Atlantic Yards Fallout
by Brian J. Carreira

Shortly over a year ago, I wrote a piece about the Atlantic Yards where I lamented our elected officials’ refusal to use their political leverage to demand a development over the rail yards that would be more in scale with and more beneficial to the surrounding community. Forest City Ratner’s proposal bypassed legislative bodies and skirted community input making it clear to many of us that any benefits the community would gain from the project were going to be accident more than intent.

My conclusion back then was, when all is said and done, it’s a pretty steep price to pay for a basketball team. Ratner announced last week that, for the time being, a basketball team and the outlandishly expensive $950 million basketball arena to go with it will be about all the “benefit” taxpayers and the residents of Prospect Heights can expect from Atlantic Yards.

I still don’t know quite what to say about all of it. The revised timetable gives the developer six years to complete the arena, 12 years to complete Phase 1 of the project, and there is no longer a timeline for Phase 2 where most of the affordable housing is meant to be. Apparently the politicians who I criticized last year don’t know what to say either. I received an e-mail from Borough President Marty Markowitz’s office shortly after Forest City Ratner Companies’ (FCRC) announcement:

I am obviously disappointed that some key components of the Atlantic Yards project may not be completed on the timetable we had envisioned. But like Coney Island’s famous Cyclone, the economy goes up and it goes down—and I remain confident that Forest City Ratner, with its successful track record of development through all economic climates, will fulfill its vision of bringing the Nets, affordable housing, and a new city center to Downtown Brooklyn.

You can’t make this stuff up.

The fact is that the seeds of what Nicolai Ourousoff from the New York Times recently referred to as a “fiasco” have been present since before the project was announced in late 2003. The proposal and its implementation were erected on a foundation of false assumptions that led former U.S. Representative Major Owens to foresee this present “boondoggle.”
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I contend that if FCRC had proposed a modestly scaled, mixed-use development that would be built exclusively over the Vanderbilt rail yards, such a project would have been lauded, not resisted. If “destination development,” was the goal, there is still plenty of opportunity for innovation and exciting architecture on a smaller scale.

Now, the arena has ballooned in price, the developer cannot find an anchor tenant to move ahead on “Miss Brooklyn,” and the rest of the project is on indefinite hiatus.

It is arrogance, not an economic downturn, that is sinking the Atlantic Yards.