York City and its consequences for sustainability and livable streets.

And while Atlantic Yards is not mentioned, the failures in the planning for this megaproject--some 3600 spaces--fit right into the critique.

There would 1044 spaces for indefinite interim surface parking, plus (ultimately) the 2570 underground spaces intended for the project's residential component and an additional 1100 underground spaces for the arena that would replace the surface parking.
...
In Part 2, The Next New York: How the Planning Department Sabotages Sustainability, Kazis wrote:

Density, however, is only one piece of the planning process. Amanda Burden's planning department has laid the foundation for transit-oriented growth, but so far failed to create conditions where walkable development can flourish.

Across the city, mandatory parking minimums are holding New York back from true transit-oriented development. Additionally, the largest development projects in the city tend to sacrifice good planning in order to satisfy demands from developers with little interest in creating walkable places. Even as the Department of City Planning takes steps toward good urbanist principles in its rezonings, planners are sabotaging that very effort.

The department's parking policy is one major impediment. By requiring most new residential developments to include a minimum number of parking spaces per unit, the department is artificially inflating the supply of parking, inducing more traffic and subsidizing car ownership.

While Atlantic Yards is not mentioned--indeed, it's not a city rezoning but an override of zoning--it fits right into the critique.

article

Posted by lumi at 6:00 AM

Zukin and Lopate discuss Atlantic Yards: scale, process, and superblocks

Atlantic Yards Report

Sociologist Sharon Zukin, author of Naked City: The Death and Life of Authentic Urban Places, was a guest yesterday on WNYC's Leonard Lopate Show and, sure enough, Atlantic Yards came up for some semi-contentious discussion. The action went from about 5:40 to 9:00.

The discussion went a little afield--was the site really one Robert Moses had in mind or just the area?--but touched on some of the hot-button issues.

Zukin identified two problems--the scale and the process--but provoked her host by asserting AY would be a "giant attraction on top of a relatively small set of subway platforms."

Lopate pointed out that it was, after all, to be located near Brooklyn's major transit hub. (Then again, the capacity wasn't increased.)

Zukin pointed out that, if we were better at urban planning, we'd create transportation and infrastructure before such things as an arena and housing. (She returned to the issue of infrastructure first later in the program, at about 33:10.)

article

Posted by lumi at 5:48 AM

February 22, 2010

Nonfiction Book Reviews: 2/22/2010

Publishers Weekly

The Battle for Gotham: New York in the Shadow of Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs Roberta Brandes Gratz. Nation, $27.95 (400p) ISBN 978-1-56858-438-6

The mid-20th-century showdown between New York City planning czar Moses and legendary community urbanist Jacobs reverberates down the decades in this meandering polemic. A journalist and member of New York City's Landmarks Preservation Commission, Gratz (The Living City) views 50 years of economic and real estate development as a duel between the legacies of Moses, whose pharaonic highway and urban renewal projects obliterated neighborhoods, and Jacobs, who extolled urban diversity and disorderly mixed uses, hated cars, and championed organic, human-scale development. Through this lens, Gratz rehashes Jacobs's defeat of Moses's Manhattan expressway schemes, examines New York's (anti-)industrial policies and historical preservation laws, and attacks what she sees as latter-day boondoggles like Brooklyn's proposed mammoth Atlantic Yards development and Columbia University's expansion.

link

Posted by eric at 11:37 AM

January 28, 2010

Did New York City Planning Officials Sidestep Looking at the Bigger Atlantic Yards Picture?

Noticing New York

Forest City Ratner owns air rights that would allow it to build three high-rise buildings atop its Atlantic Center mall, which was constructed in such a fashion as to support the additional structures.

NNY wonders if City Planning had taken those extra buildings into account in its "review" of the Atlantic Yards project.

Given all this focus on whether the mega-project was too large, combined with the fact that Ms. Burden and her city planning officials took credit for downsizing it when they actually didn’t, we wondered whether City Planning’s review of the mega-project looked at it in terms of its inescapably larger proposed size, 19 new towers rather than 16. We think they should have. Instead, the evidence is that City Planning again played along with the effort to depict Forest City Ratner’s overall plans as being for just 16 new towers.
...

Why is it important whether the City Planning Commission or the City Planning Department dealt with the larger project as a whole rather than just participating in the manipulation of public perceptions about the project size? Because that is what city planning is supposedly about, looking at how planned city developments operate as a whole, integrating with the environment around them. The focus of City Planning officials is not supposed to be minimizing reviews and coordinating with the developers’ PR.

article

Posted by eric at 11:19 AM

January 25, 2010

More details on the arena block, thanks to a new schematic, with building envelopes

Atlantic Yards Report

So, what happened to Frank Gehry's plan for Atlantic Yards?

Well, it's been tweaked, and likely will be tweaked even more, as a slightly more detailed design of the arena block--though not the arena--has emerged.

Well, among the voluminous documents that were part of the Atlantic Yards master closing, first made available today, are schematics (below; click to enlarge) of the arena block produced by Stantec Consulting. It includes modified building envelopes and a parking ramp.

link

Posted by eric at 9:02 PM

January 13, 2010

2010 Atlantic Yards - permanent street closures

Tracy Collins, via flickr Atlantic Yards Photo Pool.

Tracy Collins has posted some photos of Brooklyn's most endangered streets, which Bruce Ratner and the State of New York are fixin' to close any day now. Click the image to play a slide show.

link

Posted by eric at 10:56 AM

January 7, 2010

Brooklyn BackBroadside Double Dose

Brooklyn Daily Eagle
by Dennis Holt

New Atlantic Avenue LIRR/Subway Entrance Fits the New Brooklyn

The decision by the MTA to finally bring the complex into the new century was not made in isolation. As has frequently happened in recent Brooklyn history, Bruce Ratner influenced matters. After the Atlantic Center was built, he made plans to build what we now call the Atlantic Terminal Mall. Then, after 9/11, he decided to build a new office building for a displaced company.

The patriotic Bruce also saw an opportunity to get his hands on a pile of federal subsidies.

And then came the master plan for Atlantic Yards across Atlantic Avenue, and independent of Ratner, the concept of a new cultural center, in and around BAM.

One did not have to have a degree in urban planning to realize that a lot more people would be coming that way, everything would be new, and it would make no sense for people to get off at a station that looked like a dump.

Moreover, Ratner, with the MTA’s hearty endorsement, planned to link the station underground with the new sports arena, and the MTA concluded it was time to get cracking. While they were at it, someone decided, why not build a whole new entrance to go along with all the other jazzy stuff coming to the neighborhood?

Only problem is, the ESDC says it won't be "feasible" for LIRR passengers to get from the train to the arena underground.

New Talent to Match Old In City Government Posts

These are [Bloomberg's] visions for the city in the decades to come — big goals supported by big development projects.

Atlantic Yards and the West Side Rail Yards will not be finished in four years, but should be far enough along to assure completion. And Bloomberg will not be content to coast along — he will want to see his Coney Island plan in movement.

Actually, it's very likely that only the arena, and maybe one of Atlantic Yards' planned 16 buildings, will be finished by the time Bloomberg leaves office (assuming he doesn't try to buy a fourth term). But Prospect Heights will have acres of surface parking lots as his monument.

Posted by eric at 4:42 PM

January 3, 2010

The Big Apple’s Big Problem

Newsweek
By Joel Kotkin

This article takes the beginning of Mayor Bloomberg's third term to suggest a new direction for New York City. Perhaps NoLandGrab readers will not be surprised that the overly-dense and heavily-subsidized Atlantic Yards project is not the way to go towards developing family-friendly neighborhoods.

Nurturing these neighborhoods will require a distinct shift in public policy. During the Bloomberg years the big subsidies have gone to luxury condo megadevelopments, sports stadiums, or huge office complexes. Consider the 22-acre Atlantic Yards project in downtown Brooklyn, which will include luxury housing and a new arena for the NBA's Nets; one recent report by the city's Independent Budget Office put the total subsidies provided by the city, New York state, and the transit authority at $726 million and estimated the project will hurt, not help, the city's economy over time.

Click on the link to read how the city might be turned around.

link

Posted by steve at 5:16 PM

December 30, 2009

During a short walk from Fort Greene to Prospect Heights, the contrasts and contradictions of Brooklyn

Atlantic Yards Report

Like an Atlantic Yards-centric version of David Hartman and Barry Lewis, Norman Oder takes a walk through the neighborhoods that will bear the brunt of Bruce Ratner's megaproject.

It was just a short walk, less than a third of a mile. But Brooklyn's contrasts and contradictions were manifest during a walk I took on November 24, a few hours after we learned that the state Court of Appeals had green-lighted the state's use of eminent domain, justified in part by removing "blight" in Prospect Heights, to build the Atlantic Yards project.

There, at the corner of Fulton Street and South Portland Avenue, a major shopping corridor in the gentrified section of Fort Greene, Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz hosted a press conference outside the new Greenlight Bookstore, a most-local independent bookstore started with the help of a prize in a small business plan contest sponsored by the Brooklyn Public Library.

The new novel by Brooklyn author Jonathan Lethem, a member of the Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn advisory board and noted critic of the Atlantic Yards plan, was in the window.

Markowitz and other were boasting "Shop Brooklyn" buttons, announcing a seasonal initiative. Markowitz's press people--the only ones looking wary at the cheery event--had sent out a notice that Markowitz would address the Atlantic Yards eminent domain decision at the event, but first there was some promotion to do, and Markowitz managed his usual enthusiasm.

After ten minutes of boosterish speeches by Markowitz and Wellington Sharpe of the Fulton Area Business Alliance, however, I couldn't stick around.

There was a Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn press conference just a few blocks away, a straight shot down South Portland Avenue, then across broad Atlantic Avenue, past the Vanderbilt Yard and then buildings within the Atlantic Yards footprint that, as of that day, were more likely than ever to be demolished.

article

Posted by eric at 7:57 AM

December 22, 2009

Atlantic Yards project deemed unnecessary... in 1985

Queens Crap

There's a historical pattern in this state of the government going after private property multiple times using the threat of eminent domain, until it's finally developed by one of their preferred parties. And each and every time, there are developers salivating over the prospect of being handed cheap land without having to go through the time, cost and effort of acquiring it themselves. Take the Atlantic Yards project, for example which actually was resurrected in order to enrich then-Governor Pataki's college roommate, Bruce Ratner.

The Urban Development Corporation, now known as the Empire State Development Corporation, was looking to site a sports arena in or near NYC way back in 1985. Sites evaluated included Atlantic Terminal, Flushing Meadows (including Willets Point), Coney Island, Midtown near Madison Square Garden, Sunnyside Yards, Yonkers Raceway and Co-Op City.

Atlantic Terminal was eventually ruled out because it would compete with existing venues. So we're wondering why there has been a new need identified for that location when there are more large venues available now than in 1985.

The proposed project also has a much smaller footprint now, calling into question whether or not it will pay off. Although I suppose that doesn't really matter to Ratner since we taxpayers will be left footing the bill whether it fails or not.

Click through to see the supporting documents for this history lesson.

link

Posted by steve at 6:31 AM

December 6, 2009

Yassky's waterfront lesson: make sure neighborhood commitments in development plans are done up front

Atlantic Yards Report

From an 11/23/09 New York Observer article headlined Yassky's Bargain: A Departing Councilman in Search of a Quo for His Quid, concerning "the parks the city promised Yassky in exchange for a sweeping 2005 rezoning of the Williamsburg and Greenpoint waterfront."

The Observer reports:

There wasn't much else to see and as we got back into the minivan, I asked Yassky about making deals with the city.

"Certainly one lesson," he said. "One lesson of that is: whatever neighborhood improvements are supposed to go with a big development plan should be done up front--should be done before it's passed. The commitment should be made enforceable in some way. And if not, then don't bank on it."

...

Of course, the same questions have long been raised about the promised "publicly accessible open space" in the Atlantic Yards project.

And we know that all of it--except for interim open space occuping land promised for towers--wouldn't come until the distant (and perhaps never) Phase 2 of the project.

By contrast, the open space came first with Battery Park City. That lesson has been long learned. It just hasn't been followed.

link

Posted by steve at 8:31 AM

November 30, 2009

The atrocity that is Empire State Plaza

Althouse

Is it any wonder that politicians and judges in Albany just don't get it? Check this out:

You're walking in a neighborhood of 19th century townhouses...

... and you run smack into this:

New York spent $2 billion to demolish 98 acres of 19th century buildings, displacing 9,000 human beings, in order to build a sickeningly ugly collection of government buildings. Is there a worse architectural crime in the history of the world? I'm sure there must be, but...

Commenter From Inwood cites Atlantic Yards in the following:

Michael Hasenstab said at 8:59...

Governments do the sorts of horrible things to neighborhoods that they would never allow a private developer to do.

Alas, not so when the private developer is a friend & contributor.

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Posted by eric at 10:05 AM

November 19, 2009

In Third Term, Bloomberg Must Align All Agencies With PlaNYC

Streetsblog
by Ron Shiffman

Co-founder of the Pratt Center for Community Development, professor at the Pratt Institute's Graduate Center for Planning, former City Planning Commissioner and Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn Executive Board member Ron Shiffman critiques the failures of the Bloomberg administration — and lays out a road map for how it can make good. One key aspect of that — scrapping Atlantic Yards for the UNITY Plan.

When it comes to sustainable development, the mayor's record is mixed at best. Many of his agencies -- such as the Department of Design and Construction with David Burney at its helm, the Parks Department under the able direction of Adrian Benepe, and the Department of Transportation under the energetic and farsighted leadership of Janette Sadik-Khan -- have done a fabulous job promoting and implementing the goals of PlaNYC.
...

Unfortunately, creativity, innovation and commitment to the principles of sustainability stop with these few agencies. Other public servants charged with planning for the future of the city have abdicated that responsibility. The Department of City Planning, despite some exemplary work on open space design and enhancing opportunities for world-class architecture, has ignored planning for the New York City of 2030. Instead, it has focused on rezoning the city as if we still lived in the 1960s, using the language and planning concepts of that discredited era rather than preparing to meet the challenges and opportunities of the 21st century.

Together with private developers, the city's Economic Development Corporation and other quasi-government entities, the planning department has embraced outmoded redevelopment plans for Willets Point in Queens, Hudson Yards on the far West Side, Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn, and Columbia University's expansion into Manhattanville without any substantive regard to the principles and goals of PlaNYC.

These large-scale development plans fundamentally ignore the issue of sustainability. And they cast the form of the city in concrete for a century or more.

article

Posted by eric at 5:45 PM

November 18, 2009

Book on mega-projects offers more reasons for skepticism of Atlantic Yards

Atlantic Yards Report

Norman Oder applies an Atlantic Yards perspective to his latest book report:

I wrote yesterday how the 2003 book Mega-Projects: The Changing Politics of Urban Public Investment, authored by Alan Altshuler and David Luberoff, implicitly criticized Atlantic Yards in advising that overrides of local decision making are "very rarely justified" for sports facilities, since they don't serve "urgent regional needs."

There's much more in the book to generate skepticism about Atlantic Yards, as I describe below, including how project proponents have subtly shifted costs to the public sector; why the AY footprint poses a tighter fit than nearly all other sports facility siting efforts; and how mega-projects invariably involve cost escalation.

article

Posted by lumi at 6:01 AM

November 17, 2009

Jane Jacobs Report Card: #28, 29, 30 & 31

Noticing New York

Bruce Ratner's Atlantic Yards overdevelopment is scoring abysmally on the Jane Jacobs report card. Today's installments examine the unintended consequences of directing massive public subsidies to a single megaproject.

Jane Jacobs Atlantic Yards Report Card #28: Observes the Goal of Creating Political Access (Inc. Goal of Countering Public Money Expenditures)? NO

Jane Jacobs was concerned with cities as working organisms. As one part of this concern, she wrote about consciously creating communities within cities that will have political access and effective influence to represent the interests of neighborhoods. Rather than respecting this as a goal, Atlantic Yards has progressed in the opposite fashion, stripping communities of their say-so about the project. When Community Board 6 voted 35-4 to disapprove of the project as proposed in the July 18, 2006 General Project Plan and Draft Environmental Impact Statement “because it will cause irreparable damage to the quality of life in the borough of Brooklyn,” the Brooklyn Borough President who stands apart in supporting Atlantic Yards removed members from that board on a wholesale basis. Jane Jacobs was also critical of the way that expenditures of public money were also sometimes used as a distracting sort of candy to try and nullify the political rights of voters.

Jane Jacobs Atlantic Yards Report Card #29: Using Public Participation in Shaping Cities? NO

Jane Jacobs viewed the people who live in city neighborhoods has having the most important (empirically derived) first hand expertise about their neighborhoods. She therefore believed that getting their input is a supremely critical aspect of the planning process. By comparison, she discounts the value that “experts” have to offer in the process. Normally, planning for big developments involves the public in the planning through the City’s ULURP process. In the case of Atlantic Yards, the process of involving the public through ULURP was sidestepped using a mechanism that people probably never expected would be used to sidestep projects of this magnitude after the City’s Charter was amended to create the ULURP process.

Jane Jacobs Atlantic Yards Report Card #30: Avoidance of Cataclysmic Money? NO

Part of Jane Jacobs genius was to point out that money could be destructive when it floods in faster than it can be constructively used. Even if good is “intended” by it, it can be too much of a good thing. She calls this “cataclysmic money” and identifies more than one form of it, but one of its most important forms, especially these days and in the case of Atlantic Yards, is public funding and subsidy. Even though or despite the fact that the Atlantic Yards area was, through natural economic processes, attracting substantial economic capital and creating million dollar co-ops and condos, Atlantic Yards is a supreme example of something with so many bad economic equations it would never happen except for public subsidy. That subsidy is overriding private enterprise in a huge way that ought to be offensive to conservative thinkers and liberal alike.

Jane Jacobs Atlantic Yards Report Card #31: Making Good Use of Gradual Money? NO

Jane Jacobs was supremely conscious of the good that money well and properly spent could create and was not, per se, against subsidies. However, she saw the most valuable form of money as gradual money spent slowly for gradual changes, building on and supplementing what exists. That money could come in through public spending and subsidy. Jacobs was also aware that in situations like Atlantic Yards where there is massive misdirection of public funds and subsidy into cataclysmic spending, each dollar the public spends cataclysmically creating destruction also represents a dollar that could, instead, have been spent gradually for public good. So, the misdirection of funds is, at least, a double loss to the public.

Posted by lumi at 11:15 AM

How to prioritize megaprojects? Avoid state intervention on behalf of local sports facilities

Atlantic Yards Report

At a panel on megaprojects November 7, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer suggested a need to prioritize, given that not all projects could go forward. And he also pointed out that many projects have regional importance.

No one tried to prioritize, but I found some guidance--implicitly critical of Atlantic Yards--in the 2003 book Mega-Projects: The Changing Politics of Urban Public Investment, authored by Alan Altshuler and David Luberoff.

In a nutshell: the use of a state zoning override, the bypassing of any effective input from any legislative body and the fact that the stated goals of Atlantic Yards could have been achieved by other, simpler means, would probably lead analysts to conclude that Bruce Ratner's megaproject doesn't belong on the priority list of regional projects.

article

Posted by lumi at 6:00 AM

November 12, 2009

Jane Jacobs Atlantic Yards Report Cards, Numbers 24-27

Noticing New York

After posting umpteen-thousand words on Tuesday on 300 years of the history of judicial independence, Michael D.D. White somehow managed to run off four more installments of his "Jane Jacobs Atlantic Yards Report Card" series.

Jane Jacobs Atlantic Yards Report Card #24: Avoidance of “Border Vacuums?” NO

Jane Jacobs pinpointed and described a phenomena that is readily possible to observe many places in almost any city- What she called “border vacuums.” She observed how borders that interrupted the flow of the city and city streets tended to create areas of deadness surrounding them. Among other things, she observed that projects built like Atlantic Yards on superblocks visually separating themselves from the city created these borders and associated vacuums notwithstanding that they might offer paths and promenades for pedestrian travel.
...

Some borders damp down use by making travel across them a one-away affair. Housing projects are an example of this, the project people cross back and forth across the border (usually, in any appreciable numbers, at only one side of the project or at most two sides). The adjoining people, for the most part, stay strictly over on their side of the border and treat the line as a dead end of use.

Jane Jacobs Atlantic Yards Report Card #25: Convert Borders to Seams? NO

Jane Jacobs suggested that borders could be converted to “seams” and would not have to function as borders if along their edges there were frequent invitations that would bring users across the border. Atlantic Yards does not seem to have any lively cleverness in its design that would accomplish this though some corrections might one day get fitted in to correct some of it problems. Corrections will be more difficult in some areas like where the arena presents large blank walls more than a block long. Further, as the megadevelopment will take decades, perhaps three to four, there will be decades where with acres of parking lots and a still open cut for the rail yards little or no correction will be possible.

(Above: The seven-story tall back of the proposed arena which, straddling a closed-off street, will be nearly two blocks wide. It is likely to face acres of parking lots and open rail yards for decades.)

Jane Jacobs Atlantic Yards Report Card #26: Allowing People to Move up the Ladder Through “Unslumming”? NO

Jane Jacobs devoted a chapter of her book to the subject of the way in which areas of cities thought of as “slums” went through natural processes to become anything but. She called the process “unslumming” but these days it might be considered much the same thing as gentrification depending on the income levels that come to prevail in an improving area. In describing this kind of improvement she countered the wisdom or dogma of the day that slums needed to torn down to be improved and that residents needed to be removed and relocated in large scale reshufflings of the population.
...

Atlantic Yards involves the tearing down of blocks and reshuffling of people living on them in much the same fashion as the old-style urban renewal projects of the days of yore. In much the same way, justification for the tear down and reshuffling is being offered by describing as `unhealthy’ areas that don’t believe themselves to be such and are quite busy improving themselves through natural processes.
...

Jane Jacobs, in realizing that the neighborhoods “unslummed” naturally with many of the same families remaining in place as the neighborhood improved realized that the poor were not just being unproductively evicted from a poor neighborhood, they were being evicted from a neighborhood that was likely a potentially wealthier improved neighborhood. In other words the less advantaged in society are being knocked off an ascending ladder.

Jane Jacobs Atlantic Yards Report Card #27: Use of Empiricism and Curiosity to Determine and Work with Actual Facts and Reality? NO

Jane Jacobs was remarkable for being able to see and understand what “experts”who had proceeded her overlooked or failed to understand and she did it by rigorously going out to observe what was actually out in the world to be observed rather than seeing what she expected, wanted to or thought she should see. If the Atlantic Yards Environmental Impact Statement is representative of what the sponsors of Atlantic Yards see, or don’t, the evidence is that they are not seeing the world of this Brooklyn site for what it is but for what they hope would justify their proposed actions. Likewise, if you go by the inaccurate descriptions of the proposed project and area in the materials the Ratner organization promulgated to promote the project.

Posted by eric at 1:00 PM

November 9, 2009

At panel on stalled megaprojects, AY draws implicit skepticism and indirect support (but only if there were infrastructure investment)

Atlantic Yards Report

So, is Atlantic Yards the right kind of megaproject? AY came up only glancingly during a panel on Saturday during the Institute for Urban Design's conference Arrested Development: Do Megaprojects Have a Future?, but panelists' comments, in general, offered much implicit skepticism--though some indirect support--for Brooklyn's most controversial project.

Notably, they portrayed megaprojects as mainly (but not exclusively) public infrastructure projects, such as transportation, not sports facilities.

And while one panelist, former developer Vishaan Chakrabarti, made a case for "extreme density" as a way to save energy in a steadily urbanizing world, he said such projects had to include "very intense" infrastructure investments in mass transit, parks, and schools.

Atlantic Yards, while it's supposed to include an upgraded Long Island Rail Road yard, would have no subway improvements other than a new entrance. There'd be space for as school but the new open space would be long-delayed--as opposed to beforehand, as with Battery Park City--and mostly serve the new residents rather than "Brooklyn," as developer Forest City Ratner has promised.

article

Posted by eric at 10:20 AM

November 4, 2009

Review & Comment: For a Better-Looking City

The Brooklyn Daily Eagle suggests that bloggers only post around 40 words to circumvent any copyright issues.

Here are 40 words mentioning "Atlantic Yards" from Henrik Krogius's column exploring the idea of a Public Design Commission:

Today, here in Brooklyn, we are still embroiled in controversy over Atlantic Yards, although its original architect whose unconventional designs spurred at least part of the conflict has been eased out. Frank Gehry enjoys a world reputation somewhat like that...

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Posted by lumi at 7:01 PM

November 1, 2009

One City, One Future: strategies for housing, jobs, and equitable growth (that Thompson has mostly ignored)

Atlantic Yards Report

The proposed Atlantic Yards project is certainly an example of poor planning. The project has morphed from a mix of office towers and housing to primarily a market-rate housing project plus the "who asked for this?!" arena. Instead of trying to stand on its head trying to please a developer, wouldn't it be better if there were a set of guidelines that government could follow to assure sound development?

The publication, "One City/One Future" (a collaboration between National Employment Law Project, New York Jobs with Justice and the Pratt Center for Community Development) shows how the city can do a better job of meeting citizens' needs and allocating precious resources.

Norman Oder digests this publication that espouses these principles:

Raise the Standards

Government should set clear standards for economic activity in New York City, especially activity that benefits from public spending or actions. Meeting these standards -- whether they concern the quality of jobs created or the environmental sustainability of new buildings -- must be a prerequisite for anyone doing business with the city.

Invest for Shared Growth

The city and state currently spend billions keeping New York's economy humming. These investments in housing, transportation, and employment need to be designed and managed with the explicit objective of improving opportunity and strengthening neighborhoods.

Reform the Process

Planning and development must take place in an open and democratic environment, in which communities and the city work as partners, not adversaries, with the objective of building a prosperous city on the strength of livable neighborhoods.

Read through Oder's take on "One City/One Future" and you'll see that it could be possible to have a more equitable system of development for New York.

link

Posted by steve at 8:48 AM

October 19, 2009

Thompson’s Advocated Multiple Parcels (a la Battery Park City) vs. Single-Developer Mega-monopolies Should Boost Developers’ Bids

Noticing New York

Michael D.D. White explains the difference between just-in-time manufacturing and highly subsidized megadevelopments:

There is one thing in the Observer Article that we think is misleading:

“Giving a big site to a single developer all at once—such as the 22-acre, $4.9 billion Atlantic Yards project—could bring a higher bid given, among other reasons, that the developer would benefit from economies of scale and increased values as it fills out the site.”- -

- - We think that it needs to be understood that 'giving a big site to a single developer all at once—such as the 22-acre, $4.9 billion Atlantic Yards project'—could bring a MUCH LOWER bid.

No doubt everyone has heard the expressions “You didn’t pay retail for that, did you?” and “I can get it for you wholesale.” Suffice it to say, retailing sales RAISES the prices a seller can charge. Furthermore, dividing huge sites into multiple parcels increases the number of capable bidders in the game and that raises the price the government will receive. Another benefit is that it mitigates risk for the government, allowing for more flexible Plan Bs (and Cs). As Atlantic Yards Report notes (and suggests may have been understood when the Observer article was authored), the lack of alternative plans can lead to costly additional concessions later on. Or the lack of alternatives can be used as political excuses to wind with a “deal on terms more favorable to the developer.”

article

Posted by lumi at 6:48 AM

Two profiles of Amanda Burden make and miss the same points about City Planning (and Atlantic Yards)

Atlantic Yards Report

Two profiles in the past week of City Planning Commission (CPC) Chairwoman Amanda Burden take the same tack: she's led rezonings and, to her credit and (anonymously-sourced) discredit, has become a micromanager on design issues. Meanwhile, Mayor Mike Bloomberg has left her significant latitude.

Those themes can't be disputed, but both articles miss a larger issue and a smaller one. They fail to note how the CPC has become diminished, unable to truly plan, and they fail to explain how Burden has been (mostly) a loyal foot soldier for Mayor Mike Bloomberg's Atlantic Yards plan.

article

Posted by lumi at 6:41 AM

October 5, 2009

Autumn in New York

He knew all the words….

The High Line succeeds where other projects fail (spectacularly).

I emerged in the West Village, at 12th Street and 7th Avenue. I walked west and when I got near to Gansevoort Street I realized how close I was to the entrance to the High Line, our new elevated park that I hadn’t yet been to see. So I ascended to the old abandoned railway tracks and experienced this unlikely success story for the first time. The park is wonderful. It’s beautifully designed with a crazy combination of nods to the site’s industrial past, the wildlife that overtook the tracks when it fell into disuse, and the slick urban hipness of the (overly) revitalized Meat Packing District. Because the weather was beautiful and because it was near sunset, I assumed the park would be packed with people. But it wasn’t. There were plenty of people there, but it felt very relaxed and very much like a park. In a few places where cafe tables or chaise lounges appeared, it was easy to forget you were on an elevated train track at all — it simply felt like a very peaceful urban park. It’s hard to believe this project came through with such perfection, especially given the fact that when it was first proposed then-Mayor Giulinani played Grinch by signing demolition orders for the tracks, and then of course he was replaced by Mayor Bloomberg who’s overseen one great failure of city development after another. That this project didn’t turn into another botched Coney Island or Atlantic Yards is nothing short of a miracle.

article

Posted by eric at 10:11 AM

September 16, 2009

Kingsborough Conference To Focus on Development

Planners, Academics Head for ‘Dreamland’

Brooklyn Daily Eagle

Kingsborough Community College plans to host a conference titled “Dreamland Pavilion: Brooklyn and Development” on Oct. 2-3.

The multidisciplinary conference will explore the past, present and future of development in Brooklyn. Kevin Powell, a Brooklyn-based activist and author who ran for Congress unsuccessfully against Rep. Ed Towns, will deliver the keynote address. Powell has written for publications such as Esquire, Newsweek, the Washington Post, Essence and Rolling Stone.

The conference brings together more than 50 city planners, academics, journalists, activists and creative artists. Topics will include Atlantic Yards, Coney Island, the politics of gentrification, and the representation of Brooklyn in the media.
...

Dreamland was the name of one of Coney Island’s original grand amusement parks, which burned in a spectacular fire in 1911.

For more information on the conference, please log onto www.kingsborough.edu/dreamland-pavilion.

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Posted by eric at 1:42 PM

September 12, 2009

Architecture Review - Atlantic Yards

DE.SIGN

Blog author Anarchitect points out that the New York Times' architecture critic, Nicholas Ouroussoff, has a narrow focus that can hinder a greater understanding of the field of architecture as well as the proposed Atlantic Yards project.

New Design for Atlantic Yards Project Restores a Bit of the Old - NYTimes.com I am not greatly impressed with the flip-flopping design proposals for the Atlantic Yards site. However, I am also equally unimpressed by NY Times' lopsided critiques. Is NYT into marketing architects or good architecture and urban design? Mr. Ouroussoff sounds concerned and terrified (or Gehryfied?!) while reviewing the revised plans for the project by SHoP Architects....

It is tragic when architectural critics sing praises of architects rather than issues concerning architecture and urban design... There are many unanswered questions about the proposals for this site including absence of a plan - infrastructure planning and who is paying for it along with other costs that the taxpayers are presumed to bear..... In these times of Less rather than more, a critique of Excess is more we look forward to when evaluating large-scale architectural projects, not just iconic branding. Good is difficult to define however, accepted norms for what is considered to be a "high standard" remains indubitably questionable. NYT readers would be better served if Mr Ouroussoff focused more on the larger issues facing the profession of architecture and its responsibility towards shared goals; and writing a critique on architecture of the "sameness" that defines much of contemporary architecture including the work of Gehry's office rather than vilify other architects.

link

Posted by steve at 5:54 AM

August 26, 2009

Limited parking, street closures, and rooftop seats: why watching the Cubs in Wrigleyville contrasts with the plans for the Nets and AY (+ video)

Atlantic Yards Report

Norman Oder takes a field trip to Wrigley Field to explore the comparisons made to the downtown ballpark in the Atlantic Yards Final Environmental Impact Statement.

The [Empire State Development Corporation] says Wrigley fits into its neighborhood.

However, there are some significant contrasts between Wrigley and the proposed Atlantic Yards arena, as I learned when I visited Chicago's Wrigley Field in July during an afternoon baseball game and took photos and a video (below).

The contrasts and insights:

• Living or visiting across the street is a boon because you can watch games
• There's very little parking, even though the stadium has more than twice the projected capacity of the arena and, while located on a transit line, is not at a transit hub
• Residential permit parking has been instituted to protect residents
• There's a vigorous private market in which residents rent their own parking spaces
• Two streets are closed during games
• A line of buses waits for the crowds

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Posted by lumi at 5:39 AM

August 7, 2009

Catching up with Coney Island: how CBA-like trade-offs may have sacrificed the amusement area

Atlantic Yards Report

Last week, the City Council voted to approve the rezoning of Coney Island, shrinking the amusement district. What role did the Community Benefits Agreement play in giving cover to the politicians who voted for the Mayor's plan, and are there any similarities to Atlantic Yards?

[C]ritics say the rezoning passed 44-2 last week by the City Council won't save Coney Island so much as shrink the amusement area, allow the demolition of historic buildings, and, crucially, permit hotel towers south of Surf Avenue, blocking views of the beach and amusement area.
...

The enormous natural advantages of Coney--the beach and the sky--are a civic asset. If there are to be many new high-rises in Coney--and that's fine--there's ample room north and west of the central amusement area....
...

Similarly, zoning for amusements is a scarce commodity--it allows light and noise--and there's a strong argument for maintaining a larger, rather than smaller, amusement area.
...

But the City Council agreed, in part because of a Community Benefits Agreement (CBA)-like compromise that has little or nothing to do the amusement area.
...

Not dissimilarly, some of the promises in the Atlantic Yards CBA have nothing to do with the fundamental question: should Forest City Ratner be allowed to built Atlantic Yards at the size it wants and gain the benefits of state override of zoning and exercise eminent domain?

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Posted by lumi at 5:12 AM

August 6, 2009

Hills & Gardens
Boerum Hill’s New Voice

Brooklyn Daily Eagle
by Trudy Whitman

The Eagle profiles Howard Kolins, the new president of the Boerum Hill Association.

What differs from past Boerum Hill Association presidents’ tenures and [Sue] Wolfe’s and his, Kolins muses, is that neighbors had been motivated by a single big issue in the past. Now there are multiple big issues — Atlantic Yards and other large development projects, the Brooklyn House of Detention, and park remediation, to name just a few.

“But the collective impulse of the board members . . . is self-determination,” relates Kolins. “We moved here because it is a certain way, and people want to preserve that.”
...

See Part 2 of this profile next week in which Howard Kolins discusses the big issues (Atlantic Yards, the House of Detention) and the annual events that make Boerum Hill a unique neighborhood (a holiday potluck that attracts 120 neighbors, a plant sale that nets a $6000 profit.)

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Posted by eric at 12:28 PM

July 29, 2009

It came from the Blogosphere... (NY Post edition)

News that the Municipal Art Society released a set of revised renderings, because Atlantic Yards developer Bruce Ratner won't, made the rounds in the blogosphere:

Brownstoner, Reality Check Rendering of Yards from MAS

Now that the budget and ambitions of Atlantic Yards have been scaled back and Frank Gehry has been dumped, what are we left with? Since Forest City Ratner has not been forthcoming to date, the Municipal Art Society took a stab at creating a rendering of what may be in store.

NY Times, "City Room," Morning Buzz: Housing & Economy

Renderings of Bruce Ratner’s embattled Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn commissioned by the Municipal Art Society portray how the $4.9 billion project will look now that all the bells and whistles have been stripped from it - most notably the architect Frank Gehry and his expressionist building and arena design. The society says it’s doing what Mr. Ratner and the state won’t — providing the public with renderings to rely on as the Empire State Development Corporation holds public hearings Wednesday and Thursday regarding Ratner’s revised project plan, which was released last month and is scaled down and more costly than the one state officials approved in 2006.

Sports Business News, Facility Notes

In N.Y., Rich Calder reports the Municipal Art Society of N.Y. (MAS) said that it is doing what Nets Owner Bruce Ratner and the state "won't -- providing the public with renderings to rely on as the Empire State Development Corp. holds public hearings Wednesday and Thursday....

* Aerial photo, Jonathan Barkey

Posted by lumi at 5:10 AM

July 15, 2009

Jane Jacobs Atlantic Yards Report Card, cont'd

Blogger Michael D.D. White has been putting Atlantic Yards to the Jane Jacobs test. Thus far, Atlantic Yards isn't getting a passing grade — today's marks pretty much meet expectations:

Jane Jacobs Atlantic Yards Report Card #21: Avoidance of Harmful Gigantic Outdoor Advertising? NO

Jane Jacobs was unusually tolerant of what ought to be permitted in an urban environment but goes out of her way to say that except in very unusual situations very large billboards and signage is destructive because they are visually disorganizing to streets, and overly dominating. The Atlantic Yards proposal involves illuminated (changeable and perhaps animated) electronic signage of up to 150 feet,- That is billboards 15 stories tall- and to accomplish putting these signs in the middle of historic brownstone neighborhoods would override local regulations which would normally, in such an area, be stricter than usual to prevent such signage. No sports facility in the city has similarly huge signage.

Jane Jacobs Atlantic Yards Report Card #22: Avoidance of Enterprises and Uses Harmful Because the Scale Is Wrong? NO

Jane Jacobs pointed out that there were enterprises or uses which she referred to as `exploding’ the street that were not, in themselves wrong, but which were harmful if they were operating at too large a scale, with too much disproportionately large street frontage. The disproportionately large street frontages at Ratner’s Atlantic Centers are examples of such street exploders and bode ill for Atlantic Yards. Security problems at Metrotech have created similar problems at that location which have gone unaddressed. But even if the ground floor space at Atlantic Yards is leased to retail operators that use smaller street frontages in a break from past Ratner practices, the effect of the street being broken up will occur because the buildings in Atlantic Yards are spaced apart so that they will not have continuous uninterrupted streets.

Jane Jacobs Atlantic Yards Report Card #23: Protection Against Self-Destruction of Diversity of Building Use? NO

Jane Jacobs describes a problem of the too successful city where diversity is lost when supplanted by crowded uses like banks or insurance companies that lack diversity. Though each is economically successful in its own right, Jacobs feels a dull monotony takes over with the crowding.... This has application to Atlantic Yards mainly in that buildings that could have been converted and enlisted for such “staunch” uses, perhaps as schools or libraries, are being torn down instead.

Posted by lumi at 5:24 AM

July 13, 2009

Jane Jacobs Atlantic Yards Report Card #s 18, 19 & 20

Noticing New York

Michael D.D. White continues his series asking "what would Jane Jacobs do?" in the case of Atlantic Yards.

Jane Jacobs Atlantic Yards Report Card #18: Improved Mass Transit Bus Service by Avoidance of One-Way Streets? MAYBE NOT

Jane Jacobs pointed out technical reasons why two-way streets favor and assist the mass transit use of buses. The City’s Department of Mass Transportation has been unable to envision how the city transportation systems will be able to handle the extra loads associated with a project the size of Atlantic Yards. It will be a problem in terms of vehicular transit on the street and also because DOT has reported that the subway lines serving Atlantic Yards are already at maximum capacity and will not be able to be suitably upgraded in the foreseeable future applicable to the project’s construction. Without a good solution available, DOT flailed at the problem by proposing to accommodate Atlantic Yards by turning Brooklyn’s Sixth and Seventh Avenues into one-way streets. (Fifth Avenue is proposed to be partly shut down by the Atlantic Yards project.) If this were done it would be despite the particular technical problems for buses that Jane Jacobs pointed out, notwithstanding that mass transit buses might be the main hope available to deal with the sudden huge population Atlantic Yards would dump into this area of Brooklyn.

Jane Jacobs Atlantic Yards Report Card #19: Avoidance of Harmful Large and Heavy Trucking Depots? MAYBE NOT?

Jane Jacobs views trucking depots in the wrong areas as adverse to neighborhoods. Atlantic Yards is not proposing that trucking depots will be built within its final design. But there will likely be many years where construction trucks fill the neighborhood.

Jane Jacobs Atlantic Yards Report Card #20: Avoidance of Harmful Gas Stations? MAYBE YES/MAYBE NO

Jane Jacobs suggested that gas stations in the wrong areas would deaden neighborhoods. Those looking for a positive accomplishment in the Atlantic Yards Development can point out that a gas station will be one of the condemned businesses. On the other hand, the gas station which sits on an island on busy Flatbush Avenue might be in about as good a place as it might ever be in terms of not disturbing an adjoining neighborhood. Arguably, on the other side, when it goes out of business at this location it is possible the demand for an unfilled service may result in a new gas station springing up in a less desirable location.

The Mobil station in question, at the corner of Flatbush Avenue and Dean Street, has since been demolished by Forest City Ratner.

Posted by eric at 9:16 AM

July 12, 2009

In Architectural Record (February 2007), editor called for "employing other voices"; now what?

Atlantic Yards Report

Norman Oder takes a look at a mostly ignored article from 2007 that examined the proposed Atlantic Yards project through a mostly architectural viewpoint. After two years, a new look would be a good idea.

This is well over two years late, but I don't think anyone noticed a thoughtful but flawed February 2007 column by Architectural Record editor Robert Ivy, headlined City of Trees and published shortly after the Atlantic Yards project was officially approved but, obviously, well before significant changes were made.

It's worth another look and Atlantic Yards, I think, deserves Ivy's attention again.

Ivy points to the need for development at the crucial intersection of Flatbush and Atlantic avenues, cited the need for housing in the city, and pointed out the importance of professional sports in what could be the fourth-largest city in the country. (I don't buy his restatement of the cliche that Brooklyn is "still grieving the loss of the Dodgers in 1957," however.)

...

However, he acknowledges concern: Soon residents of surrounding property and their sympathizers began to protest the disruption to the urban fabric that the 22-acre master plan proposed. They decried the loss of low-scale housing in the Prospect Heights neighborhood (a gentrifying area), the use of eminent domain by a civic authority to block viable streets, and the variation in scale presented in the proposed project.

It's even more than urban design, scale, and even eminent domain, given factors like superblocks and indefinite interim surface parking. The big issue is process--why else would the Municipal Art Society's Kent Barwick have mused that AY might be "this generation's Penn Station"?

Oder goes on to examine the role of Frank Gehry in the planning and promotion of the project as well as the original concept that Gehry would have been responsible for planning every building for the project.

He concludes by looking at how realistic a compromise solution might be and suggesting a fresh look.

Ivy concludes: New York needs density, and more housing, but not at the expense of alienating urban advocates who decry closed streets, inadequate affordable-housing options, or imperiled existing residences. Their voices must be taken into consideration. Ultimately, Atlantic Yards will comprise its own city within the city. As Gehry himself has proposed, his large commission can be improved by employing other voices to build on the plans he has laid out to date, adding other sensibilities to the architect’s own, layering the new community now in formation with multiple points of view, and enriching the borough and the whole city as a result. (Emphasis added)

This is essentially a "mend it, don't end it" solution, reasonably close to the issues raised by BrooklynSpeaks.

...

But it doesn't square the circle: if existing residences are to be saved and streets not to be closed, Forest City Ratner's master plan must be significantly altered--and probably couldn't work. It implies a lower density; if so, the developer couldn't fulfill the affordable housing pledge it made.

Moreover, it doesn't deal with the dubious claims of blight. Nor does it deal with the developer's pattern of misleading the public.

It's understandable that Ivy, like other architecture critics, would focus on issues of urban design. But a project this big raises other questions, as well.

Now that it's been two years and counting, he should revisit the issue.

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Posted by steve at 8:20 AM

July 11, 2009

This is the Coney Island the Bloomberg Administration Doesn't Want the City to Have

Noticing New York

The focus of this blog entry is the release of images by the Municipal Art Society (MAS) that clearly show the problems with a proposed city plan for redevelopment of Coney Island. Also, MAS's "Atlantic Lots" images are recalled.

Not only are MAS’s images informative but MAS has previously been marvelously prescient in producing urban development image projects. MAS was right on target with its "Atlantic Lots" website. That website, predicting that the Atlantic Yards megaproject (yet another Bloombergian mega-vision project) would become just a generic arena surrounded by parking lots, furnished images that have turned out to be exactly right. Right now, Forest City Ratner, the developer proposed to get a monopoly over a swath of Brooklyn, just wants to build a crude airplane hanger style arena. Notwithstanding, FCR would get a blight-inducing ultra-long-term, low-cost exclusive option on many times the acreage needed for that arena. That extra acreage is where FCR would get to put parking lots for perhaps as long as 30 or 40 years. And the developer has already been busy tearing the neighborhood down.

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NoLandGrab: Like Atlantic Yards, the redevelopment of Coney Island has not received nearly the attention it should be getting from mainstream media, so you may not be aware of the plan that will likely destroy Coney Island as an amusement destination. Click on the above link and take a look at this video, Don't Kill Coney! Fix the Plan!: A Friendly PSA from Coney Island's 'Mayor', to come up to speed quickly on this issue.

Posted by steve at 6:52 AM

July 3, 2009

Ratner Makes New Promises; Amanda Burden Close to Edge on Arena Design

After Atlantic Yards developer Bruce Ratner committed not to build ugly, Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn wonders:

So, if the renderings of the Barclays Center Hangar were not Bruce Ratner's "intentions for the project" what were they and what are his intentions? And if he still doesn't know what his arena is going to look like (if that is true) how can he claim, with a straight face, that he's breaking ground this fall?

Anyway...

It seems pretty clear that City Planning Commissioner Amanda Burden is not pleased with Atlantic Yards at all. So she has a choice to make: let it stumble along and end up with decades-long blight and a big box arena sitting empty most of the time or buck her boss Bloomberg and do the right thing. It's times like these on projects like these that call for whistleblowing.

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Posted by lumi at 5:35 AM

June 26, 2009

And from the mailbag

The Brooklyn Paper, Letters

To the editor,

The firing of Frank Gehry and the evolution of Atlantic Yards ought to provide a moment for reflection regarding the role of architecture, hubris, politics, and planning in our city. Will we continue to see another development deal, another architect, another political legacy all intertwined in a misbegotten attempt to control what perhaps should not be controlled?
...

Let us engage our most talented designers and let us see the alternatives to this mediocre scheme. Let’s insist on the best results for Brooklyn, for New York, for architecture, for urban design and for the people. There is no excuse for less.

James Garrison, DUMBO

link [The first two letters were published previously; scroll down for Mr. Garrison's letter.]

Posted by eric at 11:16 AM

June 25, 2009

Prospect Heights gets historic district; historic boondoggle TBD

Tracy Collins via flickr Atlantic Yards Photo Pool, Atlantic Yards v. Prospect Heights Historic District

Note how the newly approved historic district wraps the southeast section of the Atlantic Yards footprint like a fork. That section until last year contained the preservation-worthy Ward Bakery Building — which was perhaps Prospect Heights' most distinguished building — demolished courtesy of Bruce C. Ratner.

Brooklyn Daily Eagle, LPC Votes Unanimously to Designate Prospect Heights Historic District

The Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) Tuesday unanimously approved the designation of the Prospect Heights Historic District.

The 850-building district is the city’s largest since the 2,020-building Upper West Side Historic District was formed in 1990, according to LPC Chair Robert Tierney.

And with its mid-19th century and early 20th century rowhouses and apartment buildings designed in a broad array of architectural styles, it is certainly deserving, he added.

The Municipal Art Society of NYC, MAS Applauds Prospect Heights Historic District Designation

Prospect Heights is rich in historic architecture, with blocks of beautiful Italianate and neo-Grec rowhouses, interspersed with churches, small commercial and apartment buildings. Located just north of Prospect Park, the neighborhood has seen few changes since it was first developed in the late-19th century. Today, it is threatened by the Atlantic Yards project, a proposal by the developer Forest City Ratner to build 16 towers and a sports arena on a 22-acre site adjacent to the neighborhood.

This announcement marks a significant milestone for an innovative civic partnership between the Municipal Art Society of New York (MAS) and the Prospect Heights Neighborhood Development Council (PHNDC). The two groups teamed up in 2006 to advocate for historic district designation.

NoLandGrab: While MAS and PHNDC are to be commended for their efforts, had the two groups been more vociferous in their opposition to Atlantic Yards — both are members of the "mend-it-don't-end-it" BrooklynSpeaks coalition — one has to wonder if the Ward Bakery, too, could have been saved from Bruce Ratner's wrecking ball.

The Brooklyn Paper, City makes ‘history’ in Prospect Heights

Prospect Heights has joined its better-known upscale neighbor Park Slope as Brooklyn’s latest historic district.

On Tuesday, the Landmarks Preservation Commission voted unanimously to turn the 850-building area into a protected historical landmark.
...

The district stretches from Flatbush Avenue to Washington Avenue and from Eastern Parkway to Atlantic Avenue — up to, but not including, Bruce Ratner’s proposed mega-development, formerly known as Atlantic Yards until this week’s announcement that most of the project had been tabled.

NLG: No, it's still known as Atlantic Yards, and the project has hardly been "tabled." The Brooklyn Paper should try as hard to be accurate as it does to be cute.

AP via WCAX.com, Brooklyn neighborhood gets landmark status

The Prospect Heights district is next to the site where developer Bruce Ratner plans to build a basketball arena and 16 skyscrapers. However, his development will not directly encroach on it.

Posted by eric at 5:01 PM

June 13, 2009

How To Unmake A Frank Gehry Building and a Section of a City

Regional Plan Association
By Alex Marshall

The author of this piece explains how being a fan of Frank Gehry helped him to abandon his principles and endorse the proposed Atlantic Yards project.

Last week, Forest City Ratner announced it was dropping Gehry as the architect of the New York Nets arena that is at the center of the much debated Atlantic Yards, the project that would cover the now open LIRR train yards, and wipe out several of the surrounding blocks. More importantly perhaps for the public, Ratner has asked to be relieved of some of his public obligations. This after having drastically trimmed away at the project and reduced the number and composition of offices and apartments.

I have long opposed the process that created this project, as well as many aspects of the final design, even while ultimately supporting the construction of the project itself, despite all its flaws. I supported it because it got a lot of things right, including the scale of offices, housing and amenities for that location. The project sits right next to the largest collection of subway lines in Brooklyn if not the city. It is probably the most appropriate place in the city to build a lot of something. I even swallowed my dislike of how the project closed existing streets and put in few cross streets, making the project essentially a collection of street-deadening super-blocks.

But it's also true that having a Frank Gehry building sweetened the pot for me. And living just a few blocks from the site, this was not an abstract question.

With Gehry out of the picture, a more pragmatic approach appears.

Should the MTA and the city make some sort of arrangement with Ratner? That depends on whether a new deal can be constructed that can still provide net economic benefits to the city and MTA over the long run. But any renegotiation should also extract a price from Ratner by demanding greater oversight over the future evolution of the project. That would go a long way toward fixing the deeply flawed process whose outcome is playing out exactly as predicted by astute observers like Rob Lane of RPA.

...

Speaking for myself, I would say the public sector has to act robustly in almost every development project now under way, including Atlantic Yards, the WTC site redevelopment, Hudson Yards and more. The basic model should be the city designs and supervises; the private sector builds. Right now, it's too often the private sector designs, the public sector accommodates.

When will we learn?

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NoLandGrab: Will RPA demonstrate what has been learned and reconsider its endorsement of the proposed Atlantic Yards Project as has been suggested by Norman Oder in his Atlantic Yards Report?

Posted by steve at 9:15 AM

May 27, 2009

As with FCR's pictures of open space, the city likes to produce unrealistic park renderings

Atlantic Yards Report

From Tuesday's New York Post:
A Parks official... also said the city has a "bad" habit of commissioning renderings for park projects "it knows it'll never be able to fully fund" just to grab a quick headline "and boost the mayor's popularity."

That sounds a lot like Forest City Ratner commissioning landscape architect Laurie Olin for some renderings of open space not scheduled until Phase 2, for which the State Funding Agreement imposed no timetable.

Remember, according to Empire State Development Corporation CEO Marisa Lago, Atlantic Yards could take "decades." And the open space is all scheduled for Phase 2.

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Posted by eric at 10:44 PM

May 4, 2009

Mayor's Office: maybe to new schools if AY is built, no to a new 78th Precinct stationhouse

Atlantic Yards Report

The Mayor’s Office of Management and Budget, in budget documents released Friday, revealed a couple of Capital Budget Priorities and Requests related to Atlantic Yards.

In neither case does the city appear willing to commit more resources, stating that it would try to build more schools, should AY be built, with existing funds, and would not try to construct a new 78th Precinct stationhouse, despite the impact of an arena that would be built a block away.

article

NoLandGrab: The Mayor continues to support Bruce Ratner's Atlantic Yards scheme, but will not commit to supporting the community in and around the project.

Mayor to Community Boards: drop dead (or, at least, wither away)

Mayor Bloomberg is facing some hard choices, but his top-down community-be-damned approach to rezoning leads one to believe that his decision to cut the already meager budgets of Community Boards wasn't one of them:

...Community Board budgets average around $220,000, and Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s budget proposes that those budgets go down 5%, not up.

Yes, the city budget is under stress, but, as Manhattan CB 7 Chair Helen Rosenthal notes in this March 16 Gotham Gazette commentary, the entire community board budget is some $15 million--essentially a rounding error in a $60 billion budget. (Actually, the budget this year looks like it'll be under $14 million. See p. 55 of this PDF budget document.)

Numerous Community Boards asked for an increase in their budgets, pointing out that they're already stretched to the bone, and the CBs can’t fulfill their mandates in the city charter.

Posted by lumi at 5:27 AM

May 1, 2009

And what if climate change had been part of the EIS? Maybe there wouldn't have been so much parking planned for AY

Atlantic Yards Report

Hmm... what if climate change had been part of the Environmental Impact Statement? The short answer is there would have been even more analysis for developer Bruce Ratner and the Empire State Developerment Corporation to ignore.

However, Atlantic Yards has become the poster project for reckless urban planning, so it's worth ruminating on what-ifs, at least for future projects and environmental reviews:

Last week, the Municipal Art Society (MAS) released a study that "details a suggested framework for analyzing climate change, and enables New York State to evaluate and address the potential climate change impact of different actions in land-use, energy and industrial transportation, and other issues."

And the state Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) has issued draft guidelines for adding analysis to environmental impact statements (EISs).

A dense development like Atlantic Yards, with buildings designed to meet LEED standards, may seem to foster sustainability, but critics like urban planner Tom Angotti remain skeptical, because of what's been left out.

Indeed, should this new policy avenue be followed, the environmental review for large projects like AY would require a closer look at the impact of parking, traffic, and construction on greenhouse gases (GHG).

article

Posted by lumi at 5:14 AM

April 28, 2009

Development amid Deficits, Building amid Budget Gaps

City Hall News

Atlantic Yards excerpts from online selections of the the on-the-record transcript of Empire State Development Corporation President and CEO Marisa Lago at an On/Off the Record breakfast held April 8:

Q: What is the status on Atlantic Yards?
A: Obviously a challenging project. Again, projects conceived in a different time and in a different economy. But, one, now the focus is very much on moving forward with the Nets stadium and with the housing that is on that first block, the first phase of the project. Attenuated timelines, I think, are a reality for private-sector and for public-sector projects; there’s nothing wrong with that. You look at the history of the transformational projects that have occurred in the city—earlier I was discussing with some of the folks here Roosevelt Island, the project that has grown over decades; 42nd Street, a project that has grown over the past 25 years—and the scale of the Atlantic Yards is similar in that it is remaking, re-knitting a portion of the city. So, as I said: [we are] focusing on what can get done now in the current climate, what is finance-able now, and also recognizing that it is a project that is scheduled to grow out over multi-years, decades, not months.

Q: What dates are we looking at for completion, and what does it look like when it’s done?
A: With respect to Atlantic Yards, our focus is on the first phase, on the arena and the attendant community benefits and housing that surround it, and with respect to particular dates, one doesn’t know, I think that it is a folly to say that. But, are we driving it aggressively? Absolutely.

Q: So we don’t know yet when the first basket will be scored in the Nets arena?
A: You know the history of predicting dates for it. I think the important thing is the commitment that the government has, that the city/state government has in working with Forest City to drive the project forward.

Video is available at http://www.cityhallnews.com/. Scroll through the video links on the right-hand side under "Online Exclusives."

Posted by lumi at 5:01 AM

Noticing Noticing New York: a twofer

Markowitz, McCullough, Me and Other Merry Minions of the Blogosphere

Though Michael D.D. White's update on the fight to preserve landmark views of the Brooklyn Bridge may have little to do with Atlantic Yards, activists in the fight against Bruce Ratner's Prospect Heights megaproject will get a sense of "deja screw" as Marty Markowitz stages another face-saving compromise and celebrities begin to join the fight, as an autocratic Mayor begins to tighten his grip on the power lever.

Links to Avoid: Unnecessary Temptation, Unnecessary Subsidies

One family's disgraceful fall is a cautionary tale about the inevitable political drift when politicians are faced with hundreds of millions of dollars sloshing around looking for a pocket to fill.

We offer a diagnosis of the source of political drift: We think that what most often separates a political party from its name and principles is the pull of temptation. The temptation in the comptrollers’s scandal is that the structures allowed one man control too much money and there was a lack of transparency to boot. It was just too easy to skim.
...
Consider, for example, the case of the highly unnecessary Atlantic Yards that is proposed to be massively subsidized almost beyond belief. For starters, the project will never deliver its ostensible benefits which are little but Orwellian fictions. In championing this project, Republican’s like former Governor Pataki or former Senate Leader Joe Bruno become proponents of excessively large government and an extraordinary level of government intervention in the private sector. Conversely, Democrats, like former governor Eliot Spitzer, become proponents of specially aiding a wealthy real estate developer and sports team owner like Bruce Ratner at the expense of the general New York populace. Voila! What better example could you have of political drift?

Unencumbered by a fixed party label, Bloomberg alone is not subject to such criticism since, names aside, he seems to be fixedly devoted to only one thing. He is regularly on the side of an oligarchic big government that aids the privileged.

Posted by lumi at 3:56 AM

April 22, 2009

Former Port Authority head warns about deferring infrastructure decisions to private entities (and what about AY?)

Atlantic Yards Report

Last night's panel discussion at the Municipal Art Society, The City in the Age of Obama, was notably thought-provoking, applying some reasonable skepticism to the daunting challenges facing the region.

Anthony Shorris, director of the NYU Wagner Rudin Center for Transportation Policy, and former executive director of the Port Authority of NY/NJ, had the most resonant lines, warning that questions of infrastructure face major and various roadblocks.
...
He then made comments that, while not directly about Atlantic Yards, certainly had some resonance, especially given Forest City Enterprises' claim that "we control the pace" even as as the developer is reportedly looking to build a less expensive replacement railyard than it promised.

"The fourth challenge that requires rethinking... is the boundary between public and private," Shorris said. "Increasingly we've deferred much of the [infrastructure] decisionmaking to the private sector"--his tone turned sardonic--"and we know by definition the public sector is incompetent and corrupt, unable to make decisions wisely; the only people who can make decisions wisely are clearly bankers."

article

Posted by lumi at 6:01 AM

April 19, 2009

The Rocawear Pop Shop: from blight to bling and back

Atlantic Yards Report

Norman Oder visits the mobile Rocawear shop that has parked on the site of the proposed Barclay's Arena. He finds the developer-created blight unavoidable.

Yesterday I checked out the mobile Rocawear shop that finally arrived Friday (I'd thought Thursday) at the northeast corner of Pacific Street and Flatbush Avenue.

Up close it's a nifty retail concept, and other news coverage (e.g., The Brooklyn Paper) has given us a close-up exterior shot, plus an interior view.

...

Go inside ... and it's an immersive environment, a lounge on wheels: no windows, flattering lighting, couches, and hip-hop videos providing the proper ambience to sell $28 t-shirts and $48 polo shirts (among other things) anointed by rap superstar Jay-Z.

...

Exit to a barren stretch of Flatbush Avenue, however, and the blight is palpable.

It would take a lot of temporary installments--shops, flea market, playground--to bring life to the empty lots created by demolitions in the Atlantic Yards footprint.

link

Posted by steve at 7:47 AM

April 17, 2009

Doctoroff reflects on PlaNYC's virtues; contrasts with AY evident

Atlantic Yards Report

Norman Oder uses former Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff's own words to expose the big lie otherwise known as Atlantic Yards.

As the second anniversary of the debut of PlaNYC 2030 approaches, former Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff Wednesday reflected on "one of the Bloomberg administration's proudest legacies." The event, at the Museum of the City of New York, was the first public appearance in which Doctoroff addressed the issue since he left government.

While a framework plan like PlaNYC is not the same as a development project like AY, notably, many of the principles behind the former--an emphasis on consultation and achievable goals, realistically presented--seem counter to the city's embrace of Atlantic Yards.

article

Posted by eric at 11:48 AM

April 11, 2009

Two Entries on Historic Preservation From Atlantic Yards Report

Atlantic Yards Report

A few mayoral candidates (but not the big two) on historic preservation, plus more from the HDC conference

For their annual conference, the Historic Districts Council invited 5 mayoral candidates. The two considered the top contenders, incumbent Mayor Mike Bloomberg and City Comptroller Bill Thompson, stayed away. Those who did appear were Tony Avella, Green Party candidate Bill (Rev. Billy) Talen, and Rep. Anthony Weiner.

Tony Avella spoke of steps he's taken that, had they been enacted earlier, might have saved the Ward Bakery Building in the footprint of the proposed Atlantic Yards.

He cited his success in enacting the “demolition by neglect” bill, which plugged a “huge loophole” in the landmarks law, allowing owners to demolish a landmarked building that had fallen into disrepair. The opposition was not just the real estate industry, he noted, but also, the religious community, which often wants more control of real estate that could be turned into development sites.

He said he’s been working on a bill to give the LPC the power to trump a demolition permit. “Even if they have a permit, we should have power to say, the building is still there, you’re going to have to hold off for 30 days,” Avella said. That could have at least stalled the Ward Bakery demolition.

Those fighting Atlantic Yards will readily agree to this quote from Bill Talen:

“The government must no longer be the partner of the real estate developers and speculators.”

This quote was part of remarks by former State Senator and Council Member John Sabini:

Sabini offered the money quote: “Real estate is to New York what oil is to Texas.”

Brooklyn Assemblyman Jim Brennan offered an idea as to how to uncouple the interests of developers from construction unions so that the unions wouldn't have to endorse every development proposal, no matter how outlandish:

Brennan suggested there may be a way out of polarizing development battles pitting residents against construction workers. “Unions become allies because they are dependent on these megaprojects for their employment and always take the short-term pro-development point of view,” Brennan said.

“I think government needs to promote public works and development in a balanced stabilizing manner, so construction unions are less dependent on the private sector.”

At a crossroads, preservationists urged to find clear message and collective voice

Norman Oder has gone through the report "Preservation Vision: Planning for the Future of Preservation in New York City" (PDF), released by Minerva Partners, and highlighted portions of particular siginficance to the Atlantic Yards and the effort to save the Ward Bakery.

The report paints a bleak picture for the current state of preservation in New York, but offers suggestions in ten categories as to how to make preservation a priority:

• Sustainability
• Research
• Incentives
• Land use regulations
• Strengthening the Landmarks Law
• Community livability
• Messaging & branding
• Alliances & diversity
• Funding
• Education

Here are highlights under the heading "Community Livability":

It’s important to link preservation to affordable housing, since it shows a recognition of an important issue. Then again, it's a challenge, since, in the case of Atlantic Yards, affordable housing is a tradeoff for increasing density, something often not possible via preservation.

Suggestions include: Find a way to make it easier to use the Historic Preservation tax credit program; if the State Historic Preservation Office could be more flexible and the standards for restoration eased so that developers could also conform to code requirements, the tax credit could be used to help finance safe and affordable apartments.

Collaborate with affordable housing developers and advocacy organizations on tax credit filing, research and paperwork in support of middle class property owners and lower-income housing developers.

Create a city policy for mandatory inclusionary zoning, with new subsidies for the creation of affordable housing; since available properties are privately owned and expensive for affordable housing developers to buy, more public funding should be devoted to helping them succeed.

Rethink the question of density on wide streets; NYC has been and will continue to be a growing city, no historic district designation or down-zoning should be affected without some thought to where new housing can be built in the community.

Here are some ideas in the "Messaging and branding" category:

Preservationists are often perceived as stodgy, elitist, negative, and scolding -- not a good thing. Even the terms “preservation” and “historic” suggest an emphasis on the connoisseur, not the layperson. How to mainstream it?

Among the suggestions: Put human stories first: notions of “neighborhood preservation” and “community character” and “sense of place” have meaning for regular New Yorkers, but they need translation and specificity; for now, many associate the work of the profession with the negative impacts of gentrification.

Coordinate an event series, like Open House New York, for preservation.

Posted by steve at 6:45 AM

April 7, 2009

A baker's dozen of memories

NY Daily News
By Jotham Sederstrom and Sarah R. Kaufman

Last year, neighborhood activists tried to preserve the Ward Bakery building. The Daily News helps residents preserve the memories:

Joseph Medina, who has lived in Prospect Heights for all of his 29 years, remembers weekly trips to the Ward Bakery, a historic building that succumbed to the wrecker's ball last year.
...
"It was monumental," Medina said of the buildings that have been razed since last year, including the bakery. "You see buildings you've seen all your life being knocked down, torn down. And they disappear."

A mattress store was the first to come down, Medina said, followed by several apartments and, finally, Ward Bakery, which was built in 1911 and knocked down in October.

In middle school, Medina said, he and his friends would get free doughnuts by the dozen from a friendly security guard until the bakery closed in 1995, when he was 15 years old.

article

Posted by lumi at 6:43 AM

March 22, 2009

The Xanadu story: a reminder about "public authorities largely operating out of public view" and some sobering AY parallels

Atlantic Yards Report

Who can name a development plan that involves back-room deals done between State agencies and a developer, over-optimistic financial assumptions, and deadlines that just keep getting moved further and further back? You say "Atlantic Yards"? That is one correct answer, but the answer I was looking for was "Xanadu".

See the remarkable parallels to Atlantic Yards including this comparison of two struggling developers:

WNYC pointed out that Colony Capital -- the current private sponsor of Xanadu -- failed to make its November payments on a $360 million loan to creditors.

And the Star-Ledger reported yesterday that workers at the Xanadu site "said they were told they were being let go, but a spokesman for the developer, Meadowlands Xanadu, said the project is not being halted," just delayed.

That echoes the mysterious close of work at the Vanderbilt Yard in Brooklyn, which Forest City Ratner blamed on lawsuits but which workers said (I've been told secondhand) was due to cash flow problems. Remember, FCR made virtually no explanation even to the ESDC.

And parent Forest City Enterprises, apparently trying to avoid the fate of a Colony Capital, is selling prime properties to raise cash and is reevaluating the Beekman Tower in Manhattan and may leave it at 50% of its planned height.

link

Posted by steve at 10:00 AM

March 17, 2009

City criticizes developer for writing Coney zoning amendments, but has not criticized source of AY design guidelines

Atlantic Yards Report

According to the Daily News, "Local pols approved dramatic new changes to the city's plan for Coney Island at a developer's urging, infuriating city officials, sources said."

A city official summed up his or her indignation this way: "Having a for-profit developer write these zoning amendments is the equivalent of having a Big Tobacco lobbyist write anti-smoking legislation."

More proof that Atlantic Yards is the exception to the rule, Norman Oder reminds us that one of his Freedom of Information Law requests turned up the revelation that the Atlantic Yards design guidelines were created by none other than the developer's own designer, Frank Gehry.

article

Posted by lumi at 5:56 AM

March 13, 2009

Cities in Crisis

America’s cities are fighting foreclosures, stalled development and budget shortfalls on a scale not seen in a generation. But innovation is taking root in the empty spaces left by economic retreat. A look at how tomorrow’s American cities will be leaner — and greener.

Next American City
By Ariella Cohen

Cities are struggling to find new solutions for budget gaps, neighborhoods hard hit by the foreclosure shock wave, and stalled real estate projects. In this climate is Atlantic Yards "too big to succeed?"

Last fall, that prediction began to come true. In November, architect Frank Gehry laid off the staff working on the arena and skyscrapers. Forest City, the parent company of the site’s corporate developer, has said that while it remains committed to the project, it faces credit problems and has been unable to secure commercial tenants for the project’s signature tower, known as “Ms. Brooklyn.” In a December conference call, Forest City CEO Charles Ratner told investors and analysts that the company would not begin any new projects until the market recovered, a dead halt after four years during which the company averaged $800 million in new project starts. “Today,” he said, “you can’t take a pencil and figure a return. When you can’t make money, you don’t do it.”

Footprint resident Daniel Goldstein sees opportunity in one neighborhood's struggle:

“There is an opportunity to go back and design a project with the community, a project that the community wants and would benefit from.”

Ron Shiffman, a professor at the Pratt Graduate Center for Planning and the Environment and a former commissioner at the New York City Planning Commission, agrees. “There are empty lots where luxury condos were planned,” he says. “Now we see that this idea that we would always have an unending supply of the wealthy is wrong, and we see that we need to diversify the way we are building our cities.”

article

Posted by lumi at 5:26 AM

March 2, 2009

Community-Based Plan of the Month: the UNITY Plan

The Campaign for Community-Based Planning

This monthly feature profiles a plan included in Planning for All New Yorkers: An Atlas of Community-Based Plans in New York City, an interactive, online tool created by the Municipal Art Society and the Community-Based Planning Task Force. This month, we feature the UNITY Plan, a community-based alternative to the proposed Atlantic Yards development.

link

Posted by lumi at 5:10 AM

A look at a rescued and revived Ward Bakery (in New Jersey)

Atlantic Yards Report

The Ward Bakery turned into affordable housing — Norman Oder takes a look at what could have been a real win-win for Brooklyn:

Given the recent demise of the Ward Bakery in Prospect Heights, demolished by developer Forest City Ratner and with a few fragments turned into art, let's look at the renovation of another Ward Bakery (right), which straddles the border of Newark and East Orange, NJ.

Located in a depressed neighborhood, the building, now known as Bakery Village, was renovated into affordable housing that opened in 1999.

When I wrote about the project, in March 2007, I cited an Urban Land Institute report that said, “The building, however, required massive, expensive structural improvements and environmental cleanup.”

Well, "massive" and "expensive" is in the eye of the beholder. A look back at the news coverage suggests that, while it may have seemed costly in the 1990s, it was far less expensive than the sums suggested by the Empire State Development Corporation to renovate the building in Prospect Heights.

article

Posted by lumi at 4:15 AM

February 26, 2009

Jane Jacobs Atlantic Yards Report Card #10-13

Noticing New York

City planners constantly wrestle with the question WWJD (what would Jane do?).

Though the celebrated urban activist and author Jane Jacobs passed away before handing out a detailed report card on Bruce Ratner's Atlantic Yards eminent domain-abusing superblock megaproject, her research and groundbreaking books provide enough information for acolytes to fill in the blanks.

Blogger Michael D. D. White continues his series (links and excerpts below):

Jane Jacobs Atlantic Yards Report Card #10: Building Creates Close-grained Weave of City Fabric? NO

Jane Jacobs calls for cities to be constructed with intricate and close-grained diversity of uses that give each other constant mutual support both economically and socially. Atlantic Yards, and the Ratner Metrotech and the Atlantic Centers do not incorporate such close grained and intricate features.

Jane Jacobs Atlantic Yards Report Card #11: Project Will Be Developed Gradually Working with City Fabric? NO

Jane Jacobs calls for cities to be constructed gradually so as not to lose the existing intricate and close-grained diversity of uses that has built up slowly and organically and does not replace itself easily. Atlantic Yards, which is planned to be under construction continuously until finished will be the opposite of a gradual event, partly because of its concentrated scale and partly because, rather than integrate with existing fabric, it goes out of its way to tear down existing fabric and replace it in one sudden “swoop.”

Jane Jacobs Atlantic Yards Report Card #12: Avoidance of Projects Being Apart from Weave of City Fabric? NO

Jane Jacobs objects to projects being constructed in a self-isolating way, apart from the weave of the city fabric, which is the way that Atlantic Yards is proposed to be built and the way that Ratner’s Metrotech was built.

Jane Jacobs Atlantic Yards Report Card #13: Project Participates in City Fluidity? NO

Jane Jacobs suggests that cities must provide fluidity which means that different sections of the city should work together in multiplying options and choice for the city’s dwellers in general. There is no evidence that Atlantic Yards (or Metrotech) is creating any new options for living or working that people will utilize.

Posted by lumi at 4:44 AM

February 25, 2009

UN-FUNNY VALENTINES ARRIVING LATE: YOUR COMMUNITY INTERESTS AT HEART

Noticing New York

Blogger Michael D. D. White imagines neighborhoods sending each other Valentine's Day cards because... well because when it comes to city planning, there's not a whole lotta love goin' round.

9. The Proposed Atlantic Yards Megadevelopment in Brooklyn: Poster Child For Everything Developmentally Bad. Speaking of destroying what the community values and what is economically of superior value, the Fort Greene and Prospect Heights communities, near the proposed Atlantic Yards, should get a valentine from Red Hook. The developer-driven Atlantic Yards involves tearing down worthwhile existing buildings. Some of those buildings, like the Ward Bakery are historic and surpassingly valuable as candidates for adaptive reuse. Others were very recently produced within the last few years by a vigorous and governmentally unaided development economy that the project seeks to quash and replace. The communities near Atlantic Yards will be getting empathy valentines from, and sending them to, almost all the other communities in New York beset by bad development. Atlantic Yards is the one project that is so supremely bad that it is the poster child for virtually every kind of city and state development incompetence and collusive oversubsidization of big developers.

article

Atlantic Yards Report, Noticing New York's critique of major projects, and the path not taken of site preparation (at Hudson Yards and AY)

The "Mad O" finds some interesting points in Michael "Double D" White's Funny Valentine post:

There White takes on stadium projects, Brooklyn Bridge Park, the Columbia University expansion, the Rudin/St. Vincent’s Real Estate Deal, and a whole lot more. Atlantic Yards, not surprisingly, is deemed "Poster Child For Everything Developmentally Bad."

But probably the most resonant observation regarding AY comes in the segment White devotes to the Hudson Yards project, to be built on railyards that require some very expensive platforms. (The Vanderbilt Yard, less than 40% of the AY site, also would require a platform but not one as extensive.)

White observes:

If the government (as opposed to a private developer) was preparing the site it would not be necessary to postpone the site’s preparation at this time. Site preparation during the current economic downturn might even be cheaper. As it would be a public work, it would arguably be in the running for funding through federal stimulus, an important part of that being that the prepared parcels would later be bid out. But stimulus money cannot be given to a private developer already signed onto the deal because it would totally change the equation based upon which the developer bid to pay the public a low amount for the site. Used that way, the money would eliminate the risk developer assumed and constitute an award of enormous private benefit to the developer without bid.

The same would be true regarding Atlantic Yards, despite Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz's push for federal stimulus money for the railyard.

Posted by lumi at 5:17 AM

February 9, 2009

Report: City wasted resources on projects like Atlantic Yards instead of investing in infrastructure

Atlantic Yards Report

A report released last Friday by the Center for an Urban Future, titled Reviving the City of Aspiration, lays out the daunting challenges faced by the middle-class in New York City and lays out some potential solutions.

I'll write about the report in more detail later on, but here's one resonant excerpt:

As the city economy boomed over the last dozen years, city leaders expended a large chunk of New York’s economic development and planning resources on costly sports stadiums and glitzy developments like Atlantic Yards, Governor’s Island and the new Penn Station—projects that garner headlines and facilitate huge private profits, but do little to shore up the basic building blocks of life in the five boroughs. The opportunity cost came in investments not made to increase the frequency of subway service, create new express bus and ferry routes and renovate critical infrastructure—projects that would help reduce commuting times and improve New Yorkers’ quality of life. Local officials must now make it a priority to undertake these infrastructure projects, while continuing ongoing efforts to improve public schools and reduce crime.

None of the news coverage last week picked up on this one.

The issue isn't completely cut and dried. Surely a new Penn Station is needed, and Atlantic Yards would include some infrastructure improvements. But the economic case for a new arena--capturing revenues from New Jersey--has declined steadily as the city put more money into the project, and it may well be a money-loser.

article

By the way, the cover photo of the report was shot by Atlantic Yards Camera Club member and Brit in Brooklyn blogger Adrian Kinloch.

Posted by lumi at 5:32 AM

January 27, 2009

Learning from Rockefeller Center: building during a downturn, the role of p.r., and the difficulty of effective urbanism

Atlantic Yards Report

...Rockefeller Center occupies 22 acres, the size of the current Atlantic Yards footprint (announced at 21 acres). Rock Center has 19 commercial buildings; Atlantic Yards would have an arena, an office building or two, and the rest of the 16 towers would be housing.

Despite a distinct difference between a complex with no housing and another that would mostly contain housing, there are some interesting comparisons and contrasts, as a reading of Daniel Okrent's terrific Great Fortune: The Epic of Rockefeller Center, published in 2003, suggests.

So some relevant issues, as I'll discuss below, include the shifting costs and program; the drumbeat of public relations; the relationship with holdouts; the role of zoning; the capacity to gain tax breaks; and the opportunity to build during an economic downturn.

Ultimately, however, the message is clear: even if Atlantic Yards gets built as proposed, which is enormously unlikely, Rockefeller Center would be a very difficult standard to meet.

article

Posted by lumi at 3:53 AM

January 12, 2009

Eminent Domain Is Density

Noticing New York

Michael D. D. White makes a point that has so far been overlooked in the conversation about the use of eminent domain for property transfer from one private owner to another in an urban environment... it inevitably leads to greater density and all of the attendant issues.

It does not seem to be an accident that density and the use of eminent domain coincide in the following examples of recent and proposed NYC development:

1. The Bank of America Tower, the second tallest building in New York (6th Avenue and West 42nd Street. Year of completion 2009)

1. The New York Times Tower, which is tied with Chrysler Building for third place as the third tallest building in New York (8th Avenue between West 41st Street and 40th Street. Year of completion 2007)

2. The proposed 22-acre Atlantic Yards megadevelopment which, calculated on a per square mile basis, would be twice as dense as the densest census tract in the country. (Though the 22 contiguous acres of the megadevelopment should certainly be considered as a whole, the 22 acres do not constitute a single census tract since the span of acreage spans partakes in four different districts. See: Ratner Will Bring Us Closer Together, by Matthew Schuerman in the Observer, October 5, 2006. The project area unto itself is substantial: Though the project design involves discredited superblocking, its footprint could readily constitute 10 city blocks if it were better laid out.)

...Eminent domain is being used as the tool to shoehorn in density that would not be achievable under normal circumstances. The fact that these three examples are current era projects separated by only a few years bespeaks something of the new proclivity to use eminent domain to force private owners to transfer their property to other private owners. Often the transfers being forced involve the new, after-transfer owners making similar or identical use of the land as the original owners even though the original owners’ actual buildings might be torn down.

article

Posted by lumi at 5:00 AM

January 2, 2009

Atlantic Yards Report twofer

Another report argues against parking requirements for projects like Atlantic Yards

Thanks to Streetsblog's end-of-the-year roundup for pointing me to the much-overlooked Transportation Alternatives report, Suburbanizing the City: How New York City Parking Requirements Lead to More Driving [29MB PDF].

What Streetsblog calls the "Best Policy Paper That You Probably Didn't See Because They Released it at the End of August" reinforces the observation--as I wrote 12/24/07 in a piece headlined PlaNYC 1950--that residential parking shouldn't be required at large outer-borough projects near transit hubs.
...
The report mentions Atlantic Yards, but I think the numbers projected in the chart (click to enlarge) are misleading.

The report blends the residential and commercial variations presented in the AY environmental review, but the former configuration, as I've written, is far more likely, which would produce 2570 underground spaces for residents component and an additional 1100 underground spaces for the arena.

IS ULURP on the way out when the City Charter is revised?

The Courier-Life chain reported last week, in an article headlined Community input may be on the outs - City looking to re-examine uniform land-usage guidelines that revisions to city's Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP) will be looked at by a City Charter revision panel Mayor Mike Bloomberg is expected to establish next year.

Such a change has been talked about for months, including in a 5/11/08 Daily News column, as I reported.

The Courier-Life article quoted an anonymous "informed source, who attended a discussion of the issue at a meeting held by Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, the goal may be to shorten the lengthy ULURP process." The goal: to move development much faster.
...
Some large projects, like Atlantic Yards, have been exempted from ULURP because the city agreed to let the state take the lead. Even though former Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff has acknowledged that Atlantic Yards should have gone through ULRUP, note that a city housing official has observed that ULURP doesn’t work for large projects.

Posted by lumi at 4:35 AM

December 8, 2008

MAS Prescience on Subject of One Developer: Could Prescience Have Been Greater?

Noticing New York

Atlantic Yards Report today has a pickup from our recent Willets Point series, noting the prescience of the Municipal Art Society in advocating the superiority of the multiple-developer model used at Battery Park City and Queens West over the ineffective one-developer model envisioned for the Willets Point megadevelopment. The one-developer model is the same approach that is now failing at Atlantic Yards megadevelopment.
...
MAS’s indisputable prescience is laudable, but we need to ask one important question. Could MAS have improved upon its prescience? We think the answer is yes.
...
Here is where MAS’s clear sightedness falls short. We have been urging a mutideveloper model for Atlantic Yards as far back as we can remember and we were very glad to see it is an important part of the proposed alternative Unity Plan. In contradistinction to the UNITY plan, MAS and Brooklyn Speaks, of which it is a part, have been described as having a "mend it don't end it" stance regarding Atlantic Yards.

article

Posted by lumi at 5:02 AM

December 5, 2008

Will It Come? What the Bloomberg Administration Wills at Willets Point

Noticing New York blogger Michael D. D. White is a curious mix of lawyer and urban planner with expertise in the public and private sector.

Today White posted a four-part series on Willets Point, which like Atlantic Yards, is a case study of the coercive use of eminent domain to clear way for a Xanadu-like megaproject, oops... we mean "the next great neighborhood." White explores the decision making and environmental review process, the effect of Taxpayer Field (aka Citifield), the benefit to the developer of upzoning, the story behind jobs, and the politics of "affordable housing" (including our foresight on ACORN's conversion).

For those of you trying to get caught up on the politics and planning behind Willets Point, this is a must read that contains information and analysis that you'll never find in the mainstream media.

Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV

Posted by lumi at 4:51 AM

December 3, 2008

Lessons from the Ward Bakery demo

Noticing New York, Landmarks Preservation Commission: Will Times Special Series Have it All Covered?
Michael D. D. White wonders if the NY Times will ever understand the significance of Bruce Ratner's demolition of the Ward Bakery building:

Just as there is no legitimate need to destroy cornices, round-arched windows and serpentine ornamentation first, there was no need to destroy the Ward Bakery Building so soon. It will probably be decades hence if it is ever replaced by Ratner at all. Still, this kind of demolition, driven by Ratner’s inverse values, continues today as he targets for demolition first that which has greatest value to the community. The current case in point is the demolition of three attractive town houses on Dean Street.

Atlantic Yards Report, The Ward Bakery gets an LPC dis (and a timing error) in the Times
Norman Oder notes that the Times finally mentions the Ward Bakery building, but only gets a clue about when it was demolished after the fact:

Yesterday the bakery got a mention in a long round-up article, though an unnamed LPC spokesperson was given the last word, suggesting that losing the bakery was no big deal.
...
The Times's belated attention to the topic is underscored by the newspaper of record's inability to figure out when the Ward Bakery was actually demolished, even though the demolition was completed at the end of October, just as the LPC was considering a proposed Prospect Heights Historic District that comes very close to the Atlantic Yards footprint.

...the article as published in print (and in a database) incorrectly reports that the bakery was demolished last year.

However, the online version of the article corrects the record without acknowledging the error.

Posted by lumi at 5:32 AM

December 2, 2008

Preservation and Development, Engaged in a Delicate Dance

The New York Times
by Robin Pogrebin

The Times continues its "Preserving the City" series, and this time gets quickly to the crux of the issue.

Over a decade of whirlwind development, the Landmarks Preservation Commission has repeatedly played dance partner to a potent mix of preservationists, developers and city politicians. It must strike a balance between protecting architecture and accepting economic realities, between a responsibility to history and a knowledge that the city must evolve.
...

Yet some preservationists and politicians assert that, under a mayoral administration that has emphasized new construction — from behemoth stadiums to architecturally bold condo towers — big developers have too often been allowed to lead on the dance floor. Some accuse the landmarks commission, charged with guarding the city’s architectural heritage, of backing off too readily when important developers’ interests are at stake.

“The real estate industry controls the agenda in the city,” said Tony Avella, a city councilman from Queens. “If they don’t want something to happen, it doesn’t happen. They pull the strings from behind the scenes, whether in rezoning reform or landmarking. It’s just incredible how much influence they have.”

Indeed. As in the following case, for example.

Yet the commission is faulted for refusing to schedule public hearings on some of the most fiercely contested projects, like Ward’s Bakery, an imposing terra-cotta-tiled structure that lay within the 22-acre footprint of the Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn. In 2006 the commission’s staff determined that the building was not eligible for a hearing on landmark designation. Yet it was ruled eligible for a listing in 2003 on the National Register of Historic Places. Forest City Ratner tore down the bakery this year.

“This appears to be a political decision by the landmarks commission,” Daniel Goldstein, a spokesman for the group Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn, was quoted as saying at the time. “It is deeply frustrating that they have let politics enter their deliberation on a building that clearly deserves landmark status.”

A commission spokeswoman said of the bakery, “There are many other industrial structures like it around the city, and it had several branches throughout the city.”

article

NoLandGrab: We challenge the "commission spokesperson" quoted above to show us one example as fine as the Ward Bakery — if such a building still stands, it's a safe bet it doesn't lie in the footprint of a politically connected megadeveloper's megaproject.

Related...

Brownstoner, The Dance of Preservation and Progress

Posted by eric at 1:59 PM

November 30, 2008

Jane Jacobs Atlantic Yards Report Card #9: Park Design Makes Use of “Enclosure” to Define Park Space? NO

Noticing New York produced six new segments of the "Jane Jacobs Atlantic Yards Report Card," five deal with the definition of park space, and the sixth asks "Appropriate Density? NO":

The absolutely incomparable density of Atlantic Yards is one of its most clearly controversial features. Jane Jacobs considered herself to be a proponent of density, describing in her book as dense the similarly dense neighborhoods of Brooklyn Heights and Greenwich Village, but she was not a proponent of a particular level of density which should be mathematically measured. Instead, she was a proponent of density at a level that would perform well, which would vary according to many other specific factors in play. She also called for gradual reductions of density when appropriate. Atlantic Yards is immensely more dense than, at least double, Manhattan and any area of New York City now or that might have been targets for such a density reduction at the time she wrote.

Uses Parks as Focal Points? NO

Has Intricacy of Park Design? NO

Parks Are Designed with Desirable Centers? NO

Parks Are Designed So Sun Shines Within Them? NO

Park Design Makes Use of “Enclosure” to Define Park Space? NO

Posted by amy at 8:30 AM

November 27, 2008

How the (unintended consequences of) the EIS process fostered suburban sprawl

Atlantic Yards Report

Developer Jonathan Rose shares his opinions on what is wrong with environmental impact statements and their effect on suburban sprawl.

"One person chooses to build a 1000-unit urban project in a city and they get held up for five years in an environmental impact statement," he concluded. "And so the unintended consequence of NEPA [National Environmental Protection Act ] actually was one more of the many things that made it easier for suburban sprawl to proceed from 1970 to 2000 instead of urban redevelopment."
...
NEPA is also a poor planning tool, he says, because of its heavy reliance on environmental impact statements, whose accuracy he believes is unproven. "I ask this of Planning magazine readers: Does anybody have a good, broad-based study of a diverse group of environmental impact statements of [completed] projects that 10 years later were back-tested to see if the predictions were accurate?"

One of the reasons he believes they can't be accurate is that "they look at projects from a granular point of view; essentially, they look at a project by itself, and not the whole system."

article

Posted by lumi at 4:30 AM

November 26, 2008

An Opaque and Lengthy Road to Landmark Status

The New York Times
by Robin Pogrebin

An in-depth examination of New York City's dysfunctional Landmarks Preservation Commission of course omits mention of the LPC's failure to act to save the Ward Bakery building, which was only recently reduced to rubble by The Times's development partner, Atlantic Yards mastermind Bruce Ratner.

Ruling on a lawsuit filed in March against the landmarks commission’s top officials by a preservationist coalition, the judge called the agency’s inaction “arbitrary and capricious” and ordered it to start making timely decisions on every designation request. To allow such proposals “to languish is to defeat the very purpose of the L.P.C. and invite the loss of irreplaceable landmarks,” the judge, Marilyn Shafer, wrote.

The city says it will appeal. Still, the ruling was a significant victory for preservationists and politicians across the city who have long accused the commission of lacking the responsiveness and accountability that citizens expect from a watchdog of the city’s architectural history.

A six-month examination of the commission’s operations by The New York Times reveals an overtaxed agency that has taken years to act on some proposed designations, even as soaring development pressures put historic buildings at risk. Its decision-making is often opaque, and its record-keeping on landmark-designation requests is so spotty that staff members are uncertain how many it rejects in a given year.

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NoLandGrab: Here's a shocker — the LPC's chairman, who turned down a 20% budget increase approved by the City Council last year, has no background in architecture, urban planning or historic preservation.

Posted by eric at 12:59 PM

November 24, 2008

NYC's chief urban designer salutes continuity and vitality of streets (and what about AY?)

Atlantic Yards Report

The Director of Urban Design for the Department of City Planning, Alexandros Washburn, only joined the administration in January 2007, so he's presumably had little contact with the Atlantic Yards project, which got its final state approval a month earlier. (The City Planning Commission in September 2006 had endorsed the project, with minor changes.)

Still, it was remarkable how, in a recent discussion of the city's planning practices, he saluted the High Line project, which began with public infrastructure, not a private developer, involved multiple developers, and emphasized streets rather than demapped them. The contrast with Atlantic Yards is stark.

article

Posted by lumi at 4:17 AM

November 21, 2008

Plan to Redevelop Seaport Is Spurned for the Mass, Scale and Height of Its Buildings

The New York Times
by David W. Dunlap and Sewell Chan

What's good for the South Street Seaport is apparently not good for Prospect Heights, at least where the Landmarks Preservation Commission is concerned.

An ambitious and much-debated plan to redevelop the low-rise South Street Seaport with a 42-story apartment and hotel was rebuffed in its current form on Tuesday by the Landmarks Preservation Commission.

Eventually, the plummeting economy might have reshaped the redevelopment proposal by General Growth Properties of Chicago, which itself faces an uncertain future. But the landmarks commission got to it first.

A majority of the commissioners made it clear that they did not find the proposed massing, scale and height of the buildings appropriate to the 19th-century historic district, said a spokeswoman for the commission, Elisabeth de Bourbon.
...

The redevelopment plan — a mix of stores, hotel rooms, apartments and open space — is strongly favored by the Bloomberg administration. SHoP Architects has designed a 495-foot tower, clad in a terra-cotta exoskeleton, rising on new pilings in the East River. A 1980s mall on Pier 17 would be replaced with two-story retail buildings, a four- and six-story hotel, walkways, a plaza, and the refurbished and relocated Tin Building.

article

NoLandGrab: While the LPC is now considering a Prospect Height Historic District that carefully avoids the proposed footprint of Bruce Ratner's Atlantic Yards project, it refused to consider protecting noteworthy buildings in the path of Ratner's wrecking ball, like the old Spalding Factory and the now-demolished Ward Bakery — which was, ironically, perhaps the finest example of a terra-cotta-clad building in New York.

For the record, the Atlantic Yards plan includes several towers of a similar "mass, scale and height" as the building proposed at the Seaport, all of which would loom over low-rise, 19th-century Prospect Heights and Fort Greene.

Posted by eric at 10:41 AM

Port Authority's Ward: AY represents simple--er, complex--density challenge

Atlantic Yards Report

Norman Oder reports on recent comments about Atlantic Yards made by Port Authority chief Christopher Ward.

Then he got to Atlantic Yards. “That is part of the challenge that we face in terms of where we will build," he said. "Think of the challenge that Bruce Ratner’s facing, Atlantic Yards, where you’ve had exactly what you could describe as a transit-oriented development resisted heavily, simply because--simply for the complex reason that the community around there does not match the height, density, and character. So you have the brownstone versus the skyscraper, although Atlantic I think is the MTA’s second-largest transit hub within the city, which lends itself to the very model that Hong Kong represents.”
(Emphasis added)

It's the third-largest transit hub, I believe, but not necessarily the third-busiest. (Aren't Times Square, Grand Central, and Union Square busier?)
...

Ward's awkward syntax suggests that the issue is more complex than simple. Yes, many have resisted the project's scale and density, but supporters of the UNITY plan welcome significant density, just not at the level that Forest City Ratner proposes. Urban planner Ron Shiffman, a supporter of density, has argued that the proposed density "far exceeds the carrying capacity of the area’s physical, social, cultural, and educational infrastructure."

Several other issues generate resistance, including the undemocratic approval process, the level of public subsidy, and the use of eminent domain based on questionable findings of blight.

article

Posted by eric at 7:22 AM

November 18, 2008

Atlantic Yards Report Watch

Though Norman Oder is majoring in Bruce Ratner's Atlantic Yards megaproject, the overachiving Mad Overkiller seems to be minoring in NYC Urban Planning. Today he double-posted on the efforts to rezone the Gowanus Canal area and Coney Island:

Learning from AY: Gowanus Summit insists balanced development desirable and possible

They didn't say so explicitly, but it sure looks like the Gowanus Summit--a coalition of community organizations, affordable housing advocates, labor unions, and advocates for blue-collar jobs setting out principles for rezoning in Gowanus--learned from the Atlantic Yards experience.

They haven't let one developer's demand for density and a particular footprint drive the process. They haven't let advocates for affordable housing shout down those who raise questions about other priorities.

Rather, they're trying to have it all, and while the devil will be in the details, they think the package is workable, not just affordable housing but space for industrial jobs, respect for community context, mixed-use zoning, responsible contracting, and a comprehensive approach to neighborhood infrastructure.

Imagine Coney thinks big (and small): new cable car, digital skins, and lucrative $ignage

A little more than four decades ago, many in the city had given up on the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM). Now it's a thriving, multi-building institution, and its handsome, cavernous BAMcafe, glittering with light and graced with Milton Rosa-Ortiz's floating part-torso sculptures dubbed "Disbelief", was the appropriate setting for last night's standing-room only public unveiling of the Municipal Art Society's (MAS) Imagine Coney project.

It was a particularly opportune time, as well, given that just yesterday morning the New York Post reported that developer (or flipper?) Joe Sitt was ready to give up his plans for hotels (time-shares) and entertainment retail and sell to the city.

Posted by lumi at 5:40 AM

November 16, 2008

Friday Links Roundup

Campaign for Community-Based Planning

As expected, both the Willets Point and Hunters Point South (rendering shown here via EDC) plans got approval from the City Council yesterday. Atlantic Yards Report has an interesting comparison of the Willets Point and Atlantic Yards plans in regards to affordable housing.

In other AY news, this week we learned that Barclay’s is sticking around, despite the fact that developer Bruce Ratner will not break ground on the project this month, as previously planned.

link

Posted by amy at 9:36 AM

November 15, 2008

Catching up with Jane Jacobs and AY

Atlantic Yards Report

In case you didn't check back on my coverage last Saturday of an affordable housing panel that served as the First Annual Jane Jacobs Forum, take a look at the lengthy comments from Benjamin Hemric, a Jacobsian who's read a lot more than The Death and Life of Great American Cities.

Then take a look at Michael D.D. White's Noticing New York, where he's expanding on his 1/26/08 Brooklyn Paper op-ed, How Jacobs would view Yards, with methodical posts detailing the 47 criteria used in his report card.

link

Posted by amy at 10:26 AM

November 10, 2008

Atlantic Yards Report Digest

Today's Atlantic Yards Report focuses on urban planning:

After Oil: dispatches from a conference on the challenges facing cities worldwide

I couldn’t get to Philadelphia this past weekend for the symposium at the University of Pennsylvania titled Re-Imagining Cities: Urban Design After the Age of Oil, but a set of jouranlists and academics blogging at the web site of the magazine Next American City posted some 16,000 words.

I’ve distilled some thought-provoking excerpts below. My overall conclusion is that, however much civic energy is spent on individual controversies (like, um, a certain Brooklyn megaproject), there are huge systemic issues we have to address, and, as noted by some of the bloggers, many of those at those conference--though more motivated than most, obviously-- didn't grasp the urgency of the problem.

In China, many eggs broken for omelet of massive urban tranformation

Last week, I mentioned how an urban planner was impressed by China's massive efforts at urbanization, and that a critic listening was appalled at the casual dismissal of the costs of upheaval.

But how much transformation is there? In an interview in the September issue of Metropolis, headlined The Chinese Century, Thomas J. Campanella, author of The Concrete Dragon: China’s Urban Revolution and What It Means for the World, explained that this is unprecedented:

We’ve never seen anything like this in terms of the sheer amount of stuff being built. But we’ve also never seen so much destroyed in order to build. You know the old maxim “You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs”? Robert Moses was very fond of that saying. Well, China has busted a lot of eggs to make this great big omelet. The amount of urban fabric that’s been razed to make way for all this new construction is unprecedented in the peacetime history of world cities. In fact, the only comparable thing we have—and I don’t want to make too much of this because in China it’s reconstruction—is the wartime bombings of cities like Dresden and Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Posted by lumi at 5:11 AM

November 9, 2008

Critic Huxtable: "Everything in this city is totally developer driven"

Atlantic Yards Report

In Philip Lopate's interview in today's New York Times with Ada Louise Huxtable, "the dean of American architectural criticism" has some harsh words for the developer-driven world of architecture in New York today.
...
Huxtable sets out a central problem: Architecture is a very real and important art; it affects us all so directly. You must judge it in terms of problem-solving in this uneasy, difficult combination of structure and art. My feeling is that criticism is not looking at this — it is treating architecture as eye candy.

Indeed, I'd point out that the late Herbert Muschamp pronounced Atlantic Yards "a Garden of Eden" only with some major blinkers.

article

Posted by amy at 12:19 PM

November 7, 2008

HPD official says development trade-offs should be transparent (and implicitly indicts the AY approval process)

Atlantic Yards Report

In talking about development trade-offs, a top official in the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) Wednesday night provided an (implicit) indictment of the process behind Atlantic Yards.

HPD Deputy Commissioner for Development Holly Leicht spoke matter-of-factly during a panel discussion, titled Housing New Yorkers in the 21st Century, sponsored by the Municipal Art Society and underwritten by the Rockefeller Foundation as the First Annual Jane Jacobs Forum. (I’ll write tomorrow about the broader issues raised at the forum.)

She even declared that the city’s Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP)--which Atlantic Yards critics stress was bypassed in the state approval process--doesn’t work for large projects.
...
ven former Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff acknowledges Atlantic Yards should’ve gone through ULURP, which gives community boards an advisory vote and requires the approval of the City Planning Commission and the City Council. Atlantic Yards critics point out that ULURP at least allows local elected officials a voice, adding legitimacy.

HPD's Leicht, however, warned Wednesday night, “ULURP is awfully late to start a conversation about a large project. It’s one thing if you’re talking about a small project, and you’re going to tweak a floor... or affordability, slightly. If you’re talking about a large-scale project, ULURP is simply too late to really have that dialogue.”

article

Posted by lumi at 4:47 AM

November 3, 2008

Overdevelopment, zoning, and the public realm (and AY)

Atlantic Yards Report

Norman Oder mulls over a couple recent panel discussions on development, overdevelopment, and the future sustainability of cities, and as usual, the conversation comes back to Atlantic Yards.

Interestingly enough, [Hunter College Urban Planning Professor Tom] Angotti found himself agreeing with [Real Estate Board of NY President Steven] Spinola that a lot of neighborhoods in the outer boroughs should have been upzoned, rather than downzoned, “because there was great potential for development in the outer boroughs that was not taken advantage of.”

Then he returned to the whipping boy: “Instead, we have the lunacy of concentrating development in Atlantic Yards. The third largest transit hub, yes, and they call it transit-oriented development, but there’s no improvement to transit. They're putting in a huge parking garage. So, this is not really planning.”

article

Posted by eric at 11:01 AM

Ward Bakery Rubble

All that is left of the stunning white-terracotta-tiled Ward Bakery building is this windrow of rubble waiting to be loaded and carted away.

This demolition was brought to you by Bruce.

Photo, Atlantic Yards Webcam, November 2, 2008, 12:45pm.

Posted by lumi at 5:39 AM

October 31, 2008

Cutting the Nets?

The Architect's Newspaper Blog

Politics takes a back seat when the Borough President's planning director starts ad libbing:

As with all these things, there was a Power Point presentation, and as with all Power Point presentations, the whole thing took some time to boot up. In the interim, [director of planning and development for Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz Jon] Benguiat decided to tell the story of how he became Marty’s planning direct, during which he let some shocking news about the Atlantic Yards, or at least the fate of the Brooklyn Nets, slide.

After explaining how most of the Borough President's planning initiatives are underway or completed, Benguiat added:

I’m not sure if we’re going to get the Nets or not. We should have groundbreaking in December, but we’ll see.”

The Borough President's office issued this statement for clarification:

The current state of the American economy underscores the importance of moving ahead with projects like Atlantic Yards, and I am confident the project will happen. It will create union jobs and much-needed affordable housing, as well as bring professional sports back to Downtown Brooklyn—becoming just the kind of investment magnet that Brooklyn and New York City need right now

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NoLandGrab: The moral of the story is planning geeks should be seen, not heard, and it is our patriotic duty to support Atlantic Yards at all costs.

Posted by lumi at 5:41 AM

Who's made the AY timetable gaffe? (Jon) Benguiat or Bertha (Lewis)?

Atlantic Yards Report

Journalist Michael Kinsley famously posited that "A gaffe is when a politician tells the truth."

By that measure, on Monday, when Jon Benguiat, Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz's Director of Planning and Development, "blurted out" (in the words of the Brooklyn Paper), “I don’t know if we’re going to get the Nets,” it was a gaffe.

Yes, it might have been embarrassing to Markowitz, an unabashed Atlantic Yards booster. However, given all the chatter about a potential sale of the team and the delays in starting arena construction, Benguiat's statement was simple candor.
...
Less credible, and thus more of a real gaffe, was ACORN head Bertha Lewis's unwillingness to acknowledge any doubts about the project and its timetable.

article

Posted by lumi at 5:40 AM

October 29, 2008

Puzzle Pieces: Proposed Prospect Heights Historic District, LPC Public Hearing

Noticing New York

Michael D. D. White reports from the Landmarks Preservation Commission hearing on Proposed Prospect Heights Historic District:

The Atlantic Yards megadevelopment abutting the proposed district was mentioned countless times. It was cited repeatedly as the threat which makes creation of a historic district so important. People such as Atlantic Yards opponent City Council Member Tish James were careful to refer to the “proposed” Atlantic Yards. She lingered on the word “proposed” in a deliciously savoring way.

Marty Markowitz, he of the boundless enthusiasm (and questionable “charities”), gave tribute to the threat and negativity of Atlantic Yards in a roundabout way when his boundless enthusiasm overflowed to praise for Prospect Heights as a neighborhood full of “activists.”

Click here to read the rest of the article, including White's own testimony.

Additional coverage: The Brooklyn Paper, Heights anxiety! Locals want Prospect Heights named a historic district.

Posted by lumi at 7:04 PM

At LPC hearing on Prospect Heights Historic District, mention of the Ward Bakery and AY briefly unsettles the mood

Atlantic Yards Report

Yesterday’s public hearing held by the Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) on the designation of part of Prospect Heights as a historic district, involving some 870 properties, was hardly contentious. Various interested parties, residents, neighborhood groups, and preservationists saluted the LPC for its decision to move forward in designating part of Prospect Heights as a historic district.

One question was what exactly people might say about the planned Atlantic Yards project, the blocks of which were not considered as part of the district.

When neighborhood activist Patti Hagan described paying last respects to the Ward Bakery building, the mood became a bit somber.

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Posted by lumi at 5:22 AM

October 27, 2008

As Prospect Heights Historic District gets hearing Tuesday, some politic omissions

Atlantic Yards Report

From 1:30 to 3:30 pm Tuesday, the Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) will hold a public hearing on the proposed (PDF) Prospect Heights Historic District, parts of which would border the Atlantic Yards footprint. (Previous coverage.)

The hearing is important both because of its the goal, long sought by Prospect Heights residents, and because it reminds us how landmarking is a political process, especially when historic preservation intersects with the Atlantic Yards project.

article

Posted by lumi at 5:34 AM

October 23, 2008

Is Overdevelopment Still a Threat?

City Room [NY Times Blog]

Tom Angotti, who directs the Center for Community Planning and Development at Hunter College, has written a new book, “New York for Sale: Community Planning Confronts Global Real Estate,” to be released by the M.I.T. Press next month. As its title suggests, the book argues that powerful real estate interests have often effectively hijacked land-use decisions in the city, but the book also gives examples of local groups that have organized against environmental hazards, mega-projects, urban renewal and gentrification.

article

Of course, in just the last few months the fear of “overdevelopment” has been eclipsed, in some quarters perhaps, by fear that the real estate market will decline as a result of the financial and credit crises that have buffeted economies worldwide. Those concerns were the subject of a panel discussion tied to the book’s publication, on Monday evening at the Museum of the City of New York.
...

Professor Angotti was particularly critical of the Atlantic Yards development in Brooklyn. He said that the developer of the project, Forest City Ratner, “got the state to threaten condemnation of 22 acres in Brooklyn,” and that now “there’s no way they’re going to finance it and we’re looking at probably 20 years or more of parking lots.”

Posted by eric at 2:04 PM

October 20, 2008

Building the Right Landmarks Case; Wrong Building

Noticing New York

The NY Times's handwringing over the slow pace over at the NY City's Landmarks Preservation Commission isn't going to change things as long as the current mayor is holding the reins. Blogger Michael D. D. White examines the case of a Manhattan building that was sorta saved and the Brooklyn gem that got outflanked by demolition man Bruce Ratner.

article

Posted by lumi at 4:33 AM

October 15, 2008

Laurie Olin is(n't) working on Atlantic Yards

It depends on whom you ask

Yesterday, Norman Oder noted on his blog, Atlantic Yards Report, that Laurie Olin's web site indicated that the celebrated landscape designer is no longer working on Atlantic Yards.

The Real Estate Observer, Forest City: Landscape Architect Olin Still Involved at Atlantic Yards
Reporter Eliot Brown from The NY Observer called developer Forest City Ratner for comment, which provided a statement to the contrary:

...via spokesman Joe DePlasco:

"Laurie Olin has been involved from the beginning of the design process and he will be involved in the end. The eight acres of open space will be built as part of Phase 2 of the project, which has always been the case. Mr. Olin has completed preliminary work on that and will be involved going forward."

Atlantic Yards Report, FCR's fudge: Laurie Olin is (maybe) on sabbatical
Oder finally received a statement from Olin's firm and posted this on the blog:

Sure, it's possible that his role has been suspended rather than ended. If so, however, why did his office provide me with a statement that used the past tense regarding the relationship with the developer?

The statement: "OLIN completed a master plan for Atlantic Yards that we believe was a serious response to the many issues raised regarding this portion of the City of New York, and the great need for large amounts of affordable housing with adjacent well-designed, environmentally-responsive public landscape. We enjoyed a supportive and appreciative relationship with the owner/developer, the architects and the City of New York public officials. The current economic turmoil points to the truth that plans of such scope almost inevitably are realized over several economic cycles and must both be able to endure as well as be flexible to change."

NoLandGrab: No matter what the Forest City Ratner spinmeister would have us believe, it sounds like Laurie Olin considers his work on Atlantic Yards to be done [read, Ratner is no longer a paying client] and that the landscape architect does not expect that the project will be completed any time soon, nor will it actually adhere to the original project proposal.

Posted by lumi at 6:09 AM

October 14, 2008

Landscape architect Olin leaves AY project (apparently), predicts "other architects and other hands"

Atlantic Yards Report

Bruce Ratner's Atlantic Yards web site touts Lauri Olin's design for the Atlantic Yards open space, but Olin's web site indicates that the landscape designer is no longer working on the project.

Olin's office hasn't returned Norman Oder's requests for comment [Update: Oder received a statement from Olin's office late this morning], but that doesn't stop the "Mad O" from piecing together the clues:

It's not clear why he's gone. Maybe Olin's main work in master planning is done. Maybe the developer's trying to save a few bucks. Maybe it's a penalty for having gone off-message regarding the project's timetable and the role of other architects. Maybe it's that the eight acres of promised open space are so far in the future--in an unscheduled Phase 2--that there's no need to keep him on board for now.

Whatever the reason, it certainly diminishes one of the selling points for the project: Olin's role. And it means that Forest City Ratner should stop promoting Olin's role, as on its web site.

article

Posted by lumi at 5:47 AM

October 3, 2008

"The Glass Stampede," Downtown Brooklyn, & Atlantic Yards

Atlantic Yards Report

In a thoughtful, more-optimistic-than-not essay published last month, headlined The Glass Stampede, New York Magazine architecture critic Justin Davidson addressed the building boom, with side-by-side photos showing before-and-after views. Though the article contains few Brooklyn examples and no mention of Atlantic Yards, the article still has resonance in Brooklyn.

article

Posted by lumi at 6:45 AM

September 25, 2008

The Jane Jacobs Medals, Robert Moses, and the view beyond “Death and Life”

Atlantic Yards Report

We nearly spit our coffee this morning while reading this excerpt from Jane Jacobs's "The Economy of Cities," in Norman Oder's reflections on this year's winners of the Jane Jacobs Medal.

There’s little in The Economy of Cities about the street ballet Jacobs described in Death and Life, but there’s one tart observation that has resonance in the Atlantic Yards debate:

Nor is the process by which one thing leads to another confined to profit-making enterprises... Nor is it, as we notice from the papers, confined to useful, legal, or innocuous work... some city-planning departments take to scouting out and processing profitable deals for favored real-estate operators and also to organizing and running fraudulent “citizens’ organizations” to help overcome public opposition.

article

NoLandGrab: "Favored real-estate operators," "fraudulent 'citizens' organizations'?" And we thought that Atlantic Yards was special.

Posted by lumi at 5:40 AM

September 24, 2008

Should a Teardrop be Shed- Considering the Burden?

Noticing New York

This is about Battery Park City’s Teardrop Park, which I like, and the issue of superblocking. I don’t like superblocks. I am wondering whether to cry a few tears about the inconsistent philosophy of Amanda Burden when it comes to supporting the Atlantic Yards, the ill-conceived megadevelopment supported by the man who appointed her, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg.

article

Atlantic Yards Report, Reducing Noticing New York’s Amanda Burden post to a Tweet

Michael D.D. White's analysis of City Planning Commission Chairperson Amanda Burden is worth a read, but if you don't have the time, consider that the microblogging service Twitter limits posts (aka Tweets) to 140 characters.

A. Burden. Worked on BPC. Worried about BPC teardrop park, based on superblock. Park < AY superblock. Burden likes AY. Sincere? Prob. not.

Posted by lumi at 5:27 AM

September 21, 2008

'Meet the Press' transcript for Sept. 21, 2008

Meet the Press Tom Brokaw asks Mayor Bloomberg how the financial crisis will affect city planning:

MAYOR BLOOMBERG: No, we're not going to make the mistake--the mistake that was made in the '70s is we stopped policing the streets, we stopped cleaning the streets, we stopped cleaning the graffiti off buildings, we stopped supporting our cultural institutions and building parks and schools and all those kinds of things. We are going to go ahead and continue those things. We may have to stretch out some construction projects, we may have to ask people to do more with less. We may not be able to have the frills at the edge, but we are not going to walk away from our city. That's the prescription for disaster. When you do that, your tax base leaves, and the rest of this country, as well as New York, are going to have exactly the same decisions to make. The taxpayers are going to have to decide do they want to have a future or not? If they don't want to have a future, then they're not going to have to pay as much now, but if they want to leave a better world for their kids, they're going to have to pay the bills up front.

link
NoLandGrab: We're not sure what stretching out a construction project could mean, other than allowing endless timelines. Although a project with no timeline and no public money would be great, shouldn't the taxpayers who "have to decide do they want to have a future or not" have some say in these matters?

Posted by amy at 1:20 PM

September 19, 2008

Strategic Economic Development Would Mean Putting Atlantic Yards Out of Its Misery

Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn responds to comments made by Marisa Lago, the new head of the Empire State Development Corporation:

It is refreshing to hear that the ESDC has someone at the helm who understands that "strategic economic development" is a necessity in this very shaky "down economy."

The Atlantic Yards plan, proposed in 2003 in an entirely different economy, is in no way strategic in the economy we are in now, and will be in for years to come. Whatever Atlantic Yards is today (and nobody seems to know what it is, not even NYC Comptroller Bill Thompson) it is not strategic.

Strategic economic development would include the principle at the foundation of the UNITY Plan—the community's plan for the Vanderbilt Rail Yards—which is to divide the 8-acre rail yards into multiple, smaller and more manageable parcels to attract multiple developers through a legitimate RFP to pay more to the MTA than Ratner is willing to. The multiplicity of developers would finally detach the sound and strategic development of the yards from the vice grip Ratner has had on it for nearly 5 years thus radically reducing the overall risk. No longer would the development of the yards be dependent on Ratner's fiscal health and his desperate need to move the Nets team for which he overpaid.

Strategic economic development would not include fantasies about the health of the housing market, pr jargon and empty promises about "affordable housing" and jobs; strategic economic development would most certainly not include a taxpayer-subsidized, billion dollar basketball arena plagued by financing troubles, escalating construction costs, eminent domain opposition and litigation.

link

Posted by lumi at 4:39 AM

September 11, 2008

A TALE OF TWO CITIES, and ONE BELEAGUERED BOROUGH

NoLandGrab Community Commentary

During his travels last month through New England, communtiy activist Alan Rosner's summer reading provided a stark contrast to developments back home in Brooklyn.

On a brief road trip through Western New England and the Hudson Valley, I picked up two free local magazines. One, Chronograph, had an article on the rebirth of Downtown Schenectady, NY. Since I attended Union College there, I read the piece. The next magazine, The Country, had virtually the same story, but about Pittsfield, MA.

The parallels jumped out. Schenectady and Pittsfield had both spiraled downwards, losing their tax bases and downtowns when their largest employers closed up shop — and for both of them, that corporation was General Electric. I’d seen the results in Schenectady on a visit years ago.

Both downtown rebirths came with new mayors who fought for their revitalization, beginning with efforts that brought local theater arts centers back to life. This led to restaurants and retail, combined with a concerted effort to support public and private investment in their downtowns and businesses.

What jumped off the pages was seeing that Schenectady consciously decided not to base their revival on the sports-venue model, while Pittsfield turned to the arts and retail after enduring a bitter, divisive fight over a baseball stadium. That story is documented in former Major League pitcher Jim Bouton’s book, Foul Ball: My Life and Hard Times Trying to Save an Old Ballpark.

Here in Brooklyn, Marty Markowitz, the Brooklyn Borough President, bit the apple offered by Atlantic Yards developer Bruce Ratner and, forever after, he has pitched a false nostalgia. He turned away from using his booster energy to support the BAM cultural and arts area expansion. Instead he went for the sports stadium, and was enabled by Bloomberg and backed by Pataki’s state power brokers. Now Brooklyn faces ongoing Developer’s Blight, acres of blight-enhancing parking lots, and another 10 to 20 years of construction.

Instead of selling off the commons to inside bidders, Schenectady & Pittsfield chose to enhance theirs, to make it an attractor for their surrounding populations. Brooklyn’s gotten baited and switched.

Another example, albeit one without the false promise of a corporate sports rescue, is the Vermont city of Burlington on the shores of Lake Champlain. We visited, dined & walked around downtown and found a revitalized city, based on making the downtown and lakefront walkable and enjoyable. The arts, entertainment, retail, restaurant & small business model works. It was Brooklyn’s before Marty & Bruce embraced.

Posted by lumi at 4:35 AM

September 2, 2008

The Three C's: Condos, Classrooms and Crowding

Gotham Gazette
By James Trimarco

Bruce Ratner gets a dishonorable mention in an article about the City's failure to include more classroom space while development continues apace:

The current flurry of new luxury housing construction in New York City has created a number of quandaries for the city's public schools.

The influx of students threatens to undermine the quality of nearby schools --often the very thing that helped attract young families in the first place. To further complicate matters, the high land values that good public schools help create make it increasingly difficult for the city to obtain land on which to build new ones. Developers see the expensive real estate as appropriate for only the most profitable projects, and that does not leave much room for schools.
...
Things can get more contentious when a development is going up on private land. Then, communities must use the various approval procedures to try to get schools included. Requests for rezoning, the city's land use process -- known as ULURP -- and City Council votes all provide some opportunities for neighborhoods to make demands. However, the amount of leverage the community can muster depends more on whether a rezoning is needed than on the urgency of their needs.

Two current cases in this category involve Sheldon Solow and Bruce Ratner, developers not known for harmonious relations with local groups.
...
Of course, the arm-twisting can go both ways: Bruce Ratner, who agreed to build a school at his Beekman Plaza development in Lower Manhattan, recently threatened to cease construction on it unless he received a 421-a tax abatement valid for 20 years.

article

NoLandGrab: The issue of classroom space was brought up by community groups two years ago at the public hearings for the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS).

In a nutshell, Forest City Ratner's DEIS claimed that there is plenty of classroom space in the school district that includes the Atlantic Yards footprint. Neighborhood organizations pointed out that the numbers used in the study were already outdated and that the study failed to take into account students crossing district lines to attend schools that are already, technically, overcrowded.

Posted by lumi at 4:52 AM

August 25, 2008

Reshaping the City: Who's Being Heard -- and Why?

Gotham Gazette
By Courtney Gross

An examination of the dramatic rezonings in Mayor Bloomberg's New York notes how Bruce Ratner's controversial Atlantic Yards plan is special:

Rezonings can come in several ways. There are developer-initiated applications, like Atlantic Yards, but the vast majority begin at the city's planning department.

article

Posted by lumi at 4:23 AM

August 24, 2008

Will new head of ESDC take a walk around the AY footprint?

Atlantic Yards Report

In March, Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC) Downstate Chairman Pat Foye, an appointee (and friend) of departed Governor Eliot Spitzer, resigned, leaving his deputy, Avi Schick, as the ESDC's acting president.

Schick, who will leave his post in September, has publicly defended Atlantic Yards. Foye was supposed to visit the AY site, but never did.

Now Governor David Paterson has nominated Marisa Lago, a global head of compliance at Citi Markets and Banking, to be the ESDC's president and chief executive, supervising executives for both downstate and upstate. Reported the New York Times:
Mr. Paterson has made revamping the agency a top priority. As he has sounded the alarm in recent weeks about the increasingly bleak outlook for New York’s economy, a better functioning Empire State Development Corporation has become a key piece of the governor’s economic revitalization plan.

link

Posted by amy at 11:06 AM

August 14, 2008

A Confrontation Over the Future of Willets Point

The New York Times
by Fernanda Santos

Supporters and foes of the Bloomberg administration’s plan to turn gritty Willets Point in Queens into a $3 billion development of stores, offices and apartments faced off Wednesday in a confrontation that grew emotional and raucous at times.
...

The hearing combined public testimony on Willets Point and two other rezoning projects, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and at south Hunters Point, along the East River in Queens. Opponents of the Lower East Side and Willets Point plans protested outside the auditorium where the hearing was held through most of the day. Councilman Hiram Monserrate led two dozen opponents of the Willets Point proposal two blocks east, to a spot in Washington Square Park, to confront city officials holding a news conference there.

The opponents interrupted the news conference, which was organized by the city’s Economic Development Corporation, and drowned out advocates for the proposal, chanting “Justice for Willets Point!” and “Save Willets Point!”

The police told the city economic development officials that they could not remove the protesters, saying they had a right to be there, even if they were being disruptive.

article

NoLandGrab: The EDC couldn't force the removal of the protesters from Washington Square Park, but it remains to be seen whether or not they'll be able to remove them from Willets Point. One thing we're pretty sure about, though, is that this eminent domain-fueled war will see many, many battles before it ends.

Posted by eric at 9:08 AM

August 12, 2008

Police Want Tight Security Zone at Ground Zero

The New York Times
by Charles V. Bagli

Surprise! The NYPD is ordering even tighter security measures at the World Trade Center (they had already ordered 75-foot setbacks for the Freedom Tower and numerous other safeguards in February), but we're still waiting for that independent security study for Atlantic Yards requested by eight Brooklyn elected officials nearly a year ago.

Planners seeking to rebuild the World Trade Center have always envisioned that the 16-acre site would have a vibrant streetscape with distinctive buildings, shops and cultural institutions lining a newly restored street grid. From the destruction of Sept. 11, 2001, a new neighborhood teeming with life would be born.

But now, the Police Department’s latest security proposal entails heavy restrictions.

According to a 36-page presentation given by top-ranking police officials in recent months, the entire area would be placed within a security zone, in which only specially screened taxis, limousines and cars would be allowed through “sally ports,” or barriers staffed by police officers, constructed at each of five entry points.
...

Landlords, company executives, public officials and some urban planners acknowledged the need for security at ground zero, but worried that the procedures would undermine the effort to reweave the trade center site into the city’s fabric. They fear that the proposed traffic restrictions could create tie-ups in a congested neighborhood and discourage corporate tenants from renting space, or shoppers from visiting the stores in the area.

article

NoLandGrab: The implementation of similar security measures at the confluence of Atlantic and Flatbush Avenues would render the intersection impassable. But the ESDC and Forest City Ratner insist we needn't worry about it.

Ah. We feel better already.

Posted by eric at 5:36 PM

City Council members blast Willets Pt. plan

Crain's NY Business
by Daniel Massey

A day before a City Planning Commission hearing on the Bloomberg administration’s plan to remake Willets Point, a majority of City Council members sent a sharply-worded letter to the planning commissioner opposing the project.

In the letter to Commissioner Amanda Burden, 30 council members say they are in “absolute opposition” to the current proposal to redevelop Willets Point, citing concerns over eminent domain, affordable housing, displaced workers and traffic.

“Unfortunately, this is a product of a flawed process that has continuously ignored the requests of the community in pursuit of a top-down planning process that sets a dangerous precedent for large-scale development projects citywide,” the council members wrote in the letter.
...

The signature drive was organized by the affordable housing group NY Acorn and is the second time in the last four months it has organized a majority of council members to write to a city official opposing Willets Point. Twenty-nine council members sent a similar letter to Deputy Mayor Robert Lieber in April.

This time, the council members say they will not support the plan unless eminent domain is taken off the table in negotiations with landowners; half of the 5,500 housing units are guaranteed to be affordable; a comprehensive relocation and compensation plan for small business owners and employees is put in place; and a community benefits agreement that includes traffic mitigation is implemented.

The city has said it will use eminent domain only as a last resort; its plan calls for 20% of the housing units to be affordable; it is working with LaGuardia Community College on a program to train the approximately 1,700 workers who will be displaced by the development; and it will require the developer to put $5 million into a traffic mitigation fund.

article

NoLandGrab: We applaud the efforts and actions of the Councilmembers who've taken a stand against eminent domain abuse, but we're compelled to point out a couple of things.

First, the "dangerous precedent for large-scale development projects citywide" has already been set by Atlantic Yards. In fact, had the Atlantic Yards plot never been hatched by Forest City Ratner, it's likely that the Willets Point plan, however heinous it may be, wouldn't have encountered such significant — and well organized — resistance.

Second, we have to admit we're curious about ACORN's role. Sure, their interest in the affordable housing makes sense, but based on their track record with Atlantic Yards, we have a hard time believing that they give a hoot about the use of eminent domain. Left to ACORN, that would surely be a bargaining chip happily traded for a richer mix of affordable units.

Lastly, we won't belabor the silliness of the city claiming that eminent domain will only be used "as a last resort." It was already put into use long ago as a negotiating bludgeon. We'll focus instead on the $5 million traffic mitigation fund. Shouldn't the mitigation of traffic be a pre-development requirement? The time to fix traffic problems is before they materialize.

Posted by eric at 4:35 PM

Why Not Add Atlantic Yards to the Agenda?

Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn

DDDB reacts to the City Planning Commission's nonsensical decision to cram three controversial rezoning hearings into one day and one auditorium with a suggestion:

While they're at it, since Atlantic Yards never went through ULURP—thus avoiding a public planning hearing in front of the planning commission or any planning body—perhaps they can add Ratner's project to the agenda.

link

NoLandGrab: Do you think the repeated scheduling of public hearings on controversial eminent domain-reliant development projects and rezonings in August (Atlantic Yards DEIS public hearing, August 23, 2006; Columbia University expansion ULURP hearing, August 15, 2007; Willets Point redevelopment, tomorrow) is just a coincidence? Or might they be timed to many people's summer vacations? Either way, the triple-billing is a creative new twist.

Posted by eric at 11:48 AM

August 11, 2008

Walk with NYC planner Amanda Burden as she rezones the lower East Side

NY Daily News
By Jason Sheftell

This tour of the Lower Eastside with City Planning Commish Amanda Burden was brought to you by the letters C, R, I, N, G, & E.

"This wasn't here two weeks ago," Burden says, sneering at a vacant lot. "There was a building. Once you lose a building, you lose character and history. The Bloomberg administration is about growth and preservation. This is why we have to act fast to change the zoning, so developers aren't allowed to come in here and build whatever they chose. I don't mind a building that is in context with the others, meaning the same height with architectural guidelines, but small streets shouldn't have large development."

article

NoLandGrab: Based upon Burden's running commentary about her vision for the Lower Eastside, you have to believe that she understands that NYC Planning's support to Bruce Ratner's out-of-context, historic-building-demolishing, neighborhood-clearing, state-sponsored, arena and high-rise Atlantic Yards megaproject is akin to delivering John the Baptist's head on a platter.

Posted by lumi at 4:32 AM

August 2, 2008

Report suggests solutions for small businesses after the Downtown Brooklyn rezoning

Atlantic Yards Report

On July 24, I wrote about the unanticipated impacts of the Downtown Brooklyn rezoning and wondered what policy changes might emerge. A new report, Out of Business: The Crisis of Small Businesses in Rezoned Downtown Brooklyn, from FUREE (Families United for Racial and Economic Equality) and the Community Development Project of the Urban Justice Center cites extensive displacement of small business (mainly run by immigrants) and suggests four policy solutions, including grants and reserved commercial space.

article

Posted by amy at 10:36 AM

July 26, 2008

Burden: The Bloomberg Administration "committed to preserving neighborhood character"

DDDB.net

The City Council has fixed arcane zoning laws, now protecting Carroll Gardens from overdevelopment. Bravo.

But in the Times's coverage of the Council vote, City Planning Commissioner Amanda Burden offered this whopper:

New Limits on Builders in an Area of Brooklyn

...Ms. Burden said the change in the Carroll Gardens zoning rules demonstrated the Bloomberg administration’s commitment to preserving neighborhood character.

That's excepting Prospect Heights, West Harlem, Willets Point, Queens West, Coney Island, the Bronx's Macombs Dam Park area, Jamaica, the Lower East Side, Downtown Brooklyn, etc. etc...

link

Posted by amy at 12:49 PM

July 23, 2008

P’Heights to get protection?

The Brooklyn Paper
by Sarah Portlock

The city is moving toward protecting a wide swatch of Prospect Heights — but the proposed “historic district” would not bar a project that some neighbors think is the biggest destroyer of the area’s history: Atlantic Yards.

Last week, the Landmarks Preservation Commission began the process of designating approximately 12 blocks in Prospect Heights as a historic district that encompasses 870 buildings from the mid 19th- to early 20th-centuries.

The district would stretch from Flatbush to Washington avenues and from Eastern Parkway to Pacific Street — up to, but not including, Bruce Ratner’s $4-billion mega-development.

That inclusion could have saved the neighborhood — if “it had been done in time,” said Candice Carpenter, a lawyer who has worked with the anti-Atlantic Yards group Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn.

Deciding the boundaries of the proposed historic district is a matter of determining which buildings have a distinct “sense of place” and a coherent streetscape, said Landmarks Preservation Commission spokeswoman Lisi de Bourbon.

“The purpose of our agency is how to protect the historic fabric of the city’s neighborhoods, not to stop development,” de Bourbon said, noting that Landmarks primarily looks at architecture, dates of construction, and the streetscape. “It certainly may have been a part of the motivation of people who wanted us to designate the district, but that’s something that we really can’t consider.”

article

NoLandGrab: OK, let us get this straight. LPC's role is to protect the worthy "historic fabric" of neighborhoods, unless that pesky fabric lies in the path of mega-developments planned by politically connected developers? The politicization of the LPC is obvious, and cries for an agency with more teeth and independence that could actually save architecturally and historically significant buildings like the Ward Bakery and Spaulding Factory from the likes of Bruce Ratner — and Mayor Bloomberg.

Posted by eric at 11:27 AM

What's Made Brooklyn Famous (Has Made a Loser Out of Me)

Reason Online
by Damon W. Root

The libertarian blog picks up on The Times's recent coverage of Brooklyn Brewery's real estate woes.

Sunday's New York Times brought word of the latest twist in the saga of New York's Brooklyn Brewery and its president Steve Hindy, purveyors of various fine beers, including the great Black Chocolate Stout. Back in 1996, Hindy and partner Tom Potter set up shop at a former matzo ball factory in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, then a mostly rundown industrial neighborhood but today a thriving hipster paradise, replete with bars, gourmet shops, and luxury condos. The only problem is that now the brewery can't afford to stay. So Hindy looked to city officials for help.
...

There's a cautionary tale or two here about getting in bed with city officials and their shady real estate allies, but the worst of it has been Hindy’s support for controversial developer and New Jersey Nets owner Bruce Ratner, the driving force behind the atrocious Atlantic Yards project, a massive boondoggle that, if realized, will produce a taxpayer-subsidized basketball arena for Ratner’s Nets along with various office buildings and luxury complexes that will displace more than 40 business owners and tenants via eminent domain and other measures.

Still, what do you expect from the wolf's lair of New York's corrupt and massively regulated real estate market? As Hindy admitted to the New York Observer last year, "Things like the development at Coney Island and things like Atlantic Yards—that’s what we have to work with, and we have to make the best of it.”

article

Posted by eric at 9:21 AM

July 22, 2008

At MCNY panel, defending dissent and promoting the better way to develop (not like Atlantic Yards)

Atlantic Yards Report

Norman Oder reports from a panel discussion last Thursday at the Museum of the City of New York that went a little off-topic.

But the Civic Talk, sponsored by Henry Stern’s New York Civic and titled “What If? Battles Over Development,” was notable for some rhetorical disagreement about the nature of civic opposition and some strong opinions on the right way to develop in New York. And Atlantic Yards came up not as a good example but as something to be avoided.
...

[Urban Planner Alexander] Garvin then criticized government projects and, apparently, public-private partnerships like those pursued by the ESDC: “And we would stop having this ridiculous argument that we constantly have about the government going to get involved in developing property on its own. I think the government should be not developing real estate. The government should be doing its investing in its infrastructure and its own property. And there is a great deal of it. We do not maintain our streets well. We have collapsed bridges everywhere.”

“And finally this city has begun to do the kind of investment that it did in the 19th century, and that I believe would help deal with a lot of what Al Butzel is talking about," he said. "If we stopped talking about developing Atlantic Yards or developing these things and left private property to the private owners to develop and instead spent our money on the public realm, I think we’d get a lot of work [done].”

That drew significant applause.

article

Posted by eric at 9:35 AM

July 15, 2008

HOLD 'EM ACCOUNTABLE: DEVELOPER FILING PROPOSED

A City Council bill would require those who use public subsidies to spell out a project's public impact.

CityLimits.org
by Lauren Victory

With controversy erupting around practically every major new development in New York City – the new Yankee Stadium, Ground Zero and Brooklyn's Atlantic Yards, to name a few – concerned citizens have been looking toward the public review and approval process for a stronger voice. The help they seek may have arrived recently, in the form of the introduction of City Council Bill 801, titled Community Impact Reports.

Aimed at those seeking economic development benefits such as direct project subsidies, low-interest financing, tax benefits, tax-exempt financing, and tax-exempt bonds and grants, the bill would require the developer of each project to submit a comprehensive report to City Council outlining the intended social and economic effects of the project on the surrounding communities. Organizations in contract with the city for the purpose of providing social services, or those that create affordable housing units exclusively, are exempt from the requirement.

“We need to have a way to monitor the benefits that are given to developers,” said Councilman Thomas White Jr., a Queens Democrat who chairs Council's Economic Development Committee. Around the city, such benefits are legion: In fiscal year 2006, the New York City Industrial Development Agency alone granted at least $700 million in tax breaks to individual firms.

Councilman Albert Vann, in consultation with Councilmembers White, Bill de Blasio, Letitia James and others, created the bill to "help us to understand how city funds are being used in communities, to help them directly," according to Vann’s legislative director, Dottie Conway. Introduced June 29, the bill is now being further shaped by feedback and is not yet scheduled for a hearing or a vote.

article

NoLandGrab: Critics question how effective this legislation might actually be, and some see it as just another spin on City- and State-mandated environmental reviews, which are produced by the developer and always seem to arrive at the same, ain't-this-great outcome.

Posted by eric at 9:39 AM

July 13, 2008

Prospect Heights Historic District Advances

Gowanus Lounge

The creation of a Prospect Heights Historic District is making progress. The Landmarks Preservation Commission will “calendar” the district this Tuesday (7/15), which is the first step in formally creating it. This would lead to a public hearing and a vote on the District on October 28. Per a release from the Municipal Art Soceity, which teamed with the Prospect Heights Neighborhood Development Corporation to push for the district, the Chair of the PHNDC says: “The Landmarks Commission has obviously recognized the threat posed to the character of one of Brooklyn’s most well-preserved brownstone neighborhoods. The pressure from the Atlantic Yards project and other recent developments are of grave concern to the hundreds of local residents who have written in support of historic designation for Prospect Heights.”

link

Posted by amy at 4:02 PM

July 12, 2008

The Prospect Heights Historic District moves forward

Atlantic Yards Report

From a press release issued yesterday by the Municipal Art Society:
On Tuesday, July 15 the Landmarks Preservation Commission will “calendar” the Prospect Heights Historic District, the first step toward protecting one of Brooklyn’s finest – and most endangered – historic neighborhoods.
...
Prospect Heights is rich in historic architecture, with blocks of beautiful Italianate and neo-Grec rowhouses, interspersed with churches, small commercial and apartment buildings. Located just north of Prospect Park, the neighborhood has seen few changes since it was first developed in the late-19th Century. Today it is threatened by the Atlantic Yards project, a proposal by the developer Forest City Ratner to build 16 towers and a sports arena on a 22-acre site adjacent to the neighborhood.
...
Given that the Municipal Art Society has on previous occasions described the AY site as part of Prospect Heights, I'm going to consider that "adjacent to the neighborhood" line a lapse. My previous reportage on the landmarking effort is here and here.

link

Posted by amy at 9:12 AM

July 9, 2008

It came from the Blogosphere...

Center Hold, Your Friendly Neighborhood
NYC makes one blogger's list of candidates of Best Planned Cities, with a few caveats, gratis the New York Department of Shitty Planning:

[T]he truth is that New York’s planning department has been heading down hill since the 70’s and 80’s saw development of government housing projects in all 5 boroughs. Schools have attempted to improve by segmenting themselves into smaller, more focused institutions but are facing the same problems their behemoth predecessors endured. And the biggest building project New York has seen in decades, Brooklyn’s Atlantic Yards Project, is an ostensible humanist project at best.

In the wake of this weekend's column by Michael O'Keeffe in the Daily News, two different blogs note that sportswriters seem to have the sharpest eye for political commentary:

Washington Square Park, NY Daily News: “Kiss my grass, Mayor Bloomberg” by Michael O’Keefe

I’m impressed by sports writers. They inject passion and reflect on history in a way that, for the most part, political writers and media covering City Hall don’t. If politics was covered the way sports is, perhaps more people would know what was going on and the world … our City … would be a different place.

DDDB.net, The Sportswriter Gets it Right

It's interesting that among mainstream New York newspapers, it's often the sports writers who have most pithily summed up the Atlantic Yards and Yankees deals for the corporate welfare exercises they are. As noted below, city columnist Juan Gonzalez of the Daily News deftly skewered the Yankees job promises last week. And then in the Sunday Daily News, sportswriter Michael O'Keeffe followed up with this observation about the state of big-money sports in the City of New York.

Note: Juan Gonzalez covers local issues for the Daily News, not sports.

Posted by lumi at 4:25 AM

June 25, 2008

Chicago, Say No to the Olympics!

Gapers Block
by Ramsin Canon

A warning to Chicagoans to reject the 2016 Olympics includes a reference to the "now-infamous and loathed Atlantic Yards development," and offers up a link to our favorite project watchdog.

There could be a continued dilution of any top-down negotiated "Community Benefits Agreement," as happened in New York City in the now-infamous and loathed Atlantic Yards development, as reported by In These Times' Michael Gauss. In that case, developers sought political cover by enticing a community group (in that case, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN) into a backroom deal that left plenty of room for developer wiggle room.

article

Posted by eric at 12:18 PM

June 22, 2008

Campaign to Reform the Governance of Atlantic Yards

BrooklynSpeaks via YouTube

June 16th Press Conference at City Hall, NY to launch campaign to reform the governance of Atlantic Yards.

link

Posted by amy at 10:35 AM

June 19, 2008

10 to lose: Ugly buildings NYC would be better without

amNY
by David Freedlander

While Bruce Ratner busily tears down every building he can in the footprint of his Atlantic Yards project, including the landmark-worthy Ward Bakery, amNY thinks he should perhaps be tearing down one of his own.

Each winter, amNewYork devotes a special issue to 10 buildings in New York City that we fear will soon disappear under negligent eye of the city's real estate interests.

Now, with the turning of the seasons and the sun high in the sky, we say enough with gnashing of teeth over this vanishing city. It's time to do a little pruning.

Besides, even the glittering New York City skyline is bound to contain a few clunkers. That's why we asked some of the city's leading architects and critics to put away their pencils and take out their erasers, and tell us which parts of New York the city would be better of without.
...

6.) Atlantic Center

Rob Lane, Regional Design Programs, Regional Plan Association:
"Seems like the focus should be on buildings and structures that are not just ugly in someone's opinion, but things that detract from, if not destroy, the most essential part of urbanity –— the pedestrian experience. One example is Atlantic Center in Brooklyn. Not only is it an eyesore, it completely detracts from the walkers experience through long empty sidewalks and hallways and absolutely no street life whatsoever."

article

Photo Gallery [photos 1-12 correspond to the buildings featured in the article]

Posted by eric at 3:30 PM

June 13, 2008

Is the Poor Economy Saving Our Skylines?

Jaunted.com

The Western World may be losing it's dominance in the neverending skyline wars, but that might not be such a bad thing for American and European city-dwellers. German newsmagazine Der Spiegel reports that as the credit crisis is halting ambitious real estate projects in the States, emerging powers such as China, Dubai and Russia are building bigger and crazier skyscrapers than ever.

This skyline boom may be providing these nouveau riche nations with status symbols, but much of the construction is being criticized by architecture experts as environmentally and aesthetically harmful.

Public opinion in many places seems to agree with the experts' contention that modern skyscrapers are ugly. The Spiegel article cites European architects who see a positive side to the poor economy because it will allow the continent to preserve it's "enduring cityscapes."

Similarly in New York, Frank Gehry's $4 billion Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn is stalling thank to money troubles, which must be a relief to the area residents who have protested the plan since it's inception. Another major New York landmark, the proposed Freedom Tower, is also way behind schedule, but it's not like those designs have been highly anticipated by the locals.

article

Posted by eric at 9:33 AM

June 10, 2008

Cities vs Skyscrapers

Market Movers

Portfolio.com
by Felix Salmon

Condé Nast Portfolio columnist Felix Salmon critiques BusinessWeek's recent proposition that when it comes to architecture, bigger (and newer) is always better.

Many thanks to Matthew for pointing me to an extremely peculiar 3,000-word Business Week feature on global architecture. If you want proof that the teachings of Jane Jacobs have yet to sink in around much of the rest of the world, then all you need to do is read this article, which paints global architectural activity as, in the words of the headline, "The Battle for the World's Skyline".
...

And it would be very hard indeed to find many New Yorkers who agree with the Business Week article that the scaling-back of Bruce Ratner's Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn is "a tough blow for New York". (I suspect the authors will have lost most Brooklynites when they describe the area as "an industrial wasteland".)

article

Posted by lumi at 1:29 PM

The Battle for the World's Skyline

Cities like London and New York don't have the money to keep up with Asia, Russia, and the Persian Gulf. Is the Western urban landscape out of date?

BusinessWeek
by Ulrike Knöfel, Frank Hornig and Bernhard Zand

From a Western perspective, at least, this is precisely the problem. Economically booming megacities — such as Beijing, Shanghai and Dubai — where extravagant skyscrapers are shooting up all over, mean that cities like New York are beginning to look old and outdated, despite attempts to modernize. In Europe, the eastern part is beginning to look more modern than the western part. Cities like Istanbul and Moscow are more dynamic than London, Paris or Milan.

There have never been this many skyscrapers on the drawing boards, with most of them planned for the world's new boom towns. The West is eying this development with jealousy, all the more intense for its inability to compete. The massive downturn in the American credit market has caused the cancellation or postponement of many major architectural and urban-planning projects.
...

Yet another of Gehry's urban improvement ventures has run into difficulties. Gehry was commissioned to transform an industrial wasteland in Brooklyn into a mixed-use architectural pearl. The price tag of the Atlantic Yards project — which New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg praised as a "colossal achievement of one of the world's leading architects" — was $4 billion (€2.6 billion). But demand has been unsatisfactory, and Gehry was forced to reduce the size of the largest tower in the complex. According to the developers, construction of several of the planned buildings will be placed on hold.

It's a tough blow for New York. For real estate aficionados, it remains the "ultimate 24-hour American city," a place that attracts the global elite. But it takes some effort and a constant series of facelifts to keep it that way. Where else but in New York is there so must distaste for any form of inertia?

article

NoLandGrab: "Damned lawsuits! I bought this overpriced Brooklyn condo because I thought this backwater was going to be more like Istanbul or Moscow."

Posted by lumi at 12:48 PM

June 9, 2008

Manholes - And What They Can Teach Us

The Footprint Gazette

The new blog diagnoses the cause behind the symptom of exploding manhole covers on Dean Street.

Did anyone else hear those manholes exploding up and down Dean St. yesterday? Did you hear what they were trying to tell us? Three manholes did their inaugural summer dances early yesterday evening prompting the fire department to take what must have been one of their shortest drives down to the end of their block. It also prompted the regulars at Freddy's to take the short trip outside to see what all the commotion was about.

I'll tell you what the commotion was all about. The city, the streets of the city, were trying to tell us something. They are ill and they angry. They are upset that on the other end of the block the sewer pipes have been exposed to help expedite the flushing of your tax dollars. Millions of your bucks are heading down that there exposed drain to prep for an arena that stands as an emblem of civic dysfunction. Meanwhile the city's infrastructure requires those dollars to keep things like manhole explosions from halting day to day life.

I don't know if the manholes popping were directly related to the construction blighting up the block, but I do know that the juxtaposition of the two painted a pretty precise painting of why this project stinks.

link

Posted by eric at 2:27 PM

May 30, 2008

Open space versus parks

Greater Greater Washington

This District of Columbia blog serves up Atlantic Yards as an example of development that is not "good for the area."

The design for Poplar Point seems to do the best with what it has. Making the stadium stimulate activity in the neighborhood depends upon generating foot traffic to and from games rather than simply a lot of car trips to parking next to the stadium. The deck over the 295 freeway is a key piece, connecting the new neighborhood with the old one and the Metro station. The stadium is near the deck and from the drawing, I don't see any surface parking lots.

If the deck doesn't get cut for cost reasons and the stadium can in fact draw more events beyond the 33 professional soccer games a year, this will be good for the area. If the project morphs into something like NYC's Atlantic Yards, where one building after another gets "postponed" and acres of "temporary" surface parking will last for ten years or more, then we'll prove Fisher right. I hope not.

article

Posted by eric at 10:19 PM

May 22, 2008

At MAS, AY as an example of a neighborhood planning struggle

Atlantic Yards Report

When it comes to discussions of “David vs. Goliath,” the subject of a Municipal Art Society (MAS) Planning Center Forum on May 14, Atlantic Yards is an inevitable subject, though--as I’ll note below--the politics of AY means that more than one set of parties might consider themselves “Davids.”

The panel addressed the issue of “neighborhood planning in the face of large-scale development,” and planner/architect Stuart Pertz, in his introduction, noted that some projects are inherently large, and only work if built on a large scale. “Unfortunately, it often gets out of hand,” he said, suggesting that “Goliath in development has extraordinary leverage, using powerful lawyers, contractors, planners, and unions.” Then again, he said, “there are many Davids.”

A fair amount of the discussion revolved around the Atlantic Yards-alternative UNITY Plan.

Architect Marshall Brown (right), a developer of the UNITY plan for the Metropolitian Transportation Authority’s Vanderbilt Yard (and beyond), said, with perhaps some retrospective bravado, “Four years ago we realized we needed to have something in place for the probable occurrence of Forest City Ratner’s plans running aground.” He suggested that Atlantic Yards exemplified a “willful ignorance of limits,” including the physical limit of an eight-acre railyard, the legal limit of eminent domain, the democratic limit of ULURP (the city’s Uniform Land Use Review Procedure, bypassed in this case for a fast-track state review), and “finally, the all too evident limit of the talents of a single architect.”

He noted that he wasn’t dissing Frank Gehry, just pointing out--as have others, and even Gehry himself--that megaprojects require multiple architects.

Brown suggested that questions of sustainability and the “looming environmental apocalypse” meant that the Bloomberg administration should prioritize quality ahead of quantity: “I’d say it’s a city of limits.”

Lawyer Candace Carponter (right), a co-chair of the Council of Brooklyn Neighborhoods (CBN), described how the coalition, formed to respond to the Atlantic Yards environmental review, moved from officially agnostic to ultimately oppositional, joining a lawsuit challenging the review, and becoming a supporter of the UNITY plan. She suggested that the combination of a new governor, “detrimental economics,” and the Newark option for the Nets might provide an opening for the UNITY plan--though of course, that remains to be seen.

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Posted by eric at 10:45 AM

The Manhattan Borough President stresses land use

Atlantic Yards Report

Norman Oder surfs the web to evaluate how New York City's five borough presidents look at land-use issues.

As noted in the discussion May 14 at the Municipal Art Society, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer has advanced ahead of the other borough presidents in stressing the importance of land use issues and in training Community Board members on land use issues.

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Follow the link for a look at the different borough home pages.

Posted by eric at 10:43 AM

May 20, 2008

How build big in NYC? Not via the AY example, panelists suggest

Atlantic Yards Report

Norman Oder files an in-depth report on last night's "Can NYC Build BIG Anymore" panel discussion, and offers plenty of reasons why opponents of Atlantic Yards won't miss Empire State Development Corporation President Avi Schick when he leaves at the end of the summer.

What are the right ways to build big projects in a growing city? Although panelists who spoke Monday night didn’t make the point explicitly, the answers they offered--public planning, realistic timetables, public ownership, infrastructure first, and media skepticism toward overhyped renderings--generally point to the opposite of the process behind Atlantic Yards.

The panel, titled Can NYC Build BIG Anymore?, was sponsored by Democratic Leadership for the 21st Century and held at Iguana Restaurant in Midtown. Notably, the acting head of the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC) also offered a hearty defense of Atlantic Yards, adopting some of developer Forest City Ratner's talking points.

The question, panelists agreed, was not “can” but “how.” “One of the problems we have to confront is that people want to build big too fast,” observed Avi Schick, acting president of the ESDC, which approved and is overseeing Atlantic Yards. “Sometimes they bit off a little too much when they tried to push an entire plan forward at once.”

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Posted by eric at 9:09 AM

May 18, 2008

State Development Agency Buffeted by Slowing Economy and Internal Rifts

New York Times
CHARLES V. BAGLI

For more than a year, the state’s main economic development agency, the Empire State Development Corporation, has been in disarray, plagued by turf battles, poor management and the political collapse of Gov. Eliot Spitzer, business leaders and state officials say.
...
A co-chairman of the development corporation, Patrick J. Foye, was one of the first officials to lose his job when Gov. David A. Paterson took over in March. Mr. Paterson has yet to nominate someone to run the agency.

Moreover, the governor has sent conflicting messages, preaching fiscal austerity while suggesting that the state can move forward on a host of costly projects, including the Second Avenue subway, the extension of the No. 7 line, the $14 billion redevelopment of the West Side railyards, the $14 billion Penn Station project and the $4 billion Atlantic Yards basketball arena and residential complex in Brooklyn.

A senior adviser to Mr. Paterson rejected the idea that the administration had sent mixed messages, saying the governor would not commit to projects that the state cannot afford. The official, who was not authorized to be quoted by name, also said the administration planned to release plans for revamping the agency. As part of that overhaul, Mr. Paterson will eliminate one of Mr. Spitzer’s more contentious innovations: dividing the corporation’s leadership into downstate and upstate leaders.

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Posted by amy at 9:39 AM

May 9, 2008

A Tale of Two Cities, Only One With Sewers

The New York Times
by Susan Dominus

When Gordhandas Soni, the owner of an Indian food company, agreed to relocate his warehouse and factory to Willets Point, Queens, back in 1990, it never occurred to him to ask about some of the more basic amenities — the sewage system, for example. “You never ask, ‘You have sewers here?’ ” said Mr. Soni, whose business is called House of Spices. “In America, right here, in the heart of New York City? No! It never occurred to me to ask. It would be silly to ask.”
...

Now Mr. Soni has banded together with 11 other businesses in Willets Point, filing a suit charging that the city has neglected to repair potholes and provide basic services like sewers and snow plowing, in an effort to devalue the property and ease the path to redevelopment.

Put in the sewers, and fix the potholes, he and his allies contend, and Willets Point will redevelop itself. The city, in reply, concedes that might be true — but because the area is on a flood plain, the city couldn’t provide sewers without removing the businesses, creating an unfortunate but intractable chicken-and-egg situation.
...

Even if the city could make him whole, Mr. Soni wonders, why shouldn’t he get some additional compensation for the inconvenience of losing his property? As he put it, why should the city “take away from the small guy like me and give to a billion dollar company just so he can make another billion dollars?”
...

Although it’s never easy for American manufacturers to compete with their counterparts in India — especially when it comes to something like an Indian food product — Mr. Soni says that he would be thrilled with his prospects were it not for this major uncertainty hanging over his head, and the threat that the city could invoke eminent domain to take the property.

“I always thought India would be my competition, that India would run me out of business,” he said, watching a machine fill jars with a dark, rich tamarind paste. “I didn’t think it would be New York City.”

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Posted by eric at 12:45 PM

May 8, 2008

When will Olin's new open space designs be released? (Soon)

Atlantic Yards Reports

Norman Oder wonders when we might get new renderings from Atlantic Yards landscape architect Laurie Olin.

First Frank Gehry's new designs, then more from Laurie Olin? That sounds like developer Forest City Ratner's new Atlantic Yards strategy.
...

As I pointed out Tuesday, Olin's somewhat stale designs, curiously enough, remain in the Atlantic Yards Image Gallery.

However, as Gehry's new graphics suggest, the Urban Room would be quite different. Thus Olin's designs surely will be updated--but when?

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Posted by eric at 8:49 AM

Lotsa "Atlantic Lots"

StreetsBlog, Atlantic Yards or Atlantic Lots?

With development projects across the city threatened by an uncertain economy, critics of Bruce Ratner's Atlantic Yards project believe that a slowdown in construction could burden Prospect Heights with decades of blight. A slide show by the Municipal Art Society, called "Atlantic Yards or Atlantic Lots?," offers a bleak look into the future, like this rendering of neighborhood blocks destroyed for "temporary" surface lots that would accommodate some 1,400 cars.

MAS is calling on Governor David Paterson to suspend demolition in order to prepare an interim development plan, and has a link to a web form through which members of the public can contact Paterson directly.

The Campaign for Community-Based Planning, Atlantic Yards = Atlantic Lots?

Following up on this weekend’s Call Time-Out on Atlantic Yards rally, the Municipal Art Society has released renderings of what the area might look like as demolitions continue and only a small piece of the proposed project is actually built. Visit atlanticlots.com for a slide show.

Posted by lumi at 5:42 AM

April 30, 2008

Olympic Landscape

The NY Sun
By James Gardner

Congratulations Bruce Ratner, your Atlantic Yards plan is now on the short list of controversial projects in NYC:

When it comes to dreaming up grand architectural visions, repressive authoritarian regimes are clearly the way to go. There are none of those nettlesome obstructions that beset the urban planners of New York City: community boards and concerned citizens, good-government types and the dithering dysfunctionality of a score of agencies. Well known to all are the hurdles that developers and architects have encountered recently at ground zero and the Atlantic Yards, the acrimony that has beset Columbia University's West Harlem expansion, not to mention the travails of Londoners over furnishing Heathrow with one lousy little new runway.

Meanwhile, in less time than it takes for New Yorkers to draw up a committee to decide whether to vote on drawing up a committee, the city of Beijing has reinvented itself in anticipation of this August's Olympic Games. Whole neighborhoods have been gleefully wiped out in order to build the Beijing CBD, or Central Business District, situated between the capital's 3rd and 4th Ring Roads and now the site of CCTV headquarters, designed by the Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas.

Despite the social consequences, Beijing appears to be one NYC architecture critic's wet dream:

Taken together, the new architecture of Beijing is a partial and mitigated success, whatever its social benefit or harm. But however many eggs had to be broken to make this particular omelet, New Yorkers can only look on in envy and amazement at the boldness, the size, and the inventiveness of these new designs, which would never have stood a chance in Gotham.

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NoLandGrab: Mayor Bloomberg would probably give his right arm to do away with the pesky Community Boards, heck, even skip the City Council, in order to "streamline" the city planning process. Imagine how many neighborhoods and blocks the city could have plowed and resown if the city had been awarded the 2012 Olympic games.

Posted by lumi at 4:58 AM

April 25, 2008

Arena subway access without the Urban Room? ESDC says it's OK

Atlantic Yards Report

The "Urban Room" at Atlantic Yards (aka, "atrium") is billed as a multipurpose, glass-enclosed retail gallery, public space, ticket window, subway entrance, and the largest stoop in Brooklyn, and has been lauded and sold as a "significant public amenity," "a soaring Piranesian space," "a prominent feature of the pedestrian experience," and "its own destination." Yet without the signature tower — fancifully dubbed "Miss Brooklyn" — might developer Bruce Ratner deliver an "Urban Shed?"

Norman Oder sifts through the few documents that have been made public, and it looks like the only requirement is that Ratner "provide reasonable assurances... that the new subway station access that will adjoin the Arena will be completed and operational at the time the Arena is opened for operation."

Oder concludes:

Without Miss Brooklyn, it looks like there's no room for the Urban Room.

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Posted by lumi at 4:26 AM

April 22, 2008

Will Bloomberg's PlaNYC 2030 survive his mayoralty? Should it?

Atlantic Yards Report

Many people concerned about planning and development issues were heartened by Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s announcement last year of PlaNYC 2030, observed Eve Baron, director of the Municipal Art Society (MAS) Planning Center. However, as she said introducing a forum titled “PlaNYC2030 Post-Bloomberg” on April 14, many people think important issues were left out--and the panel discussion bore that out.

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Posted by lumi at 5:19 AM

April 17, 2008

Atlantic Yards Subsidies Might Total $2 Billion

Runnin' Scared [The Village Voice]
By Duncan Meisel

The Voice's daily blog published a recent-news wrap for Atlantic Yards, covering subsidies, more subsidies and architecture critic Diana Lind's scathing takedown of Bruce Ratner's controversial megaproject.

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Posted by lumi at 4:34 AM

April 16, 2008

Answers About Brooklyn Architecture

City Room (The New York Times Blog)

Diana Lind, author of "Brooklyn Modern: Architecture, Interiors & Design," answers questions from readers. She most definitely has not drunk The Times's Kool-Aid when it comes to Atlantic Yards.

Q: Speaking of Atlantic Yards, what does Ms. Lind think of this megadevelopment, and its potential effects on Brooklyn life?

— Posted by matt

A: Living in Fort Greene half a block from Atlantic Avenue, I’ve thought a lot about the Atlantic Yards project and its potential impact on life in Brooklyn. Certainly the site merits some kind of development, but I’m opposed to the Ratner plan as it stands now for a few reasons. I take umbrage at the project’s vast, uninterrupted scale; its street closings; its miserable sense of public space (when was the last time you threw a Frisbee on a private building’s lawn?); and most recently, revelations of its more than $2 billion worth of tax write-offs and subsidies from the government, according to the New York Post. Though the project has promoted the fact that it’s going to create jobs and housing, the scheme of using public money to finance this endeavor sounds like robbing Peter and Paul to pay Mary (sorry, the pope’s coming to town).

But I also have aesthetic qualms with the project. I don’t think any one architect should be in charge of designing 22 acres of any city. In a March 21 article by the New York Times critic Nicolai Ouroussoff, the project’s uncertain status is lamented. Mr. Ourousoff points to the importance of great planning projects like Rockefeller Center (roughly the same size as Atlantic Yards). But Rockefeller Center was developed by a team of architects; Atlantic Yards will not be. Gehry is good at what he does, and as others have noted his voluptuous style would nicely contrast with the phallic bank building, but more than seven million square feet of his outlandish style (of any architect’s style) starts to look pretty tacky and boring, no matter the context.

So, if the project goes ahead as it’s planned now, how this will affect life in Brooklyn? A lot. Irreversibly. It will complete Brooklyn’s transformation from a post-industrial residential borough to a city unto itself and will extend Downtown Brooklyn to Fort Greene, Prospect Heights and Boerum Hill.

Spending time in Brooklyn now, one senses the borough’s promise and mutability. When and if Atlantic Yards is completed, I think many people will feel an enormous opportunity was lost on a not particularly innovative project. If I were in charge of the development site, I’d scrap the plan, build a platform over the railyards, and auction off small parcels of the site to varied developers, cultural organizations and schools. The diversity of approaches to the parcels would mimic the city’s naturally haphazard development process and allow for more community involvement.

link

NoLandGrab: Better hurry up and take a screen shot of this piece, since we don't think we'll be seeing such unvarnished criticism of Atlantic Yards in the pages of the Times's print edition any time soon.

Atlantic Yards Report, Answers About Brooklyn Architecture, criticism of AY

Norman Oder must must have been rendered speechless, since he posted the passage we cited above sans comment.

Posted by eric at 12:21 PM

April 15, 2008

West Side plans in disarray; what about AY?

Atlantic Yards Report

An article in The New York Times prompts Norman Oder to compare the Atlantic Yards fiasco to the Hudson Yards disarray:

Yesterday, in an article headlined West Side Redevelopment Plans in Disarray, the New York Times described a harsh reality that has some interesting echoes in Brooklyn:

Because of the economic downturn, logistical problems and, critics say, design flaws, the expansion of the Javits Center has died, the plan to rebuild Penn Station and the area around it is in jeopardy and there are deep questions about financing, public and private, to extend the subway or build over the railyards. ...But many urban planners, architects, community leaders and developers say the downturn may have a silver lining, providing an opportunity for the city to rethink and reconfigure sweeping proposals many of them had doubts about all along.

The article didn't mention Atlantic Yards, but there are some comparisons and contrasts worth considering.

The full article briefly examines the developer selection process, increased density around transit hubs, public costs and the Regional Plan Association's position.

Posted by lumi at 5:32 AM

April 10, 2008

Willets Point property owners sue city

NY Daily News
by Jess Wisloski

Long-time NoLandGrab readers will remember Jess Wisloski, who cut her teeth covering the Atlantic Yards land grab and is now on the Willets Point beat.

Willets Point property owners filed a lawsuit against the city Wednesday, charging it has deliberately denied the area basic city services to grease the skids for condemnation.

About 150 business owners and their supporters gathered on the steps of City Hall to announce the federal case and to protest the city's plans to redevelop the gritty 60-acre industrial swath known as the Iron Triangle.
...

Eight City Council members backed the protesters Wednesday and denounced the city's negotiating tactics, which the business owners said have been in bad faith.

Mayoral hopeful Tony Avella (D-Bayside), who heads the Council's zoning committee, said he would refuse to approve any plans that would invoke eminent domain to develop something on the site other than a "good public purpose," such as a school or a highway.

"It is a completely different thing to take it and give it to another private individual, a developer, who will then turn around and make millions of dollars," Avella said. "We're here today to say, 'No.' Go back to the drawing board, Mr. Mayor."

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More coverage:

The New York Times, Businesses in Potholed, Sewerless Queens District Sue the City

“Some of the photos you see behind me — you see floods, you wonder if this is New York City in 2008 or Baghdad after a few mortar rounds,” said Councilman Hiram Monserrate of Queens, whose district includes the area.

Councilman Eric N. Gioia, also of Queens, said the threat of eminent domain, even as a last resort, was “like walking into a negotiation, putting a gun on the table, and saying, ‘I’d like to strike a fair deal; I’ll only use the gun if I have to.’”

Newsday, Willets Point businesses sue over mayor's plan

Queens Times Ledger, Willets Pt. biz group to sue for infrastructure upgrades

Gothamist.com, Willets Point Locals Sue City Over Neglect

At a City Hall rally yesterday, Anthony Fodera, president of Fodera Foods Inc., told the Times that he’s “been there for 35 years; I have yet to see them fill a pothole.”

The Queens Courier, Willets Point businesses sue city

NY1, Ten Willets Point Landowners Sue The City

"This is our property," said Feinstein Ironworks Owner Dan Feinstein. "It's been in our family for generations. This is our legacy to our children and our grandchildren, and we're not going to allow this administration to steal it from us."

Posted by eric at 3:15 PM

April 9, 2008

Willets Point protesters sue to block $3B city plan

Protesters say the city hasn't t provided sewers, sidewalks, paved roads or storm drains for the last 40 years. New development is like throwing out the baby before changing the bathwater.

Crain's NY Business
by Hilary Potkewitz

Willets Point property owners have filed a federal eminent domain suit against New York City in an effort to keep their businesses from falling prey to "redevelopment."

A group of businesses facing eviction by the city from their homes in Willets Point, Queens filed a federal lawsuit against the City of New York and several public officials Wednesday. It is the companies’ latest effort to forestall plans for a city-backed $3 billion mixed-use project on their land.

The case, filed in the Eastern District federal court, seeks to force the city to provide sanitary sewers, sidewalks, paved roads and storm drains in a commercial area that has had none for more than 40 years. The suit also seeks unspecified damages, charging city officials with a “waging a campaign of intentional neglect to create and perpetuate an eyesore for eventual justification of the use of eminent domain,” according to the filing.

The businesses say they’ve been thrown out with the bathwater.

“The city has intentionally driven down the value of these properties by withholding services,” says Michael Gerrard, a partner in the environmental law practice at Arnold & Porter, which is representing the business owners. “It is impermissible for the city to try and take advantage of that [lack of services] to acquire properties at fire-sale prices.”

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NoLandGrab: While a spokesperson for the City's Economic Development Corporation called the area "blighted and seriously contaminated," she didn't comment on the City's failure to provide the neighborhood with sewers, sidewalks, paved roads or storm drains for the past 40 years. But now that fancy new Citi Field is set to open across the street next April, the area's problems need to be addressed — through eminent domain, if necessary (but only, of course, as a last resort).

Posted by eric at 5:09 PM

April 3, 2008

LETTER: How to Build a City

The NY Times, Letter to the Editor

To the editor:

Re “Profit and Public Good Clash in Grand Plans” (Architecture column, March 27):

Nicolai Ouroussoff comes to the right conclusion: When you are trying to build a city, it’s about championing the public good, not counting beans.

But by bemoaning the quality of the proposed buildings and the watering down of Frank Gehry’s work for the Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn, he adds to the confusion about the difference between building a city and treating big chunks of the city as if they were architectural design problems.

The fact is that great cities do not rely on cutting-edge architecture. They rely on a clear framework of streets and open spaces, designed by and for the public, that over time can support the full spectrum of architecture, from the pedestrian to the heroic.

Indeed, how many heroic buildings can you have in one place before none of them are?

Robert Lane
Director of Design
Regional Plan Association

Posted by lumi at 4:35 AM

March 31, 2008