A Clear Analysis: Atlantic Yards

oo

There is quite a wonderful blogger community here in Brooklyn. I check in with my fellow bloggers on a regular basis and it is amazing to me how many writers and community activists are busy in their own way, educating and informing people about what is happening in Brooklyn. Fellow blogger Steven Hart just published a great editorial on the impact of the mega Atlantic Yards project. It is a must read.

ATLANTIC YARDS AND THE NATIONAL TAB
By Steven Hart

The Atlantic Yards is a financial disaster poised to happen and not just
because of Forest City Ratner Company's frivolous fiscal practices, which have been well documented since the project was announced in 2003. The project has, and
will have, no fiscal over-sight. FCRC has been able to embed themselves in
Albany to such an extent that even those who are charged with guarding the
public treasure are already looking the other way even before the project
begins. That is how and why Ratner has leap-frogged his way through the
entire public review process and emerged free to do whatever he pleases. It
is already clear that the Atlantic Yards will produce a host of secondary
problems and costs, like sewerage, that will come directly out of the public
treasury and extend far beyond the limits of the project itself. The
question is, can we pay for this enormous, uncontrolled and ill-conceived
undertaking to build the equivalent of a mid-sized American city in the
middle of downtown Brooklyn?

To continue reading:

Views From The Bridge Blog