Atlantic Yards
Report reveals
today that
the August KPMG report on housing in Brooklyn--which the ESDC used to prove that
the massive dose of housing in the Atlantic Yards project could be absorbed in
ten years--was, to put it kindly, fanciful. It reported entirely incorrect
sales figures for the Oro Condos and Richard Meier's On Prospect
Park. As Norman Oder reports:...the report claimed that Richard Meier's On
Prospect Park was 75% sold. However the New York Times reported September 27
that the developer asserted that half of the units had been sold and the web
site StreetEasy.com documented only 25 closings.
KPMG also claimed that the Oro Condos in Downtown Brooklyn were 75% sold.
That didn't ring right.
In September, Crain's reported that prices at Oro had been slashed 25%. And
yesterday the New York Times reported that the building is 44 percent sold.
Why does this matter?
Because the ESDC relied on the "expert" KPMG to validate its dubious estimate
that the Atlantic Yards housing could be absorbed in a decade, a crucial defense
in the case challenging the ESDC's approval of the 2009 Modified General Project
Plan and the failure to issue a Supplementary Environmental Impact Statement
(SEIS).
