The Atlantic Yards project is the single most transformative construction in the Downtown/Brownstone Brooklyn area in more than 50 years. The project is in the same league as the clearing of many blocks of Downtown Brooklyn starting in the late 1930s to make way for the Civic Center and Cadman Plaza, the construction of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, and the development of huge public housing projects to the west and south of the Brooklyn Navy Yard. They all drastically changed the face of Brooklyn in their time, and Atlantic Yards stands to do the same.
How should the community — and by “community” I mean the residents of Park Slope and our neighbors in Gowanus, Boerum Hill, Downtown Brooklyn, Fort Greene, and Prospect Heights — respond to and live with this project?
[pullquote]For anything of value to be realized at Atlantic Yards in the foreseeable future, the project has to be rethought.[/pullquote]
The bill puts forth a structure for governance around the project, likely to be built over the span of two decades. The project sponsor, the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC), is a state agency and at present is accountable only to the governor. There is no formal process for public involvement, only the fig leaf of a community outreach office, whose liaison position is vacant as this is written.
On the legal front, BrooklynSpeaks, Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn (DDDB), and others have filed a lawsuit against the ESDC over the modified project scope and schedule issued in 2009. A decision in this case is imminent.
Activism continues. On June 15, DDDB unveiled — and the Park Slope Civic Council co-sponsored — a plan for the Atlantic Yards site called Unity 4. It is not a highly detailed, “down-in-the-weeds” set of specifications as much as it is a set of principles and guidelines. Meanwhile, BrooklynSpeaks sponsors have introduced Atlantic Yards Watch (atlanticyardswatch.net), where the public can keep track of project developments and report online how the project construction is affecting them.
A multicommunity task force, which includes the Civic Council as a member, has urged the institution of residential permit parking (RPP) in the neighborhoods surrounding the Downtown Brooklyn commercial core and the Atlantic Yards project site. RPP would not guarantee on-street parking to neighborhood residents but would give them the first shot. The New York City Department of Transportation now seems interested in RPP; in 2008, they coupled it to the Mayor’s congestion-pricing proposal, and when congestion pricing died in the State Legislature, RPP was off the table.
At the same time, ESDC and developer Forest City Ratner go on as though nothing has changed since the environmental impact study for the project was released in 2006. In fact, much has changed. There is property and business development in the vicinity of Atlantic Yards that did not exist in 2006, but at the same time a slow economy has sapped the market for much of what was proposed for the site. Promises of “affordable” housing and good jobs that were always iffy at best have evaporated, and many who supported the project have been left empty-handed.
For anything of value to be realized at Atlantic Yards in the foreseeable future, the project has to be rethought — brought out of its present opaque governance and away from its single developer. We support the proposal by BrooklynSpeaks to create an Atlantic Yards Development Corporation, where the community will have a meaningful role, as a subsidiary of the ESDC to oversee the project. This local development corporation (LDC) must include elected officials and community representatives as permanent members of its governing board. An LDC is not a new or foreign concept: The Queens West development in Long Island City, to take one example, is governed by an LDC.
We want and deserve a process where planning decisions are respectful of the host community. The result will be more than “just” better planning. Long after all the other actors have left the scene we will still be here, and we will have to live with the consequences, good and bad, of the actions of others. To get to this point, the community, its advocates, our City Council members and state legislators, and the three community boards affected by Atlantic Yards must act together on a common agenda that wraps up governance issues, development issues, legislative issues, and more.
We must also reach out to our neighbors whose support of the ESDC project has not been rewarded, inviting them to be part of a common community initiative. Looking at the BrooklynSpeaks meeting and the Unity 4 presentation that took place only four days apart to capacity crowds, we appear to be moving in the right direction.
In a question-and-answer session after a performance last December of In the Footprint, a play by The Civilians about this project, my longtime colleague Jo Anne Simon noted all too correctly that we had all played our assigned roles in getting to where we are now. Today is a new day and we are assigning our own roles, mindful that the road ahead will not be easy and the results we seek will not be quick in coming. Too much is at stake to let up now. Make no mistake, the Park Slope Civic Council is in this for the long haul.
For information about the community’s initiatives, ESDC’s plan to deal with the traffic and transportation impacts of Atlantic Yards, and more, go to www.atlanticyardswatch.net and www.brooklynspeaks.net. Much is happening, and by no means is it a case of “it’s all over but the shouting.” Get involved and stay tuned. Join the Civic Council — or a neighboring community organization — and help us remain fully engaged on Atlantic Yards.
— Michael Cairl is president of the Park Slope Civic Council.
from the Summer 2011 Civic News