TimesRatnerReport

Internationally acclaimed architect Frank Gehry told an audience at Columbia University two months ago that the Atlantic Yards project, which he called "out of scale with the existing area," is such a struggle that he sometimes wants to "jump off the Brooklyn Bridge." A guest on the 10/31/05 "Citizen: The Campus Talk Show," Gehry also revealed that developer Forest City Ratner has in fact agreed to his requests to scale down the project--something FCR has not publicly disclosed, and something unclear in the Columbia News Service report on the talk--though he didn't describe the amount of the reduction, which is a contentious issue.

Gehry acknowledged that Forest City Ratner's history is that "they haven't" been "interested in doing something special," but now "they have been very fastidious in supporting the things that I think are important." He acknowledged that the scale was driven by the developer, but said, "the developers have been very accepting of my pushback. And so we’ve taken chunks of it away, actually, to bring it down into scale." Gehry also observed that he normally would've brought in five other architects to ensure that the complex "doesn’t look like a project," but the client said no.

Gehry, who described himself as "a do-gooder, liberal," said he was trying to design the project "within a very open dialogue with the people who are involved," but acknowledged that success on the project was subjective: "What’s right is, if it turns out great, that’s what’s right." Indeed, though Gehry comes off as an earnest, well-meaning fellow, it's apparently not his role to be worried about a planning process that urban affairs expert Tom Angotti calls "all backwards." Note that Gehry also characterized Ratner as a fellow "liberal, do-gooder" in the 7/25/05 New York Observer; others, like Cooper Union's Fred Siegel, have called Ratner "master of the subsidy."

Despite Gehry's expressions of anxiety, he professed relatively little dismay that about the "not very many" buildings that would be razed, "because that was a given to me."He said that "when we started, there were a few buildings that were going to be kept, and we worked around them, and that felt better to me, to be able to do that, but they disappeared." It's unclear what he meant by that--did they disappear from the preservation effort (probably) or disappear because they were torn down? The project was in fact designed around the recently converted Newswalk condo, while two other buildings--the former Spalding factory (right, thanks to Forgotten NY) and the Atlantic Arts building--are slated to fall.

Gehry described the section of Prospect Heights--a name he didn't use--at issue as "a neighborhood that’s not very well-defined," which is not inaccurate, given that Pacific Street has a industrial buildings converted to condos, empty buildings, and a homeless shelter, while Dean Street (below, thanks to Forgotten NY) has both row houses and industrial buildings (and another homeless shelter). But Gehry characterized critics with a broad brush: "[T]here is a constituency of people that live there who fantasize this Brooklyn as brownstones and Court Street and Carroll Gardens and all that, which isn’t on this site." Well, for one thing, there are row houses in the proposed project footprint, so his "new neighborhood" would hardly be placed on a tabula rasa. Also, the community-developed Unity Plan for the Vanderbilt Yard envisions high-rise buildings, though not 40-60 stories, like some at Atlantic Yards. Why would Gehry mention Carroll Gardens and its major thoroughfare, Court Street, when project critics are far more likely to come from Prospect Heights and adjacent rowhouse neighborhoods like Fort Greene and Park Slope? Maybe because his daughter lives there.

The hour-long show covered a number of issues, and included slides shown to the audience of various projects. Notable is that Gehry himself brought up Atlantic Yards rather than follow the lead of host Kelvin Sealey. The issue was obviously fresh in his mind.

Early in the show (approximately 3:30) Sealey asked his guest about his early professional roots.

FG: I worked in a lot of offices in Europe and in L.A., and was interested in city planning. I’m a do-gooder, liberal, and I still am. I’m not a Bushie. I’m respectful, but… barely.

KS: Can we go to your design education?

FG: Architecture, as I developed as an architect, I considered a service. We were meeting with clients--you’re hired to do a project and you bring the best you can do the table and deliver the best that you can do.

A bit later in the show (at about 15:00), Sealey asked about the Gehry Residence, the architect's renovation of his Santa Monica home.

FG: This is a middle class neighborhood, and I think of myself as a member of that class, so to speak. And I was trying to find my identity in that neighborhood. I think it is pushy in the neighborhood, there was a backlash….Now it’s settled down and it’s probably worth more than any house on the block, and you can sell popcorn there on the weekends, students come around after all these years, so I guess something’s going on.

KS: Something’s going on. I want to go to one more slide before going to the film.

Here's where Gehry kept going.

FG: But it does bring up the issue, which I’m struggling with now in Brooklyn, a lot. We’re about to build, probably, an arena for the Nets, and a lot of housing. And everything we’re building is out of scale with the existing area. And the struggle is: It’s a neighborhood that’s not very well-defined, but there is a constituency of people that live there who fantasize this Brooklyn as brownstones and Court Street and Carroll Gardens and all that, which isn’t on this site. But in their mind, Brooklyn should continue to be like that. But this part of Brooklyn isn’t going to be like that. And so this developer’s is interested in doing something special. Their history is, they haven’t, but now they want to. I took them at their word, and they have been very fastidious in supporting the things that I think are important.

The struggle is, you end up with sort of a pseudo-19th century scheme—how do you take that into the 21st century, what makes it different, how do you make a complex that doesn’t look like a project even though one architect’s doing it? Normally I would’ve brought in five other architects, but one of the requirements of this client is that I do it. And so, how do you make buildings that fit, how do you make a new skyline, how do you develop a scale at the ground level, how do you create the opportunities, how do you fit an arena that at night brings a lot of people in, and is bright and sparky and a party, and the during the day what does that mean.

Those are all the issues, and they’re similar to the issues of my house, just at a bigger scale. I have a sense of responsibility to deliver something that’s a good neighbor. So I’m caught in this thing. And it’s a wonderful, scary place to be, I tell you. I have sleepless nights about it. I some days look at the project and think I can’t do it, I can’t, I go back and forth. I’m very insecure about it. I’ve brought all kinds of people in to criticize it, beat me up, do whatever, because I want to get it right. But it is that kind of issue.

KS: You bring up a number of issues… one in particularly concerns unbuilding. Some portion of the land that your structures will go on currently have buildings, is that correct?

FG: Not very many.

KS: Not very many. But to the extent of whatever is there, be they rail yards or a few brownstones or whatever is there, there’s a certain amount of unbuilding. I’m wondering if, when you think of your designs, you think about an unbuilding process?


FG: No, because that was a given to me, I had nothing to say or do about that about that process, it was given to me. I suppose some of the buildings--when we started, there were a few buildings that were going to be kept, and we worked around them, and that felt better to me, to be able to do that, but they disappeared.

During the Q&A session near the end of the show (at about 48:00), the subject returned to Brooklyn, and Gehry's second sentence, about "who's right," was a lot less clear than his conclusion.

Q: You mentioned in talking about your project in Brooklyn that you wanted to get it right. I wonder if you could tell us what you think it would mean to get it right in Brooklyn?

FG: God…Solomon, where are you now? [Solomon was the slide operator for the event] Getting it right is ephemeral, of course, because it’s who’s right is right. But I’m looking for something, I’m looking for something that makes a new neighborhood in a historic town that nee—that deserves something special for it. Because this is a big, an extraordinarily important project, and it’s all on my head, as they say. And a lot of responsibility, and a lot of anxiety, I must say, about it. There are days when I want to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge, but--because a lot of people are watching.

And the scale of the project is bigger than anything around it. And that’s the driving—it has to be in order to be accomplished. I’ve been pushing back. The developers have been very accepting of my pushback. And so we’ve taken chunks of it away, actually, to bring it down into scale, to integrate it with whatever the existing fabric is there and then finding a way, in brick and metal and glass, maybe precast, a language that can work in that area that’ll feel like a very special place and since there’s so many buildings, the thought of finding a hierarchy was important to me, that there would be certain iconic pieces and a lot of background buildings, so there’s a lot of very just simple buildings, blocky. I look at it sometimes and I say, well, that looks like a lot of stuff that’s already there. And then I wonder, am I being too polite? So there’s an anxiety about that.

In the end, I have to be responsible for it and stand up and say, I believe this is the way we should do it. And it’s that kind of back-and-forth struggle with the people that are working on it with me and the client. It’s all out on the table. We talk about it, like I’m just talking about it. I’m not trying to pull the wool over anybody’s eyes. I’m trying to do it within a very open dialogue with the people who are involved. What’s right is, if it turns out great, that’s what’s right.

Remember this date: 11/7/05. It's key to the story of Forest City Ratner's plan to demolish six buildings in the footprint of the proposed Atlantic Yards complex. It's the date of the engineer's report to FCR that declared the buildings "an immediate threat to the preservation of life, health, and property." (The report describes sagging floors and water damage that threaten the integrity of the buildings, notwithstanding any apparent sturdiness from an outside view. Photos of the damaged interiors are contained in the report.) That means that Forest City Ratner, which announced its plan to the New York Times five weeks later, on 12/15/05 for coverage the next day, wasn't in the hugest hurry--though now the developer has nixed an independent review because it would "slow down the process."

Note that the report linked above was not initially released by Forest City Ratner when the story broke, but was provided only after requests by local elected officials and Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn. Photos below of the garage buildings at 620 and 622 Pacific Street were taken 12/18/05--it's not clear when or why windows were left open. Oddly, the Forest City Ratner press release said that 622 Pacific Street, the single-story building, was among "the six buildings which have been determined by LZA Technology to be unsafe." However, the report linked above doesn't mention 622 Pacific.

"The question is, God forbid that a building collapses, God forbid that a falling brick hits someone in the head, or that there's a fire," FCR's Bruce Bender told the Times. But if people were in imminent danger, why didn't the developer make an announcement immediately after the Nov. 7 report, or put more signs on the buildings? No press outlet has raised this question, but the timing of Forest City Ratner's announcement seems to have been tied less to the receipt of the report than the plans for asbestos abatement that were to begin a few days later. [Addendum 2/20/06: papers filed in the legal case show that Forest City Ratner's delayed its announcement only until the Empire State Development Corporation approved the demolition plans.]
Well, Forest City Ratner might say it had to get its asbestos abatement and demolition plans in place, including the identification of minority contractors, though apparently it has not yet applied for all the necessary permits. But the timing of the company's announcement deserves a closer look. FCR apparently gave the New York Times an exclusive, as it has done in the past, such as the 7/5/05 front-page article (Instant Skyline Added to Brooklyn Arena Plan) that introduced Frank Gehry's revised architectural sketches.

Why give the Times an exclusive? (A Forest City Ratner press release was dated 12/16/05, the date the Times story appeared.) Perhaps because the Times's audience, including policymakers, is the key audience as the Atlantic Yards plan makes its way through review by the Empire State Development Corporation. Perhaps because the Times has more space than the tabloids. Perhaps because a general public announcement might have led to more coverage, especially in the Brooklyn Papers, as noted below. Perhaps because the Times, while certainly providing more thorough coverage in recent months, has nonetheless given Forest City Ratner the benefit of the doubt in two long articles, on changes in the plan and the developer's community strategy.

Also, by announcing its decision to the Times on a Thursday (for Friday coverage), and by announcing it to the press at large a day later, Forest City Ratner could be sure that the story would not be covered immediately by the often-critical Brooklyn Paper weekly chain, which appears on Fridays (but has a Saturday publication date). [Addendum 2/20/06: The timing is more likely linked simply to the 12/15/05 decision by the Empire State Development Corporation.] And a Friday announcement would meet the deadline of the generally less-critical Courier-Life weekly chain, which appears on Saturdays (but has a Monday publication date). Indeed, the Courier-Life story included the Forest City Ratner press release, virtually verbatim, delivered just as the paper was going to press. (Note that the article is dated 12/16/05, which was apparently the day it was posted on the web, but the print issue is dated 12/19/05.)

The story continued to develop. On 12/19/05, a Daily News story headlined Plan to flatten 6 bldgs. ripped reported that City Council member Letitia James, along with fellow project critics state Senator Velmanette Montgomery and Representative Major Owens, would ask for a tour of the buildings with an independent engineer. (The building below, in two photos, is at 585 Dean Street--from the outside, it looks more stable than the Underberg building further below, though the engineer's report describes interior damage in both.) The Daily News reported a complicating fact not part of the Forest City Ratner press release or the Times story: the developer signed contracts regarding the buildings at issue from March to June 2004. (The Times described the properties as "newly acquired.") That leaves open the question of "developer's blight"--whether and how much the buildings deteriorated while under Forest City Ratner's control. The engineer's report cites water infiltration, the nature of the construction, and the age of the buildings. As Owens said in a press release issued on 12/22/05: "Ratner has owned many of these properties for over one year. Some of the damage sustained by these buildings took place after Ratner bought them. And we all know Ratner is trying to say this is a ‘blighted’ area so he can have the state seize properties for him using eminent domain. Simply put, the area is not 'blighted.' Real estate values in the footprint have risen at the same rate or faster than the rest of Brooklyn."

James also offered an unsupported quote to the Daily News: "I know these buildings, and some of them are as sound as the Empire State Building." But the bigger question is: would an outside engineer reach the same conclusions as the firm hired by Forest City Ratner?

We still don't know.

In a 12/22/05 article headlined RATNER 'RAZES' STAKES, the New York Post reported that James, Montgomery, and Owens decided not to tour the structures after the developer refused to allow the engineer to accompany them. After James's office issued a press release on 12/22/05, the Daily News, in a 12/23/05 article headlined Ratner nixes checks of Yards site bldgs., filled in the detail that Forest City Ratner had initially agreed to the request:
Originally, a Ratner executive approved a request from City Councilwoman Letitia James (WFP-Prospect Heights) to let her bring an independent engineer into the buildings on Dean St. and Atlantic Ave.
But in a reversal yesterday, another Ratner official barred the engineer - who had agreed to do the inspection for free - and said only elected officials could take the tour.
"It looks like they're trying to hide something," said James. "It looks like they're going forward with creating blight in the community."
James was more cautious in her comments: James conceded the Underberg Building [above, at 608-620 Atlantic Ave., photo from Forgotten NY] should be demolished, but said claims of decay at the Dean St. buildings are "questionable."

Architect Jonathan Cohn, in his Brooklyn Views blog, also raises questions about the buildings at 461 and 463 Dean Street, based on an outside view. (A photo from his 12/18/05 blog is at left.) James said of Forest City Ratner in a press release: "They told me that an independent review might 'slow down the process,'" said Council Member James. "I find this irresponsible, and overtly in contempt of the state environmental review process. We want to know what they are trying to hide by not letting us in. I have requested the Department of Buildings issue no permits until an analysis is done by someone not paid by Ratner."
Left unsaid is that the five week gap between the engineer's report and the Forest City Ratner announcement could have offered more time for such an independent review.

The press release apparently came too late for the article in the 12/24/05 Brooklyn Papers, headlined DEMOLITION MAN: Ratner preps Atlantic Yards site, which mentioned local officials' criticisms, but not the developer's denial of the request to have an engineer tour the buildings. The follow-up in the Courier-Life chain, headlined Ratner Itches to Level Buildings, did address the developer's denial of the request, but not the company's flip-flop. (The article is dated 12/23/05, but the issue is 12/26/05.) Rather, company spokesman Joe DePlasco criticized James for her "Empire State Building" comment, which suggested inconsistency on her part.

So what's next? According to the 12/31/05 edition of the Brooklyn Papers, in an article headlined James and Ratner: 2 heads ’a’ buttin’, James said she was asking the city to refuse to issue demolition permits, but Ratner’s spokesman Joe DePlasco said "the relevant agencies" have been convinced. DePlasco muddied the waters by saying that that James and the other critical elected officials "were invited to tour the structures with the licensed engineer who wrote the reports, but they said no." This seems like an example of DePlasco's "Changing the Subject" tactic, since the independent engineer could have come along and would not have delayed the process significantly. (The 11/7/05 LZA Technology report was based significantly on a field visit just a few days earlier, on 11/1/05.) As the Brooklyn Papers reported: DePlasco also pointed out that if the buildings were to collapse and injure someone, everyone would again be screaming for the head of Bruce Ratner.

Again, if the issue was public safety, why did that report wait five weeks?

On the Charlie Rose show on PBS last night, the host interviewed New York Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff (below, photo from Charlie Rose web site) about a range of issues and, at one point, the talk turned to Brooklyn. The critic offered some cautionary words about the relationship between architects and developers, and wondered whether Bruce Ratner would give Gehry more autonomy.

Charlie Rose: Brooklyn. Frank Gehry has a chance to change a city, literally, of four million people, which is the fourth or fifth largest city in America. Will that happen? [Note: Brooklyn has about 2.5 million people.]

Nicolai Ouroussoff:This goes back to what we've been talking about. One of the things that's fascinating to me about Brooklyn, and all the projects that Frank and also Renzo Piano are doing for Bruce Ratner, because Piano's designing the New York Times Tower.

CR: On Times Square.

NO: On Times Square, yeah.

CR: 42nd is it, or where?

NO: 41st, across from Port Authority, on Eighth Avenue. You can see it, it's going up now.

But I think that one of the things that's happened, that's very important in the past few years, that all of a sudden, because of the cachet that architects can bring to projects, that you have a lot of developers that suddenly are interested in working with the kinds of architects they never would've touched four or five years ago. And the question then becomes: what are these architects allowed to do? Are they only there to be able to kind of decorate buildings, to make them more appealing to the public, or to raise their value basically and put more money in the pockets of their developers? Or are they actually there to rethink the way most of this work is done? And I think, if you look at Frank Gehry's project for example for Bruce Ratner in Brooklyn, where he's dealing with an arena and a lot of residential space. We all know that Frank Gehry can make very pretty forms. He has an incredible sense of scale, of massing, he'll make the buildings somehow relate to what's around them, he understands context.

[The original plan, announced in December 2003, albeit without a close-up of the arena and the buildings around it, which were the only ones fleshed out.]


The question is, for me, is he going to be able to deal with the things that traditionally developers might not let him play with. For example, the social organizations of the apartments inside. The relationship of the project to the context around it, in terms of the ground plan. I think Frank comes out of a tradition, in terms of urban planning, that in a lot of ways is very conservative. He's never built on this scale before. And I think he's now getting into a kind of unfamiliar territory, in terms of the scale he's working with. One of the things I think happens when you're working with developers is that, y'know, the kinds of architects they're used to working with--they come up with a scheme and what the developer does is, he takes a scheme, and then he builds it.

And a talented architect, all of the work happens between here and here. You start with an idea and then it's at that moment that you struggle with it, that you realize that you start turning it into something, then it takes on a life of its own, you have to kind of let it go where it's going to go. And the question is: can these architects operate that way in the context of a developer like Bruce Ratner, and to me that's really important, because if you're able to make that system work and change that system, then you start to really affect the world in a very important way.

Andersen on Gehry, Gehry on Brooklyn

In the 11/28/05 issue of New York magazine, in an article headlined Delirious New York, Kurt Andersen noted that the reason for hiring Gehry (right, photo from Columbia University web site) was in part political:
Ratner isn’t spending 15 percent extra on these new buildings simply because he wants to underwrite cool design. He understands that in Brooklyn, just as his quotas of apartments for poor people and construction jobs for women and minorities were ways of winning over key constituencies, hiring Gehry was politics by other means, sure to please the city’s BAM-loving chattering class. “The spirit of what you say,” Ratner agrees when I posit this theory, “is accurate.”

And Ratner acknowledged to Andersen the distinction Ouroussoff pointed out: "I have to blame myself [for the Atlantic Center mall]. I’ve been talking for ten years about trying to use ‘design architects’ instead of 'developer architects.'"

But would the buildings of Atlantic Yards project "somehow relate to what's around them," as Ourossoff suggested? Andersen suggested they might not, but it was worth it: The skewed, cartoony angles of the buildings, which range from 20 to 60 stories, would in one fell swoop create a second, sui generis Brooklyn skyline encompassing the familiar, phallic old Williamsburgh Bank Building. Note, however, that that July 2005 design below may be supplanted by a new one. [Addenda courtesy of Naparstek.com]

A couple of letter-writers to New York magazine, however, were more critical. Stuart Schrader wrote: Like Bruce Ratner’s previous developments in Brooklyn, the Atlantic Yards stadium complex is not going to seamlessly merge a new development with an existing and vital cityscape. It seems totally appropriate, then, that Bruce Ratner would choose an architect whose buildings are rootless, equally out of place wherever they are erected, always supplanting on-the-ground urban realities with whimsical promises of a future that never quite arrives.

And what does Gehry think? Speaking to an audience at Columbia University on October 31, he said he had succeeded in getting the developer to agree to scale back chunks of the project (note that I originally wrote, based on the Columbia News Service report below, that Gehry wanted the project scaled back but Ratner has not yet announced doing so); that Brooklynites expect only brownstone scale (not quite; the community-developed Unity Plan for the Vanderbilt Yard envisions high-rise buildings, though not 40-60 stories, like some at Atlantic Yards); and that he's "brought all kinds of people in" to help him get it right (that's admirable, but could some of those people be concerned locals?).

Columbia's news service reported:
While best known for his shimmering forms like the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, and the Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, the Toronto-born Gehry, now 76, views himself as an urban planner, whose buildings should enhance their surroundings. "I'm a do-gooder," he said. "I see architecture as a service."
But as people in Brooklyn expect the borough to be all "brownstones and tree-lined streets," Gehry's project has met with opposition from the community. "You can't do that with a project of this size," he said, adding that he had asked the developer, Bruce Ratner, to scale back the project several times.
Meanwhile, he hasn't convinced Ratner to do something else: bring in other architects to design parts of the project, to ensure a variety of styles. "He wanted to be able to deal with one person, so he refused," Gehry said.
Faced with the challenge of designing the entire project on his own, Gehry decided to develop a "design hierarchy," where several "iconic towers" will be surrounded by "background buildings."
But the dilemma, he said, is that the background buildings end up looking ordinary, like standard-issue housing projects. "Sometimes I think I should be less polite," he said -- implying that life would be easier if his buildings were all attention-getters.
"I'm very insecure about it," Gehry said of the Brooklyn project. "I've brought all kinds of people in to beat me up, because I want to get it right."

A roundup article on post-Christmas shopping on the front-page of the Business Day section of today's New York Times, The Day After Christmas, Shoppers Take a Holiday, doesn't otherwise mention Brooklyn, but the photo depicts a man with four shopping bags. The caption: "Keino Bennet leaving the Atlantic Center Mall in Brooklyn yesterday."

Except he's outside the brick-and-glass clad Atlantic Terminal mall next to the Atlantic Center mall and, at least in the picture in the print version, the cinderblock Site 5 of Atlantic Center is in the background, across Flatbush Avenue, with P.C. Richard and Modell's. (In the cropped, online version of the photo (right), there's no dispute: the only mall shown is the Atlantic Terminal. Note that in an earlier version of this post, I misidentified Site 5 as the Atlantic Center Mall. Both have similar coloring, quite distinct from the brick of Atlantic Terminal.)

Also, the man pictured is carrying at least two bags from Target, an anchor tenant of the Atlantic Terminal mall. Both malls are products of developer Forest City Ratner, but Atlantic Center (opened 1996) is much-reviled for disrespecting the urban fabric, while Atlantic Terminal (opened 2004) gets more mixed reviews.

As noted in Chapter 14 of my report, FCR head Bruce Ratner himself has criticized in Atlantic Center, telling the Times (Rethinking Atlantic Center With the Customer in Mind, 5/26/04): "Honestly, it isn’t beautiful. It’s not architecturally outstanding. It’s kept clean, and we do try and take care of it. It’s not as bad as a strip center in the burbs, I mean, but it’s not something that we would build again."
Others are harsher. Observed architectural historian and critic Francis Morrone in The New York Sun (ABROAD IN NEW YORK, 2/23/04): Atlantic Center Mall is the ugliest building in Brooklyn.

As for Atlantic Terminal mall, as noted in Chapter 10 of my report, a 5/22/05 Times Real Estate section article headlined The Underground Economy: Subway Retailing stated: The M.T.A. also worked with a private developer to turn Atlantic Terminal in Brooklyn into an attractive mall with almost 400,000 square feet of retail space.

Now, Atlantic Terminal could not have been "turn[ed]... into an attractive mall" since it was built on empty land made vacant years ago after the historic Long Island Rail Road terminal was demolished. Atlantic Terminal more resembles the Manhattan Mall at Sixth Avenue and 33rd Street, which sits aboveground, with a subway concourse below. And The mall’s attractiveness is a matter of opinion. In a 4/25/05 New Yorker article, Rebecca Mead wrote (Mr. Brooklyn: Marty Markowitz—the man, the plan, the arena): The mall is an unlovely green-and-brown hulk bordering streets of brownstones, the shape of whose sloped roofs its own much taller roof grotesquely mimics.

The esthetic distinction between the two malls matters on another level as well, because the Atlantic Center mall may be torn down to build a new and higher-yielding development. It's not part of the Atlantic Yards plan, but it needs to be taken into consideration by urban planners. At the same time in February that city and state officials signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) regarding Atlantic Yards, they also signed an undisclosed MOU regarding two parcels of land. One parcel is Site 5 (now occupied by Modell's and P.C. Richard), to be replaced by a 430-foot tower as part of the Atlantic Yards project. The other is the Atlantic Center mall, which according to that second MOU--unveiled by Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn in August--offers 1.586 million zoning square feet for a mixed-use development consisting of residential development, commercial office space, and retail space.

According to page 3 of the MOU, if the arena project does not occur, Forest City Ratner would develop up to "875,000 square feet of commercial office space and up to 711,000 square feet of residential space on the Atlantic Center site." If Atlantic Yards does go through, the developer would subtract "328,272 zoning square feet of office, retail, and/or residential space." That would mean 1.26 million square feet. Given that Atlantic Yards, currently slated to be 9.1 million square feet, has been criticized as too big by even supporters like Marty Markowitz, the proposed project at Atlantic Center should be factored into the public discussion.

[Correction: FCR all along has had the right to build at the Atlantic Center site; the MOU would transfer a portion of the development rights to Site 5.]

Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn, in its 10/28/05 response to the Empire State Development Corporation (a tenant at the Atlantic Center mall, by the way), commented that the upcoming Draft Environmental Impact Statement regarding Atlantic Yards must take plans for Atlantic Center into account:
In March 2005, ESDC, the City and FCRC announced the Memorandum of Understanding dated February 18, 2005 governing this project and entitled “Brooklyn Arena/Mixed Use Development Project”. There was another Memorandum of Understanding dated that same day entitled “ATURA Development Project” which was not announced. That second MOU appears to contemplate the transfer of development rights from the Atlantic Center to Site 5 and further development of the Atlantic Center. While the project description for this project does include some development of Site 5, it does not include the planned expansion of Atlantic Center. The DEIS must accurately describe what is contemplated in the second MOU and include the development contemplated therein as part of the project or at the least the cumulative impacts of the further development of Atlantic Center with the current proposal.

The Times has yet to write about this. In fact, the only daily paper to write about the second MOU was the New York Sun, in an 8/18/05 article headlined PRIVATE MEMO GUARANTEES RATNER SPACE. In the article, Ratner spokesman Joe DePlasco said that plans for Site 5 were disclosed at a 5/26/05 public hearing and in some local newspapers--true--but he said nothing about previous disclosure of plans for Atlantic Center. The Sun reported: As for the memorandum, a spokeswoman for the Economic Development Corporation, Janel Patterson, said that although it was never distributed publicly, it "has been available to anyone that requested it."

Note: there was no particular reason for the Times to shoot a generic post-Christmas photo outside one of Ratner's Brooklyn malls. In fact, the Times did shoot a second picture at Macy's at Manhattan's Herald Square; that smaller photo accompanied the Contents box on the front page of the main section. I don't suspect there was any intention to burnish the image of Forest City Ratner. It was likely the most convenient shot logistically for the assigned photographer. But if Times staffers were reminded that the developer is partnering with the New York Times Company on the new Times Tower, they'd have a heightened awareness of Forest City Ratner properties--for example, that 5/22/05 story mentioned above that praised the Atlantic Terminal mall should have named the developer, but it didn't. And they might identify the malls correctly. Because it matters.

In an article published in several editions of Brooklyn's Courier-Life chain this week, state Assembly Member Roger Green discusses his potential run for Congress against Rep. Edolphus Towns. The incumbent Towns doesn't come off well--his spokesperson apparently declined to be named. But more curious is the newspaper's incomplete treatment of Green's ethical lapses:
While some have questioned Towns’ voting record, Green, if he decided to run, will be doing so with a checkered past.
In 2004, Green pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor counts of petty larceny stemming from billing the state for travel expenses that were already paid for from a prison-services company seeking state contracts.
As part of his bargain, Green escaped felony charges, which would have prevented him from standing for re-election. After his conviction, Green resigned his seat only to run again and regain it that same year.
“When I was re-elected [after the conviction], I received the largest vote of any African-American assembly member in the borough. I think my apologizing for what occurred embraces the narrative of African-American males in this society, which is about resiliency and human redemption,” said Green.
Green said he looks at U.S. Senator John McCain, who was part of the investigation related to the savings and loan scandal and later admitted mistakes, but went on to be one the nation’s most respected lawmakers.

But it was not just a question of resiliency and redemption. As the Courier-Life's then-Brooklyn Politics columnist Erik Engquist reported 6/14/04, Green's resignation was part of a plan:
Green would rather have not resigned at all, but he did so in a deal with Assembly Speaker Shelly Silver to prevent (or at least forestall) the release of the Assembly Ethics Committee's report on his misconduct, which would have prompted his colleagues to punish him.

The Assembly's refusal to release that report has been criticized by both editorialists and good government watchdogs, and Engquist's column pointed out that, while Green cited other lawmakers for ethical lapses, Green has a lot of trouble casting himself as a reformer.

One of the white lawmakers Green cited: Marty Markowitz. The New Yorker has reported that, when Markowitz first ran for Borough President in 1985, he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor for failing to disclose a campaign contribution from a local businessman; he paid a nearly $8,000 fine, and performed 75 hours of community service. By contrast, according to recent press reports, Green paid $3,000 in restitution and $2,000 in fines, and was sentenced to three years' probation.

Another statement by Green deserves further analysis. One reason he received "the largest vote of any African-American assembly member in the borough" is that he faced no opposition in the Democratic primary--tantamount to election--and token Republican opposition. The New York Times explained on 11/2/04 (In District Lines, Critics See Albany Protecting Its Own) that it looked like cronyism:
While many New Yorkers might wonder about the fate of some candidates in today's election, Roger Green is not likely to be among them. Mr. Green ran without opposition in the Democratic primary and faces a little-known Republican rival as he seeks to return to the Assembly, completing a political comeback just months after he resigned from the Legislature in disgrace after pleading guilty to billing the state for false travel expenses.
Mr. Green's likely return to the Assembly is a textbook example, critics say, of one of the most brazen ways Albany protects its own: By carving up legislative districts to assure that incumbents face little or no opposition. In Mr. Green's case, the redrawing took place before his resignation, and after a significant challenge in a primary.
Mr. Green could have faced another formidable primary challenge this year from Hakeem Jeffries, a lawyer who made a vigorous but ultimately unsuccessful run against him two years ago. But this time around, Mr. Jeffries could not challenge Mr. Green, since his Brooklyn block was carved out of the 57th Assembly District, which Mr. Green represented.
"The district was cut out by just that one block," Mr. Jeffries said. "It's unfortunate that the dysfunctional nature of the Legislature in Albany allows politicians to slice and dice communities to meet their own needs."

The Times Union of Albany has produced the most thorough coverage of Green's lapses. The Albany County probation department concluded that Green was either of limited mental capacity or dishonest because he denied that he knowingly violated the law, the newspaper said. The probation officer called Green's story of why he submitted fraudulent reimbursement requests "very convoluted," according to a 3/25/04 article. Green's lawyer, without providing specific details, said facts in the probation report were "demonstrably untrue" and Green told the newspaper on 3/31/04, "It's not the first time a black man's intelligence has been questioned."

In a 12/22/05 editorial headlined "Enough, Mr. Green," the Times-Union decried Green's potential run for Congress: "So much for any sense of remorse... Next year, depending on what he runs for, [the people of Brooklyn] should vote against him for Congress or vote him out of the Assembly - anything to deny him of his shameless aspirations."

I should add that City Councilwoman Leticia James--now an antagonist on the Atlantic Yards issue--was Green's senior staffer during the period of time he billed the state for expenses he didn't pay for. She defended Green in the 6/4/04 New York Times, which reported: City Councilwoman Letitia James said, "The people in this community are still with him." Also, she told the New York Sun, in a 6/2/04 article: "There was no intent on his part to do anything wrong," said Council Member Letitia James, who formerly served as Mr. Green's chief of staff.

A Times Real Estate section correction printed 12/25/05: The "Living In ..." article last Sunday, about Prospect Heights in Brooklyn, referred imprecisely to a proposal by Bruce C. Ratner to build a nearby complex of shops, offices, housing and a basketball arena. It would indeed be built over the Atlantic Avenue railyards, but also on adjacent land now occupied by residences and businesses.

Indeed, precise description of the location is important, since the railyards occupy 8.3 acres of a proposed 22-acre site, as has been pointed out multiple times. The project also would require purchase of private land, the closing of city streets, and, most likely, the use of eminent domain--all unnecessary if the project were confined to the railyards. I'd also quibble with the description of the project itself, since, as I noted, the phrase "a sizable complex of shopping, offices, housing and a Frank Gehry-designed arena"--contrasts with the more accurate description in an 11/6/05 Metro section article: "essentially a large residential development with an arena and a relatively small amount of office and retail space attached to it."

Still, it's welcome that the Times--which generally corrects the most minute of errors--finally corrected this far more significant one. But will the Times now issue corrections for the same error? It previously occurred in John Manbeck's 11/13/05 op-ed (Forest City Ratner Companies' plan to build a sports arena surrounded by 17 imposing high-rise buildings on the Atlantic Avenue railyards) and then-architecture critic Herbert Muschamp's 12/11/03 assessment (The six-block site is adjacent to Atlantic Terminal, where the Long Island Rail Road and nine subway lines converge. It is now an open railyard.).

Given that previous correction requests regarding the above two errors have not yielded results, I'm not sure whether the correction printed today represents a change of policy or a sign of the Times's balkanization--it may be that the Real Estate desk is more willing to print corrections. Still, if the Times wants to remain consistent, the Manbeck and Muschamp descriptions should be corrected as well.

So, four weeks after the New York Times published a deeply-flawed editorial about Atlantic Yards (A Matter of Scale in Brooklyn, 11/27/05), calling for the project to be scaled down (by an unspecified amount), the Times finally printed four letters in response. I say "finally" because the Times City Weekly section usually publishes letters within a week or two.

The tally: three letters critical of the development, one in favor, but some key criticisms missing. The first problem is the headline: "Brooklyn's Railyards: The Fight Continues." It's not a fight about the railyard, it's about a 22-acre project that would include construction over the 8.3-acre railyard. How about "Atlantic Yards: The Fight Continues" or "Brooklyn Mega-project: The Fight Continues."

Lucy Koteen, an activist from Fort Greene, pointed out that the editorial ignored that "[t]he approval process bypasses all local oversight," even though the MTA land is only about one-third of the project. Koteen also noted that local residents "desire development over the M.T.A. yards that is fair and inclusive and has a city-led review process, rather than a developer-driven project that relies solely on well-oiled connections to the governor and the mayor for approval." However, unlike Daniel Goldstein's unpublished letter, Koteen diplomatically neglected to chide the Times for speciously suggesting that the residents of the area want the status quo.

Stuart Pertz of Park Slope, a former member of the City Planning Commission and a former consulting architect-planner to Forest City Ratner Companies, suggested that the Times let the developer off the hook:
Emphasizing "a matter of scale" in a debate over the developer Bruce Ratner's Atlantic Yards rather than character and quality exposes the public to a dangerous ruse.
A focus on scale allows a developer to own the development debate - letting the community steam and fret, and when the furor is exhausted, (reluctantly) reducing the project's scale to very much what the developer intended in the first place.

Peter Levinson of Windsor Terrace contended that Ratner may be gambling by planning 3,000 [actually, 2,800] market-rate condos, given other development in the area, and that taxpayers and politicians should think twice about funding it.

The only defense came from a Manhattanite, Jay Weiser of NoHo, a professor of real estate law at Baruch College. He wrote:
There is no more ideal place in Brooklyn (or even the United States) for a large-scale development like Atlantic Yards, which sits atop one of the densest mass transit hubs in the world.
Your concerns about scale are out of place. Atlantic Yards will rise over massive, empty railyards that have been an eyesore for a century.
Also out of place is your desire to replace Forest City Ratner Companies' market judgment on the appropriate mix of uses with your own. Why build commercial space in a marginal Brooklyn location when there's excess office space in Lower Manhattan?
In contrast, demand for housing is booming. Even if Forest City Ratner reduces the proportion of low- and middle-income units in the project, new market-rate units will add supply and reduce housing prices for all New Yorkers. We need to remove obstacles to build housing for New Yorkers.

Well, we're back to the distinction between "over the railyard" and "over and around the railyard." If the Atlantic Yards project were confined solely to the railyard, Weiser's argument would be stronger. His call to defer to Forest City Ratner's "market judgment" would hold more water if the company were not seeking subsidies and other benefits that distort the free market.

What's missing from these letters? How about criticism of the Times's willingness to overlook the costs of the project as a whole, or the effect of the most expensive arena proposed on those total costs?

Does Forest City Ratner still plan to build a parking garage--a tough-to-defend terrorist target--under the proposed Brooklyn Arena, the keystone of the Atlantic Yards plan? If not, where would arena parking go? And will the state Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC) consider security and terrorism issues when it produces a Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) for Atlantic Yards?

Those are three key questions as we await ESDC's issuance of a scope--the range of issues to be studied and study area to be considered--for the Atlantic Yards DEIS. The draft scope, written by consultants AKRF (hired by ESDC, but paid for by developer Forest City Ratner), brushes off challenges affecting police and fire service, and ignores larger security and terrorism issues, lapses that have drawn harsh criticism not only from critical local officials but also Community Boards around the project footprint. And it leaves the arena parking issue murky. (The draft scope also has been criticized for its treatment of traffic, parking, and pedestrian issues. Note that I originally wrote that FCR hired AKRF for the draft scope, not ESDC; FCR has hired AKRF on other aspects of the project.)

It's possible, based on the available evidence to be discussed below, that the developer no longer plans a garage under the arena, that additional parking may be planned offsite near public transit, and that the state review will be forced to confront the terrorism issue. If not, expect some major conflicts over these issues.

Some context about consultants AKRF, who have worked on projects ranging from Shea Stadium to Battery Park City. Obviously large developers value AKRF's work, but a frequent critic is Richard Lipsky, whose Neighborhood Retail Alliance lobbies for local businesses over big boxes and large developments. In a post on his blog, Lipsky wrote, "The AKRF folks are simply rationalizing their job which is to make a great deal of money by minimizing impacts and conducting dishonest research." In another post, Lipsky deemed AKRF "accommodating consultants" and "trained in the abject aping of its master’s whims."

But don't expect Lipsky to challenge AKRF's work on the Atlantic Yards project. He backs the development, despite Forest City Ratner's track record of bringing national chains to its Brooklyn properties. Lipsky, according to an 11/14/05 profile in the New York Observer, is getting paid by Ratner to organize an amateur sports league at the proposed Brooklyn arena and to do other lobbying for the developer's projects. Lipsky generally opposes projects that require eminent domain, but told the Observer, "If it was bringing in big-box stores or displacing other retailers, we might have different feelings."

The plan for a garage

An arena that can seat 18,000 to 20,000 people, even at one of the city's busiest mass transit hubs, would require associated parking, as would a significant amount of residential units--initially projected to be 4,500, now 7,300. At least that's what Forest City Ratner concluded in its early plans for the project. The first set of press releases, in December 2003, announced 3,000 underground parking spaces (1,100 for the arena + 1,900 for the housing development to the east), as noted in these architectural sketches .

The 2/18/05 Memorandum of Understanding between the developer and city/state agencies, shows underground parking beneath both the arena and housing (see p. 18 of the PDF), and describes how tax-exempt bonds would finance both the arena and "the on-site Arena garage" (see p. 6 of the PDF), which would apparently be under the building.

Since then, however, it's gotten murky. The 9/15/05 draft scope issued by the ESDC describes 4,000 parking spaces, including 2,100 to be built in the first (arena + surrounding towers) phase. It acknowledges: The study area has a very limited parking supply, and thus, the proposed project anticipates providing a substantial number of new spaces.

But the draft scope, prepared by the developer's consultants, does not specify that the parking would be underground. It does state that one challenge is to "assess the potential impacts associated with proposed parking facilities."

Does Forest City Ratner still plan an under-arena garage? Company spokesperson Lupe Todd did not respond to four queries. Staffers at Brooklyn Borough Hall also wouldn't answer that question (though they responded to others).

However, comments on the draft scope submitted by Borough President Marty Markowitz hinted that, given the parking crunch, more parking areas would be needed outside the proposed footprint: For arena events, however, the distribution of structured parking, particularly those near transit services, within at least approximately one mile should be estimated and analyzed.

Council of Brooklyn Neighborhoods (CBN) secretary Jim Vogel commented, "There is no definite parking garage in the current plan as put forward by the developer, as far as we can tell. Until we can see exactly what is proposed there is nothing definite to respond to. As we have said by way of our statement of support for the new NIST [National Institute of Standards and Technology] guidelines, underground parking is problematic from a security point of view."

Problematic indeed, as architect Jonathan Cohn wrote on his Brooklyn Views blog: Does anyone really believe, post 9-11, that we’ll allow unchecked passenger vehicles to drive under an arena filled with 20,000 fans at events carried live on national TV? Could the vehicles be checked first? Proper checking takes time...

One solution, as Cohn observed, would be to try to prevent parking on neighborhood streets--a further incentive to use mass transit. At a Borough Board hearing on traffic and parking earlier this month, there was much discussion about the need to encourage use of mass transit, but there was no mention of the onsite garage.

Then again, a report in Oculus, the magazine of the American Institute of Architects New York Chapter, on Frank Gehry's late November appearance in New York, described "3,900 below-grade parking spaces." Do the architects know something the rest of us don't?

Downplaying security issues

Security gets short shrift in the ESDC's draft scope. One of the tasks, Task 5, addresses "Community Facilities and Services," including police and fire protection, schools, libraries, day care, and health care needs. The ability of both the police and fire departments to provide fire protective services for a new project usually do not warrant a detailed assessment under the state process, the document states, "only if a proposed project would affect the physical operations of, or access to and from," the fire and police stations.

Thus the draft scope does not propose detailed analyses of police and fire protection for the largest project in the history of Brooklyn. Note that Forest City Ratner has previously downplayed the cost of increased police and fire protection, though the city Independent Budget Office observed that "costs to the city for policing the new Nets arena could be significant."

Rather, for Task 5, the draft scope proposes analysis of public schools, libraries, health care facilities, and day care centers. That emphasis drew criticism from the CBN, which pointed out that Engine Company 219/Ladder Company 1 at 494 Dean Street abuts the project site, and the 78th Precinct at 65 6th Avenue is less than two blocks away--and both would be affected by construction, street closings, and traffic. Even Markowitz's submission to the ESDC said that "the impact of the induced traffic on emergency services should be assessed."

The three affected Community Boards were even more forceful in their testimony to the ESDC. CB6 pointed out:
Contrary to the project sponsor’s assertion, a full and detailed analysis of fire and police protection impacts must be performed. The project will result in the permanent loss of city streets, street and lane closures throughout the next decade, the removal of 2 bridges, the removal of excessive amounts of construction and demolition debris, the delivery of an excessive amount of building materials and the delivery and regular use of heavy construction machinery and equipment. Taken together, these impacts will prove a substantial impediment to mobility and access in an area that is already notoriously among the worst for baseline traffic conditions and pedestrian safety. Without question, the sheer size and duration of the project will directly affect the fire and police departments’ abilities to respond to emergency calls. Failure to analyze the project’s impacts on fire and police protection in detail will place our communities at an unacceptable and avoidable risk.

CB8 noted security concerns: Prior to the 9/11/2001 attack, a plan to destroy the Atlantic Avenue station was fortunately thwarted. Because of the real possibility of another incident on American soil, special attention needs to be paid to security concerns related to international or domestic terrorism. Recently released Department of Homeland Security's 15 National Planning Scenarios, covering both natural disasters and domestic or foreign attack, reveals that over half of these scenarios apply to the BAY project.
Among the possibilities: Truck bombs and/or car bombs entering, or just passing by, the BAY complex.

CB8 also asked about parking: Will parking in underground lots be restricted during arena events given the example of how parking has been restricted at the US Tennis Open in Queens? How might such parking restrictions impact traffic & thus impact evacuation and rescue operations as well as the local economy?

Was security discussed at the Borough Hall meetings aimed to provide input on the draft scope? Borough Hall spokeswoman Regina Weiss responded: On November 29, safety and security issues were discussed during the meeting of the Brooklyn Borough Board Committee on Atlantic Yards regarding community facilities. Representatives from the FDNY and NYPD advised the committee that they will be reviewing the plans for Atlantic Yards to make sure that all security concerns will be addressed.

I wasn't there, but CB2 district manager Robert Perris said the above description was "a fair summation of the discussion on the topic of security," though "To the best of my recollection, no aspect of security was discussed in detail."

Security issues beyond Task 5, "Community Facilities"

Because the draft scope doesn't include a separate section on terrorism, the meetings at Borough Hall haven't considered it. But the CBN, in its voluminous written testimony to the ESDC, stated: The EIS should include a section on Terrorism because the project site would meet several criteria that define a terrorist target of opportunity: a prior terrorist attack, the city’s third largest transit hub, a major sports arena, location under a La Guardia Airport flight path, the height and limited setbacks of buildings, and the large numbers of people living, working and visiting the site.
Risks. The EIS should disclose all significant risks associated with the location of the project and design of the buildings...

CB2 also commented to the ESDC: The EIS should include, to the degree that this is possible, discussion about the review by the New York Police Department of the project as a possible terrorist target. Transportation hubs and places of public assembly are documented potential targets. The most recent redesign of the “Freedom Tower” clearly indicates that there is a public interest in, and a public policy for, such a discretionary review.

Indeed, Bernard A. Tolbert, chief of security for the National Basketball Association, said in 2003: "While some of the security concerns like crowd control, scalpers and unruly fans have always been considerations, we now find ourselves looking at issues like potential suicide bombers, the vulnerability of heating and air conditioning intake systems, vehicle bombs and food supply chain safety."

Security analysts Christinia Cope and Alan Rosner warned in a July 2005 white paper that requirements for vehicle searches would cause "widespread traffic jams and extreme delays throughout downtown Brooklyn." Rosner, at the ESDC hearing in October, also asked that the scope be expanded to require that the NYPD (with the Deparment of Homeland Security) examine this project just as they did Ground Zero. See more coverage of security issues at NoLandGrab.

In October, Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn commented to the ESDC that another arena site, notably Coney Island would be safer: Given the obvious concerns for traffic and security from terrorist attacks, to name a few, there are clearly alternative locations for the arena that may mitigate those impacts.

Expect more questions, and more discussion, especially when FDNY & NYPD provide the reports requested by Borough Hall. However, the Borough Hall meetings are a shadow to the ESDC process, and the bigger question is whether the revised scope, and the subsequent Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS), will address security and terrorism issues with the seriousness required.

It may sound like a small distinction, but it's an important one. Many press accounts use a careless shorthand, saying that the proposed Atlantic Yards project, or its Brooklyn Arena component, would be built "over" the Vanderbilt Yard of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. The latest example: today's New York Post uses that shorthand: The arena — which would be built over the MTA-owned Atlantic Avenue Rail Yards...

But that's imprecise. The railyard's northern border is Atlantic Avenue; its southern border is Pacific Street. But the arena, and the project in general, would extend beyond Pacific Street to Dean Street. [Note that the map below, from Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn, was made when the project was to include 17 high-rise buildings, rather than the current 16. Also see the ESDC draft scope document (which sometimes freezes in your browser) for a map.]



Why is this significant? Because developer Forest City Ratner cannot complete its 22-acre project simply by building on the 8.3-acre railyard (for which it has purchased development rights) and must purchase private property--and quite likely ask the state to condemn other properties via eminent domain. By contrast, the Extell Development Company's rival proposal to the MTA would have used only the railyard, conforming to the community-developed Unity Plan. That's not to endorse Extell, just to point out that they are very different proposals.

So what should the press do? I suggest using the shorthand "on and around the railyard" or "over and around the railyard." It doesn't require much more space, and it's far more precise. It's misleading to suggest that the project or arena would be built "over" the railyard.

In a 12/21/05 column in the black-oriented Our Time Press, headlined Atlantic Yards and the Obligations of Leadership, Daily News columnist Errol Louis deems three black elected officials failures because they haven't followed state Assemblyman Roger Green's lead in negotiating the Community Benefits Agreement (CBA) with Forest City Ratner.

Louis has vociferously, if misguidedly, supported the Atlantic Yards project, so we can't expect him to acknowledge the significant criticism of the CBA. After citing Green, he writes:
The rest of the area’s political delegation – Councilwoman Tish James, Congressman Major Owens and State Senator Velmanette Montgomery – has either tried to kill the project outright or mounted endless attacks on it. That’s no way to bring economic prosperity to an area that’s desperate for it.
In almost any other big city – Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit and Washington, D.C. come to mind – black pols understand the critical importance of positioning black businesses and professionals to benefit from big public-sector projects. In the 1970s, for instance, Maynard Jackson, Atlanta’s first black mayor, worked tirelessly to ensure that black companies got a slice of the contracts associated with the building of the city’s airport – and succeeded in putting millions in the pockets of black entrepreneurs, which in turn helped build a solid black middle class.

But it's not exactly clear how many black professionals, business-owners, or workers from Brooklyn will benefit from the Community Benefits Agreement. The document includes this passage (p. 2):
Whereas, the Coalition and the Developers seek to maximize the benefits of the Project to residents of Brooklyn, as well as minority and women construction, professional and operational workers and business owners and thereby to encourage systemic changes in the traditional ways of doing business on large urban development projects...

As noted, most but not all of the groups endorsing the CBA are Brooklyn-based, but the minority-owned engineering firm that will oversee air monitoring and safety requirements during asbestos abatement at several buildings is based in Staten Island, and the minority-owned plumbing company that will disconnect water and sewer lines to the buildings is based in Queens. As for some other minority-owned firms, as noted, it's not clear how much engaging them encourages systemic changes. Construction firm McKissack and McKissack is already doing pretty well; it has offices in New York and Philadelphia, but its web site defaults to Philadelphia, so it's not exactly local (though local subcontractors will be hired). Ismael Leyva Architects and lighting consultant Domingo Gonzales Associates are based in Manhattan and already seemingly thriving (and, if we're counting ethnicity, Latino). The Terrie Williams Agency, also based in Manhattan, seems to be doing well.

But Louis fudges the issue, writing:
Atlantic Yards, unlike any of the other listed development projects, already has a publicly stated, legally binding community benefits agreement that promises hefty percentages of the project’s dollars and jobs will go to minority- and women-owned businesses and local residents. At this stage of the game the question should be how and when the dollars will begin flowing into central Brooklyn.
Green has been diligent about getting and staying at the bargaining table, negotiating commitments for local businesses and residents – but far too many of the other local pols just don’t get it. Many have wasted two years trying to shrink or kill Atlantic Yards rather than fight to get the biggest possible slice of the multi-billion-dollar project channeled to local businesses.

As noted by the New York Observer, the CBA doesn't guarantee much to Green's constituents:
Perhaps more importantly, though, is just how many jobs will go to the poor, black neighborhood residents who live on three sides of the project site. The Brooklyn document sets up a hierarchy whereby public-housing residents get first dibs on spots in a job-referral program and a construction-job training program. But the agreement sets no numerical targets for how many local people will get jobs.
The agreement doesn’t mention the 400 jobs Forest City expects to bring when it moves the Nets basketball arena from New Jersey, which Mr. Stuckey said will be subject to union rules and may be filled with current employees.
Nor does the agreement mention jobs in the proposed hotel, which would also be subject to union rules, Mr. Stuckey said.
That leaves the construction jobs, about 1,500 of them over the next 10 years. The agreement sets a goal of employing 35 percent minorities—a reasonable and achievable threshold which Forest City has met on its other projects. In other words, 525 jobs—not reserved for public-housing residents, or even residents of Crown Heights and Bed-Stuy, but for minorities from all over the metropolitan region.

Green has been diligent about getting and staying at the bargaining table, in Louis's words? It's a little deeper than that--Green had previously gained support from Forest City Ratner, as noted in Chapter 4 of my report, and a former top aide left to work in community affairs for the developer. Perhaps James, Montgomery, and Owens are looking at the larger picture: a project that would cost the public well over $1 billion over 30 years deserves scrutiny rather than simply a search for a share--and relatively small share, considering the number of jobs and amount of low-income housing--in central Brooklyn.

Footnote: Louis doesn't mention that he was once a potential candidate, along with Letitia James, for the City Council seat won in 2001 by James E. Davis.

[I originally wrote that he and James ran for the seat, but Louis pointed out to me in a followup e-mail that "I never officially declared, never formed a campaign committee, circulated no petitions and was enrolled in law school weeks before Primary Day. In other words, I did not run for council in 2001." OK, but others thought he was running. The Courier-Life chain reported 6/25/01 that Louis had "dropped out of the 35th Councilmanic District race, citing an array of reasons for his decision." City Limits weekly, in a 6/4/01 article, reported that Louis had lost an endorsement to James: Errol Louis, co-founder of Bedford-Stuyvesant's Central Brooklyn Federal Credit Union, dropped his race for City Councilmember Mary Pinkett's seat last week. The cost of campaigning this year, said Louis, just didn't add up. Although he won 30 percent of the vote in his 1997 race for the seat, he had only raised about $15,000 to date. "You have to really, really want to do it," he said.
Veteran political observers say they're not surprised Louis dropped out. Louis suffered a blow a few weeks ago when he lost his bid for support from the Working Families Party to Letitia James, an aide to Assemblymember Al Vann who has the backing of Brooklyn Democratic Party Chair Clarence Norman.]

After Davis was tragically killed, James won the 2003 election for the seat. James is a former aide to Roger Green, so their opposition on the Atlantic Yards issue likely combines philosophical, political, and personal factors. Green, of course, has his own ethically questionable history. [Louis pointed out that James was Green's senior staffer during the period of time he stole $3,000 in state funds, leading to his misdemeanor guilty plea. I'll add that she defended Green in the 6/4/04 New York Times, which reported: City Councilwoman Letitia James said, "The people in this community are still with him." Also, she told the New York Sun, in a 6/2/04 article written by Louis himself: "There was no intent on his part to do anything wrong," said Council Member Letitia James, who formerly served as Mr. Green's chief of staff.]

The 12/18/05 New York Times Real Estate section article about Prospect Heights, "A Neighborhood Comes Into Its Own," didn't mention the parent New York Times Company's connection to developer Forest City Ratner--they are partners in building the Times Tower in Midtown. I critiqued the article previously; here I'll explain why I think it should've included the Times/Ratner disclosure, even though it's a close call.

The Times has consistently disclosed the Times/Ratner business relationship in its recent Metro section news coverage of Atlantic Yards and in its editorials. As noted in Chapter 10 of my report, the Times did not do so consistently in its early coverage of the impending project, including articles in the Sports section. Nor did the Times do so in some positive Real Estate section articles about other Forest City Ratner projects--relevant since they border the proposed Atlantic Yards and also reflect the developer's track record. Nor was there disclosure in then-architecture critic Herbert Muschamp's rhapsodic 12/11/03 essay ("Courtside Seats to an Urban Garden"), which later provided Forest City Ratner with quotes suitable for a p.r. mailer. Current critic Nicolai Ouroussoff, by contrast, did disclose the connection in his 7/5/05 essay ("Seeking First to Reinvent the Sports Arena, and Then Brooklyn") in response to the latest architectural drawings. Muschamp, as noted in Chapter 14 of my report, also failed to disclose that he served on a committee with Forest City Ratner executives (Bruce Ratner and Jim Stuckey) that helped choose the architect for the Times Tower.

Such disclosure decisions are judgment calls, so what's the standard?

Following the Times Magazine’s 6/26/05 interview with FCR President Bruce Ratner, current Public Editor Byron Calame criticized the paper’s failure to disclose its ties to the developer. Calame wrote in his 6/29/05 Web Journal:
Full Disclosure of Ties with Bruce Ratner
The New York Times, I believe, has an obligation to alert readers when they are reading substantive articles about a company or individual with whom the newspaper has some business or professional relationship. This obligation wasn’t fulfilled Sunday when the chatty “Questions for Bruce Ratner” in The New York Times Magazine failed to mention that the real estate developer and the parent company of this newspaper are partners in the construction of the Times’s new headquarters in Manhattan. Given the smiling, page-high cutout photograph of Mr. Ratner that accompanied the article, it was an especially inopportune time to fail to mention his ties to The Times. [Emphasis added.]

Calame added that "it appears to be an unusual lapse"--a judgment with which, as noted above, I disagree with somewhat.

So back to the recent Real Estate section article. Why require disclosure in an article in which only three of 32 paragraphs concern Atlantic Yards--plus another paragraph mentioning the developer? Because, on balance, I think the Times should err on the side of more disclosure, rather than less. That article on Prospect Heights will be cut out (or printed out) and read by many a house- or apartment-hunter, some perhaps new to the city or to Brooklyn.

Anyone moving to Prospect Heights should know that Atlantic Yards, the biggest project in the history of Brooklyn, would have major ripple effects in terms of traffic, transit, and construction, among other issues that I think were underplayed in the Real Estate article. Anyone moving to Prospect Heights should be put on notice that the Times has a business relationship with Forest City Ratner, and that a search for information on the neighborhood should involve not only the Times but other daily and weekly publications. As stated in my report, there's no evidence that Times reporters have been told to go easy on Ratner; it's just that, given the business relationship, the Times should report exactingly, to dispel the spectre of a conflict of interest, and the Times has not done so.

I don't think all articles that glancingly--as opposed to substantively--discuss Forest City Ratner deserve such disclosure. But this one does, especially since the article's offhand reference to the "stunning apartment building converted by the Forest City Ratner Companies" has such a rich backstory, unmentioned in the Times article.

You don't look to the New York Times Real Estate section for hard-hitting reporting, at least in its neighborhood profiles, so it's understandable that the 12/18/05 profile, Living In: Prospect Heights, headlined A Neighborhood Comes Into Its Own, deals only briefly with the Atlantic Yards development. And, given the generally positive spin in such articles, maybe it's understandable that there's no mention of "blight," the highly-charged term at the heart of the project justification. At the least, though, maybe it will remind Times headline writers and others covering this issue that the Atlantic Yards project would be in Prospect Heights, not Downtown Brooklyn.

The article sketches how Prospect Heights, "long in the shadow of Park Slope," has recently come into its own:
But in the last few years, Prospect Heights has begun to hold its own, enticing newcomers with attractive lofts, newly constructed luxury condominiums and brownstones that are often larger and more elegant than those in the rest of Brooklyn.

After listing new residential projects, and the opening of restaurants and shops, the 32-paragraph article devotes three paragraphs to Atlantic Yards:
Yet as Mr. Keegan and his fellow users of dailyheights.com are well aware, there is an undercurrent to all of the recent success of Prospect Heights: the plans of the developer Bruce Ratner to build a sizable complex of shopping, offices, housing and a Frank Gehry-designed arena for his New York Nets over the railyards on Atlantic Avenue. Concerns about eminent domain issues and the project's potential impact on the area's density are widespread, as is uncertainty over what form it will finally take.
Still, not everyone is up in arms. Mark McCartney, a computer programmer who rents a one-bedroom apartment on Washington Avenue with his fiancée, Beth Elliott, lives south of the proposed project's area. "We're so far away it wouldn't affect us," he said. "And I don't like basketball."

Concerns are... widespread? Indeed, it might have helped to warn potential Prospect Heights residents of that the concerns include transit and pedestrian issues, as well as traffic. As for the blithe resident of Washington Avenue, perhaps he does not understand that the project could indeed have spillover impacts into his neighborhood (which may be south of the proposed project area but is also east).

[The resident comments, on the DailyHeights.com discussion forum devoted to this article: Oh, I guess according to Mr. Blogger I’m "blithe"...nice. It’s a reoccurring, light-hearted, short, informational piece about a particular neighborhood. Don’t take it for much more than that blogger man.
Point taken: the quote was blithe, not necessarily the person. But "light-hearted" and informational seem to come into conflict when it comes to covering real estate.]

Over the railyards? The railyard would constitute only 8.3 acres of the 22-acre site, and the arena itself would spill over from the railyard boundary at Pacific Street and occupy what is now private property. The Times has made this mistake before.

Note that the Times description here of Atlantic Yards--a sizable complex of shopping, offices, housing and a Frank Gehry-designed arena--contrasts with the more accurate description in an 11/6/05 Metro section article: essentially a large residential development with an arena and a relatively small amount of office and retail space attached to it.

Note to the Real Estate section: read the Metro section. As for "sizable" and "large," how about the largest in the history of Brooklyn? Also note that the team is the New Jersey Nets, not the New York Nets.

Another paragraph in the Real Estate article does acknowledge:
As for the neighborhood's already established housing stock, the most sought after are its polished brownstones, many of which currently feature "No Arena Complex" posters in their oversized windows.

The Times's pro and con paragraphs are hardly comprehensive:
What We Like
Prospect Heights retains the feel of unreformed, unartificial Brooklyn. Spillover or not, it is its own neighborhood, with cultural amenities to beat any competitors.
What We'd Change
Despite the character and beauty of the houses in Prospect Heights, it does not have landmark protection status from the city, as parts of many of the surrounding neighborhoods do.

Um, besides the issues of traffic and transit and all the other environmental impacts of this proposed project, how about mentioning the potential of major construction in the neighborhood through 2016? Or that "unreformed, unartificial Brooklyn" might be preserved if the process of conversion of old buildings--as in the Daily News printing plant mentioned in this article--and contextual development continued rather than be swept aside by a superblock complex.

It almost goes without saying that this article is aimed at the well-off; there's no mention of subsidized housing and poverty within Prospect Heights--unless you take hints from the below-average scores at two schools mentioned--nor of the potential displacement caused by new development.

Footnote: in a paragraph about schools, the Times article notes:
The old Public School 9 on Sterling Place is now a stunning apartment building converted by the Forest City Ratner Companies, and the current version of the school on Underhill Avenue is the only primary school in the neighborhood.

Indeed, it's lovely, but the building, at 279 Sterling, was converted to house those displaced by Forest City Ratner's MetroTech development. And those who fought Ratner signed confidentiality agreements that, if they follow the script of the agreements required of those who sell to Ratner in the proposed Atlantic Yards footprint, also require them to praise the developer. According to a 1/23/04 Newsday profile of Bruce Ratner:
[Donna] Henes was one of 250 residents in downtown Brooklyn whose buildings stood in the way of Ratner's MetroTech development in the late 1980s. She led a group of outspoken residents who tried to block the plan for four years, but eventually they all quietly accepted what she calls "substantial" offers of cash or co-op apartments.
"I think he's really done some good things for the city and he was fair with us after we fought him," said the artist and self-described "urban shaman" who signed a confidentiality agreement barring her from disclosing the amount of her settlement.
"It was huge pain, but eventually everything turned out OK," said Henes, 54.

Did it? While it may have turned out OK for Henes and for Ratner, what about the public at large that has subsidized his development, or the many nearby residents who did not benefit from jobs there.

In a post on 10/30/05, I raised a question about the minority-owned firms Forest City Ratner had hired for design, p.r., and construction, among other things:
So, is the Community Benefits Agreement [CBA] regarding Atlantic Yards supposed to help the local "community" or the minority "community"? There's an interesting tension there, because the signatories are local (and minority), but several beneficiaries are hardly local, with none based on Brooklyn and some outside New York City.

The question remains. According to a Forest City Ratner press release issued today (after apparently giving the New York Times advance notice for today's paper) regarding the demolition of six buildings:
In accordance with the Community Benefits Agreement (CBA) signed earlier this year, FCRC has hired Safety Environmental Company of New York, a Staten Island based, minority-owned engineering firm to oversee air monitoring and safety requirements during the abatement. Top Line Contracting will handle the abatement as a subcontractor to Gateway Demolition Corp., who will perform the demolition.
...Gas and electricity to the buildings will be disconnected by the local utility companies, and the water and sewer lines to the buildings will be permanently disconnected in the streets by Lloyd G. Drummand Plumbing and General Contracting, a minority-owned business from Queens. Buildings will be exterminated by a minority-owned business which has yet to be awarded.
Note that the contractor's name, according to his web site, is Lloyd G. Drummond.

Most but not all of the groups endorsing the CBA are Brooklyn-based, and the document includes this passage (p. 2):
Whereas, the Coalition and the Developers seek to maximize the benefits of the Project to residents of Brooklyn, as well as minority and women construction, professional and operational workers and business owners and thereby to encourage systemic changes in the traditional ways of doing business on large urban development projects...

Businesses based in Queens and Staten Island may fulfill one aspect of the CBA's goals, but they don't necessarily help residents of Brooklyn.

Six buildings owned by Forest City in the proposed Atlantic Yards footprint will be demolished next month, after an engineering firm determined major structural damage. The New York Times reported, in a 12/16/05 story headlined Another Step for Downtown Brooklyn Project:
"The question is, God forbid that a building collapses, God forbid that a falling brick hits someone in the head, or that there's a fire," said Bruce Bender, the developer's executive vice president for community affairs. Mr. Bender said the firm was providing warning of the plans in part to defuse criticism from opponents of the project....
Five of the buildings - two former auto-repair garages on Pacific Street, two unoccupied apartment buildings at Dean Street, and the Underberg Building on Atlantic Avenue - are near the western end of the project's proposed site. The sixth is farther east, on Dean Street near Carlton Avenue.

Daniel Goldstein of Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn, told the Times: "To justify eminent domain, Bruce Ratner wants to argue that this neighborhood is blighted. It is not. This is his attempt to create developers' blight."

The responsibility, at least according to the Times article, is murky. On the one hand, "a tour of the interiors reveals the damage done by years of wind, rain, and insufficient maintenance." On the other, each building suffers from water damage that means floors and ceilings are on the verge of collapse, and "[s]ome of the damage has occurred only in the past few months."

So it's not clear whether earlier efforts to stabilize and waterproof the buildings--as was done to preserve other buildings in the neighborhood, an argument against claims of blight--would have worked.

Note to the headline writer: the project won't be in "Downtown Brooklyn," despite numerous mentions of that term in the press. The Times's 10/19/05 coverage used "near Downtown Brooklyn," while 7/5/05 coverage used "east of Downtown Brooklyn." This new Crain's article on eminent domain makes the same error.

"If you like a good old-fashioned street fight, you're in the right place," trumpeted City Council Member Letitia James, leading off the community meeting last night sponsored by Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn. The rousing words, especially from James and closing speaker Bob Law, reflected the political nature of the controversial Atlantic Yards development, and the importance of a coalition that mixes both race and class. (The turnout was reasonable--about 100 people on a cold night--but the audience was mostly white.)

But technical challenges to the approval process represent another front. The project is now in the hands of the state Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC), which is preparing a document that sets out the scope--the range of issues and the areas studied--for the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS). The draft scope was already criticized at a hearing in October, and it will remain a target. "The ESDC scope is comically limited," declared Dan Ross, one of three graduate students from Hunter College's Department of Urban Affairs and Planning who presented research they have conducted.

For one thing, he said, the area proposed for the project is not "blighted," despite a state document that says a main project goal is to remove blight--a key justification for the use of eminent domain needed to acquire land necessary for the project. He cited increases in land values in the neighborhood, a significant jump in income (especially within the project footprint), and the conversions of four buildings, three into luxury housing, one into a homeless shelter, all since 2001. (One of those buildings, Newswalk, was cut out of the footprint.)

The issue of blight is complicated. On the one hand, current legal standards are fuzzy; on the other, even project supporters like state Assemblyman Roger Green have declared the area not blighted. The draft ESDC scope lists several aims for the project, including replacing the current railyard, providing new "affordable and market-rate housing," and creating a "first-class sports and entertainment venue," but the first one listed is:
Eliminate blighted conditions on the project site, including dilapidated and structurally unsound buildings, debris-filled vacant lots, and economically underutilized properties.

However, only the first phase of the project--the arena and five buildings around it--would be built by 2009; the other 11 buildings, and all the publicly-accessible open space, would be built by 2016. That means that numerous buildings--which might have been candidates for renovation, given recent progress in the footprint--might remain economically underutilized. As Dean Street resident Peter Krashes recently told WNYC, in a 12/13/05 piece headlined Atlantic Yards Project Has Long Shadow:
This is inside the footprint, right, a lot of the property has the appearance of being more dormant. That’s one of the things that people miss when they walk here they don’t understand that what was a pretty active area has been emptied.

As for improving the railyard, Daniel Goldstein, spokesman for Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn, pointed out that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority--which issued "a cover-their-butts RFP"--had never previously set that as a goal. Goldstein, pointing out that Mayor Bloomberg had expressed his own NIMBY tendencies, exhorted attendees not to accept it "when anyone says you are NIMBYs because you don't think Ratner is just or fair or right."

At the meeting, Hunter graduate student Brooke DuBose cited three "glaring problems" in the draft scope. For one, it does not propose to include the highways around the development, just nearby access roads, as it sets out a quarter-mile principal study area and a half-mile secondary study area--an issue also raised at the hearing in October. The draft scope, DoBose added, vastly overstates the availability of parking in the area: "Either a lot more lots will have to go up or a lot of people will be circling." And it sets an area for analysis of the pedestrian impact that is "far too small," she said, noting that it even excludes half of the proposed Atlantic Yards footprint.

Using mapping software, she showed the impact of traffic streaming from overburdened arteries to back up in nearby neighborhoods. "Looks like a heart attack," quipped a voice from the audience. The issues of traffic and transit have been the subject of recent hearings at Borough Hall.

"Albany has given [Ratner] license to deny the reality of the real impacts on the community," Ross said. "He's being permitted to shirk his responsibility and treat this EIS--which is supposed to document the worst [potential] effects--as a formality."

Perhaps not. A final scoping document is due in January, and may be the subject of litigation. Then--perhaps quite soon--emerges a DEIS, after which there will be at least 30 days, and perhaps much longer, for a hearing and comments before the state agency accepts the project or requests modifications. But this project, the largest in Brooklyn's history and the third-largest in New York City since World War II, poses major challenges, so the Council of Brooklyn Neighborhoods (CBN) has requested that that period be extended to 180 days. (The CBN describes the general EIS process.)

CBN wants experts to challenge the DEIS, but needs $350,000 to hire them. Foundations and local elected bodies are the most likely sources. Also, CBN Secretary Jim Vogel observed, ESDC can issue charge a developer up to .5% of the project cost to fund experts to represent the community. (From a $3.5 billion project, .5% would be $17.5 million; $350,000 would represent .01%.) Under current head Charles Gargano, who has already pre-endorsed Atlantic Yards sans changes, ESDC has never ordered such a surchange.

Vogel said that CBN has just issued an RFP (Request for Proposals) to several environmental consultants, and hopes to receive bids by January 21. "Borough Hall and the Community Boards have thrown up their hands and said there's not going to be any dollars," he told me after the meeting. "Instead, they're having these meetings at 4 pm on a Tuesday," which exclude most people because of their timing.

Vogel said that the environmental consultants would conduct community outreach and education before the DEIS comes out. "It should not be written until the scoping document comes out, but often they come out the same day."

Law advised attendees to remain in the political process regarding other local issues, and to "support credible leadership." "You know that so-called community support was manufactured by Ratner's dollars," he said. "Nobody can buy what you feel. Nobody can buy what you believe." Law, who is black, scorned efforts to portray local black residents as fixated on the benefits Ratner's plan might provide: "They speak with contempt about black people, [as if] black people don't care about their community."

Taking notes in the audience was Lupe Todd, a public relations representative for Forest City Ratner and also a neighborhood resident. Her presence was derisively pointed out at the start of the meeting by moderator Scott Turner, and when he turned a question in Todd's direction at the end of the session, she declined, saying she was there as a resident. Turner observed that, by contrast to the open meetings held by project critics, Forest City Ratner and Borough President Marty Markowitz have often held closed-door meetings.

Forest City Ratner has been hyping the parklike open space at Atlantic Yards since the beginning--initially six acres of publicly accessible open space, including the top of the arena roof. Note this mailing from the spring of 2004. When earlier this year the developer acknowledged that the roof would no longer be public, the defense was that an additional acre of public space had been added.

But, it turns out, Forest City Ratner isn't being so generous. As architect Jonathan Cohn points out on his Brooklyn Views blog, the developer would be taking more than three acres of public streets. Moreover, given that the city aims for 2.5 acres of open space per 1,000 residents, and that Atlantic Yards would house perhaps 14,600 residents, the amount of open space would fall woefully short:
But rather than the required 36.5 acres of open space, not even counting the requirements for the arena or the office space, the developer is proposing to add 4 acres, not counting our currently open streets.

A skeptical reader commented, "City streets count as 'open space'? In that case, New York has a hell of a lot more open space than anyone thought." I don't think that's the point. The city could establish more parklike open space itself by closing streets, but creating superblocks is a controversial tactic. And, by closing streets, as Cohn points out, the developer can increase its FAR (Floor Area Ratio) and thus build bigger:
The intention of an FAR calculation is to limit density on private property relative to the site, with the circulation in public rights of way already factored in.

And how much will Forest City Ratner pay for those city streets? It's unclear. The MOU states, on p. 4:
The City will convey the City Properties and the City Streets underlying the Arena (but not including the commercial office building sites [note: now mostly housing] adjacent to the arena) to ESDC for $1 and the remaining portions of the City Properties and City Streets to ESDC for fair market value (paid for by FCRC) based on an independent appraisal that determines value based on the contemplated Development Plan and the development rights associated with such property, taking into account the amount of the [sic] any capital contribution or other financial contribution by the Public Parties to the Project (exclusive of the contributions for the Arena Site as specified in Section 10 below) and any extraordinary cost to FCRC of relocating public utilities and installing new public utility infrastructure...

We know what can happen to appraisals. But if Forest City Ratner can charge the cost of public utilities against the value of the site, we could use some public discussion of what those costs and the value would be. After all, an acre of land is quite valuable, as Prospect Heights is booming outside the proposed Atlantic Yards footprint.

You'd think that "New York's Youngest Good Government Organization," which defines itself as "[p]art watchdog, part cheerleader, part fundraiser, part whistle-blower, part trusted advisor, part muckraker, part think tank, part consciousness-raiser," would comment on the Atlantic Yards project. But the nearly four-year-old New York Civic--which is essentially founder Henry Stern and his writing/informed kibitzing--has said virtually nothing about the largest development in the history of Brooklyn, even though the planning, according to another watchdog, has been "all backwards."

The reason: former Parks Commissioner Stern is an old friend of Forest City Ratner President Bruce Ratner. The group also receives an undisclosed amount of funding from Forest City Ratner--effectively neutralizing it from commenting on Ratner projects. Stern told me, "New York Civic has not taken a position on the Ratner development. The reason we recused ourselves is because I’ve known Mr. Ratner for 35 years, since he came to work for the Department of Consumer Affairs. If we were to take a position, I would support the project, because I feel in general it’s a good thing. But I don’t want New York Civic to be involved, because of the relationship."

Actually, Stern did once comment favorably on Ratner's plan, in a 7/8/05 New York Sun article headlined Ratner’s Atlantic Yards Foes Delighted by Extell Bid Entry. After the Extell Development Company issued a rival bid for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) railyard at the heart of the Atlantic Yards project, the Sun contacted Stern for a comment:
The director of the watchdog group New York Civic, Henry Stern, said the Extell bid might be a “last-minute spoiler which provides a few extra bucks up front” — but less income for the MTA over the long term.

That logic was indeed adopted by the MTA, which accepted a lower bid--less than half the appraised value. Stern told me, "I didn’t volunteer that quote or seek to be involved. I totally disagree with the concept that individual agencies, especially authorities, own the land for which they have facilities and they can proceed to their own enrichment against the public interest. Say that the MTA could get more money from Extell or anyone else and therefore would be benefited financially. I don’t think they can make that judgment; they need to take the whole city’s interest into account. What if someone wanted to build a slaughterhouse there [and offered a higher bid]?...I thought, in that case, the property really belongs to the state, rather than a particular authority that happens to have custody."

Still, a watchdog group might also have commented about the strong evidence of a sweetheart deal between the MTA and Ratner, plus, as the Regional Plan Association pointed out, the MTA's failure to disclose the value of the bids or to analyze potential traffic and transit impacts.

The Sun neglected to disclose that Stern and Ranter have a longtime relationship. It's unclear whether Stern mentioned it. Stern said he doesn't remember, and the reporter (a former summer intern) told me that his notes were elsewhere, but that he doesn't "remember Mr. Stern mentioning any ties to Mr. Ratner in the few phone conversations we had."

Stern added, "If I wanted to support the project, I would’ve done more than answer a call from a Sun reporter. I thought it was in the province of my impartiality [to discuss the issue of the MTA bid]." However, as printed in the Sun, the quote from Stern sounds as much like a snap verdict than an expression of general principles.

A quick check shows Stern praising Ratner in a few articles. A 12/10/03 profile of the developer in the New York Sun, headlined Meet Bruce Ratner, Who Wants To Bring Nets to Brooklyn, contained this passage:
Even before he launched his real estate business, Mr. Ratner was getting noticed. Right after Columbia Law School, he went to work for New York City in the Consumer Protection Division in the Department of Consumer Affairs under Mayor Lindsay.
"He was a nice young man," said Henry Stern, who later would recommend him as consumer affairs commissioner to Mayor Koch. "His skills showed when he got to work on legal matters. He was very effective, he was promoted."

A 1/23/04 profile in Newsday headlined He Knows His Way Around Politics also quoted Stern:
Though Ratner's company still spends significant funds to lobby City Hall, Ratner a few years ago sharply cut back on donating funds to political campaigns - an unusual move for a real estate developer.
"He decided this was getting him into trouble, because every time he won a project, people would say it was because he gave money," said former city Parks Commissioner Henry Stern, who has known Ratner for 34 years.

Unmentioned was Ratner's pattern of giving money to community groups, as noted in Chapter 7 of my report. How much does Ratner's company give New York Civic? Stern wouldn't say, but added, "It's by no means our largest gift."

New York Civic reported contributions of $33,319 in 2004, according to the organization's IRS Form 990, as posted by Guidestar. New York Civic also reported that, from 2000 to 2003, it had raised $43,950, of which $38,000 had been given by donors whose total gifts over that period exceeded $880. This suggests that the organization has some steady donors, which may be why it doesn't solicit gifts on its web site. Still, the funds go mainly toward office expenses and administrative services, as New York Civic seems to run on a shoestring. Stern, who has a city pension, takes no salary.

Bruce Ratner has supported Stern's efforts in the past, chairing the board of the Parks Foundation during Stern's tenure, according to a 9/23/00 article ("Where City Foundation Gathers Its Greenery") in the New York Post.

And Ratner has commented favorably on Stern, in a profile of Stern and New York Civic in the 7/14/03 New York Sun, headlined Henry Stern’s Experience Leads His New York Civic to "Small Victories":
"This is really a wonderful thing for Henry and the city,” said the chief executive of real estate developer Forest City Ratner Companies, Bruce Ratner. “He’s using his wisdom and knowledge of government, and he’s communicating it to people who are interested and have influence."

Or in this case, not communicating. It would be interesting to hear Stern's unvarnished evaluation of the political and planning process behind Atlantic Yards. On the one hand, as quoted in a 7/19/05 New York Sun article on the proposed Brooklyn Bridge Park, headlined Residents Charge Development Board Misleading Public on Construction Plans, Stern does defend development against critics:
A former parks commissioner in the Koch and Giuliani administrations, Henry Stern, said that the high-rise at Pier 6 would produce a necessary independent revenue stream to fund the park's maintenance. "The trouble with parks is that even if you put up the money to build them, you still have to run them," Mr. Stern, who is now president of New York Civic, said. "And for years, the city has skimped on parks."
The Willowtown Association was founded in the 1950s to fight Robert Moses's plans for the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, and Mr. Stern speculated that the neighborhood group's storied history might have left members with a knee-jerk aversion to any sort of development. "Every land dispute we have in this city is cast as Jane Jacobs fighting Robert Moses," Mr. Stern quipped. "The Willowtown people see themselves as Jacobins."

On the other hand, Stern is an old friend of Jane Jacobs, preserver of neighborhoods and human-scale development, and a critic of the type of superblock development proposed for Atlantic Yards. Stern may be "the conscience of a city", but perhaps it's best that he not publicly confront the conflict between his friendship with Ratner and the hard analysis--beyond "in general, it's a good thing," as Stern said of the project--required of a watchdog group.

Well, it took a few days, but the Times on 12/13/05 did respond to my request (and perhaps a request from others?) for a correction:
An article on Friday about Assemblyman Roger L. Green of Brooklyn, who is considering a run for Congress despite a criminal record, referred imprecisely to a secret report prepared by the Assembly ethics committee after his conviction for petty larceny in 2004. Although the report, which recommended sanctions, was issued to Assembly leaders, it was not made public.

The meeting earlier today at Brooklyn's Borough Hall on the transit and pedestrian impact of the proposed Atlantic Yards plan didn't exhibit the same level of tension as the 12/5/05 hearing on traffic, but the issues are also quite significant--and without easy resolution.

As Jerry Armer, chairperson of Community Board 6 put it, the project poses hazards not just for vehicular but also pedestrian traffic. The intersection of Flatbush, Atlantic, and Fourth Avenues--the western border of the proposed site, "is not chaotic, it's not dangerous, it's sort of suicidal" for pedestrians. Armer argued that the state process for developing an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS)--overseen by the state Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC)--must consider effects outside the the proposed quarter-mile and half-mile boundaries. He noted that pedestrians have trouble crossing Flatbush Avenue in Park Slope near Eighth Avenue--and that the Grand Army Plaza further down Flatbush is "a pretty interesting intersection." Indeed.

"Raise this to the state and the city," urged Ruby Siegel, director of planning for Systra, a rail consultancy, who works with the Metropolitan Transportation Agency (MTA). "I think there's guidance in SEQRA [the state law governing the process] that says you need to look at the total impact."

But where was the MTA? Neither the state agency nor the New York City Transit Authority (NYCTA) sent representatives to the meeting. The reason: the Borough Hall meetings are unofficial and informational, outside the scope of the ESDC process. "They said it wasn't an ESDC project," reported an aide to Borough President Marty Markowitz.

Added Markowitz, "I think we should revisit it. It's purely informational." Indeed, the meeting again highlighted the awkward fit between the state process evaluating this project and the broader needs of Brooklyn and the city. Tom Schulze of New Jersey Transit, former executive director of the New York Metropolitan Transportation Council, noted that some issues being raised represent a "gray area outside the statutory requirements." The reluctance by the developer to extend beyond the physical and temporal scope of the EIS, he said, is because "the developer would be responsible for fixing the problems."

The MTA did send a written response to two questions. Asked how the services and schedules are adjusted for subways and buses when sporting or other events are held at other facilities in New York City, the MTA described extra service at the baseball stadiums, but said the regular schedule--albeit with monitoring of station entries and exits--is sufficient for Madison Square Garden.

Are any of the facilities models for the proposed Brooklyn Arena? The MTA replied that "Madison Square Garden is the better model, because it is about the same size and situated on multiple lines." However, participants noted, as they did on 12/4/05, that Manhattan and Brooklyn pose different challenges.

One possible solution, mentioned briefly but covered in today's New York Post (Nets Train Hard), involves efforts to devise either a swipeable game ticket or a game-day MetroCard to encourage use of public transit rather than cars. While Markowitz and Assembly Member Joan Millman seemed encouraged by the concept, it's a tougher sell in Brooklyn than at the more remote NASCAR track planned in Staten Island, as the Post reported:
But Gameday officials told The Post that controlling how fans get to the Brooklyn arena — planned for the intersection of Atlantic and Flatbush avenues — might not be feasible since, unlike the Staten Island raceway, it would be built in the heart of a mass transit hub.

Commented transportation consultant Carolyn Konheim of Community Consulting Services, a discount of one dollar for a MetroCard is "in the wrong place." To encourage use of public transit, "you discount the [game] ticket by ten dollars."

Millman said one solution might be to use dedicated shuttle buses from offsite parking lots, as far away as another borough. This would not involve existing bus routes.

Konheim, who often represents community and civic groups, spoke after a first panel that included more mainstream consultants. The three consultants addressing the assembled local officials and representatives of community boards mainly focused on nuts and bolts: the importance of good simulation models to estimate the real burden on public transit. They also addressed the possibility of light rail (years off) and bus rapid transit (soon to be demonstrated), which would involve dedicated bus lanes.

While the MTA response stated, "Buses are not a key component of any service plan for these [current] facilities," participants pointed out that buses are far more important to Brooklyn. "Buses carry a relatively small amount of ridership," observed David Sampson of Urbitran. "But given the number of buses downtown, there is a potential for more people to use buses." Still, Konheim suggested that the bus map needs work: "Buses don't go where people want to go." She cited the B61 from Red Hook to Long Island City, saying it represented three distinct trips.

Konheim asserted that it was inadequate to look only at the transporation impacts as of 2016--the current scheduled date for the completion of Atlantic Yards. The planning process should go to 2025, she said, citing the potential of the extension of the putative Second Avenue subway to the borough.

As for the MTA, she said the agency does have a model to expand service, "but they have no cars." While the agency plans to put 907 new subway cars in service in 2007-08, "they're going to junk 907 existing cars." She said that at least 200 of the cars could be rehabilitated. "But the MTA says, we can't take them, because there's no storage space."

Near the end of the hearing, Shirley McRae, chairperson of Community Board 2, said, "We need to stop making assumptions" about the MTA and urged the state assembly members--Millman and Roger Green--to pressure the agency to attend.

"I feel we're talking to each other," Konheim followed up. "Where is ESDC? Where is MTA?" At that point, however, several attendees had already left, including the Borough President. Markowitz apologized, but said he had to preside over a Christmas reception downstairs in Borough Hall.

So the Times on 12/11/05 printed two letters, one positive and one critical, responding to Public Editor Byron Calame's 12/4/05 column on how the Times could better cover itself--but neither with reference to the Times Tower deal I cited. In Other Voices: How Can The Times Report on Itself? , David Moorshead of Chicago wrote:
I'm confident that The New York Times's reporting on the Jayson Blair and Judith Miller matters (with the latter being muddy, in my view) is far more significant than its reporting about financial transactions involving its parent company. The connection between the parent company's financial dealings and what ends up in the paper is tenuous at best. Just reporting the facts of these transaction will suffice. But since Mr. Blair and Ms. Miller wrote what appeared in The Times, more lengthy explanation was required.
In the final analysis, readers will judge The Times by what appears on its pages over all, not on specific issues. The Times, like any other publication, isn't perfect. It has to make decisions. And at the end of the day, you've got to get a paper out. The Times steps into the "batter's box" every day, and its success rate is well over 90 percent. That's why readers continue reading it.
Please, stop the hand-wringing - instead, do the best you can for tomorrow's issue. That's all readers expect.

The connection between the parent company's financial dealings and what ends up in the paper is tenuous at best? Tenuous, but in the case of the Times Tower, the more aggressive coverage by the Village Voice and the New York Observer provides evidence to debate that connection rather than dismiss it.

Jonathan Zimmerman, a professor of education and history at New York University, wrote:
Providing links to other newspapers is a fine idea, so far as it goes, but it doesn't go nearly far enough. First, of course, most readers of the newspaper continue to read the print version. More to the point, providing multiple links doesn't address - and won't affect - the actual coverage in The Times. To get truly independent and critical coverage of yourself, you need to hire reporters that do not work for The Times (I argued this in a Nov. 9 op-ed article in The Seattle Post-Intelligencer).
A journalist friend told me, "That's a great idea, but no newspaper would ever do it." I asked why, and he said, "Because they don't want their dirty laundry aired in public!" That's an understandable reason, of course, but it's hardly a defensible one.

It actually has been done at least once, when the Seattle Times in 2003 hired a free-lance reporter to cover the Joint Operating Agreement--shared business arrangements but separate editorial functions--between the the Times and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. As Bob Steele wrote in Poynter Online: The freelancer will be an independent contractor whose reporting will neither be guided nor edited by top Times editors.

Wouldn't it be interesting if, to write about the Times Tower, the Times hired Paul Moses--the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, now journalism professor and freelancer, who wrote those Times Tower articles for the Voice?

Meanwhile, the Public Editor has not taken advantage of his Web Journal to inform readers whether or not the Times Tower deal was among the "several business transactions involving its parent company over the past five years" which "the paper has done a pretty good job" covering. The last post is from 11/23/05, even though the Web Journal is for comments "on matters that aren't appropriate for his column in the Sunday Op-Ed pages, or won't fit into it."

Meanwhile, the Times's troubles with Judith Miller and the leadership of publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. are getting attention from bigfoot journalists like Ken Auletta in the New Yorker (THE INHERITANCE: Can Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., save the Times—and himself?) and Seth Mnookin in Vanity Fair (Unreliable Sources).

Today's issue of Gotham Gazette includes a package of articles on eminent domain. While the article in defense of eminent domain makes some valid points, it remains irrelevant to the controversy over Atlantic Yards. You can't fully blame author Jerilyn Perine, former Commissioner of New York City Department of Housing, Preservation, and Development, because her remarks were adapted from a speech, rather than written to address all the issues facing New York City today.

Her article, Eminent Domain is a Tool, Not a Conspiracy, suggests that eminent domain goes through the city's land use process:
Eminent domain is a tool. Whose hands that tool is in determines whether or not is used for what people may see as “good” or “bad.” The political process is defined by public participation or unfortunately, the lack thereof. Whether government makes the right decision or wrong decision is not a function of the tools that are wielded, but of the process.
When it comes to the issue of eminent domain, I think we are seeing a pendulum swing.
In New York City, we have a uniform land use procedure, known as ULURP, because there was the backlash against the unfettered powers wielded by Robert Moses in building roads, bridges, and other projects. The ULURP process was the people’s way of saying to their government, “Wait a minute, you cannot just make these decisions and slash through our communities.” As good and decent as roads may be, you have to ask people what they think. And there has to be a process where people get to say what they think. So our land use procedure was born.
My fear is that now that we have integrated a way for the voices of the local communities to be heard in the process – which is very good and desirable thing – that many of these voices have become advocates for community museums.

Regarding Atlantic Yards, however, ULURP is bypassed, since the project is proceeding under the state's land use process. The voices of the local communities are not truly being integrated. And the leading voice, as stated repeatedly, favors development, not stasis.

The main article criticizing eminent domain, Eminent Domain Benefits Developers, Not the Public, by Susan Fainstein, a professor and acting director of the urban planning department at Columbia University, also is adapted from a speech. Fainstein argues:
We do not ever hear that it is a public purpose to take the land of the wealthy to benefit low-income people. We never hear that eminent domain is used to take a Hyatt and build mixed income housing. The general stance is always take away land from poor people and give it to someone who is much better off.
There are alternatives to eminent domain. Private developers who want to build large projects can buy the existing tenants out. And if there are holdouts – as was the case with the one building, that refused to sell out for the Rockefeller Center development - it is possible to build around an existing location.

This may be true for part of the Atlantic Yards plan, but not necessarily for the buildings in the first proposed segment, where the arena would be built.

Fainstein argues:
I also believe that when you take a huge swath of property and try to build it all at once we generally end up with a less interesting, less textured, and less vital environment that may not produce as much in terms of economic development as a more mixed plan.
In the case of Atlantic Yards plan with the Frank Gehry buildings and the arena, developers plan on taking over not just residences, but a lot of small businesses as well. There is a tendency of people who run economic development corporations to see anything that is not big business that is not a multi-national corporation, as unworthy. Small businesses are often the birthplaces of larger businesses that drive the economy. We must always look at who benefits and who loses in cases of eminent domain.
I would be less concerned about the use of eminent domain if I thought that it was really for a public purpose, rather than for the benefit of developers. We are in an era of public/private partnerships and what typically happens is a developer comes to the government and says, “We like that property. We think we could make good use of it. Why don’t you condemn it for us.” Then the government goes through with a charade of a public process and does it.
Also the argument that these decisions should be left up to elected officials or legislative bodies is problematic. When we voted for Michael Bloomberg in the last election, we didn’t get to vote on whether we should develop Willets Point or the West Side of Manhattan, we just had to choose between two candidates.

Note that Atlantic Yards has not even been heard by a legislative body--seemingly a standard for eminent domain cases, according to the Supreme Court.

Fainstein continues:
Eminent domain can always be used for a high school or an actual public facility, but it should not be used for economic development that benefits a developer, corporation, or shopping mall operator. We use the public sector, and then rationalize it by saying the development will produce jobs and taxes.
Many of these projects also get tax abatements. So it is not even clear that they create much in taxes. And it is difficult to say whether new jobs are created as a direct result of physical development or whether it is just a movement of jobs from one place to another.

This is certainly an issue with Forest City Ratner developments; the New York City Economic Development Corporation has estimated that only 30 percent of the office jobs at Atlantic Yards would be new.

Also as part of the package, Daniel Goldstein of Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn offers Life in the Atlantic Yards Footprint, which points out that the project avoids ULURP and argues:
Ratner already owns two mall complexes and a retail property directly adjacent to the proposed Atlantic Yards site, but has been unwilling to utilize some of his own property along with the rail yards; instead he has chosen to take other people’s property. All of the stated goals of the project could be achieved without any use of eminent domain, which is why the proposal’s opponents see the project as a land grab, abetted by government.

His article also points out that the state Empire State Development Corporation says the project would remove blighted conditions, but that state Assemblyman Roger Green, a supporter of the project, has forcefully declared the neighborhood not blighted. Now there may be a difference between the legal and colloquial meanings of the term, but that should make for some interesting arguments.

The deeply-flawed editorial about Atlantic Yards in the 11/27/05 issue of the New York Times deserves a public response, but today's City section contains just two letters, neither commenting on that editorial. (One letter refers to the issue of 11/27/05 and the other refers to the issue of 12/4/05, so I assume next week's letters will not address issues from November.)

The Times receives many more letters than it can print, so that any decision to ignore Atlantic Yards in favor of other topics--this week, on election reform and the Brooklyn Bridge--is a judgment call. (Then again, the newspaper on 7/17/05 did print three letters critical of its 7/10/05 editorial, "Skyscrapers Grow in Brooklyn.") But the Times, like all newspapers, should be more responsive to the many legitimate responses to its coverage and, especially, its editorials. Perhaps the Times can consider a web version of an expanded Letters section--in which the letters are vetted as in the print edition. Otherwise the newspaper is selling its readers short.

So, in the interest of public discussion, I reproduce three letters--surely there were more--sent to the Times, each making a different point.

My letter:
The Times editorialized, "The Nets arena is not destined to be a cash cow, but the borough deserves a sports team, so long as the price is not too high." However, the arena would be one of 17 buildings, and the September 2005 Independent Budget Office report cited by the Times did not address the price of the development as a whole.
The IBO, in a partial attempt to calculate costs-- the delivery of new education, sanitation, and police services over 30 years to the project as a whole--came up with a figure significantly higher than that projected by developer Forest City Ratner's consultant. That suggests we still need a thorough look at the potential costs and benefits of Atlantic Yards, especially in its current configuration. Indeed, the IBO cited a figure of nearly twice as much office space as currently projected, and 6,000 apartments rather than the currently projected figure of 7,300.

Wrote Daniel Goldstein, spokesman for Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn: Your editorial about Bruce Ratner's Atlantic Yards proposal, "A Matter of Scale in Brooklyn," says: "It's understandable that residents bordering the project do not want such drastic change, but that in itself is no reason to stop the development. It is difficult to build in New York as it is. Growth would come to a screeching halt forever if neighborhoods could veto projects to keep the status quo."
Ratner's opponents don't want the status quo. We seek development that enhances and benefits the entire community, without destroying the existing neighborhoods and relying on massive taxpayer subsidies. We want to develop our community with our input--that's the essence of civic engagement. We even found a developer, Extell Development Company, to submit a community friendly proposal tripling Ratner's offer to the MTA.
We stand by the name of our group leading 50 community organizations against Ratner's proposal: Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn.

Fellow activist Shabnam Merchant wrote:
Your editorial "A Matter of Scale in Brooklyn," argues that Bruce Ratner's development proposal in Brooklyn must be scaled down. But it misses the point that Ratner's proposed scale and density is necessitated by his arena's expense. At $555.3 million dollars, a cost sure to increase, the arena is by far the most expensive ever proposed and will be an economic loss for the city. Also, there is no political oversight to mandate a reduction in scale.
You support the arena because "the borough deserves a sports team, so long as the price is not too high" and "its impact on the area's night life should be positive." This contradicts the call for a smaller project--the economics say the arena requires the large scale. With a direct tunnel from the subway to the arena along with traffic and parking nightmares, the area's night life, already vibrant, could be doomed.

[The Times published a correction on 12/13/05.]

The New York Times profile today of Roger Green, From Conviction to Re-election and Beyond, omits mention of Atlantic Yards, but it also glosses over a significant dispute about the State Assembly's transparency, since the Ethics Committee has not made public the secret report it produced. The article states:
In early 2004, Mr. Green pleaded guilty to two counts of petty larceny and one count of filing a false instrument, acknowledging that he billed the Assembly for travel expenses although he had had free rides to Albany from a prison-services company seeking state contracts.
As part of his bargain with prosecutors in Albany, Mr. Green escaped having to plead guilty to a felony, which would have prevented him from standing for re-election. He agreed to be placed on probation for three years, pay back $3,000 to New York State and pay a fine of $2,000 for the petty larceny convictions.
After his conviction, the release of a secret report by the Assembly's ethics committee recommending sanctions against him, and a request from the Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver, to step down, Mr. Green resigned the seat he had held for more than two decades.

The release of a secret report? The report has been produced, but it was never made public, and that's been a huge controversy. The same Times reporter used imprecise language in a 6/4/04 article about Green, headlined "Assemblyman's Resignation Puzzles Many in Brooklyn":
Mr. Green resigned from his Assembly seat on Tuesday, after the Assembly's ethics committee issued a secret report recommending sanctions against him and after the Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver, asked him to step down

Again, the report had been produced, but issued only internally. The lack of public access to it generated significant criticism. In a 6/7/04 piece headlined Silver Refuses to Expose Green, the New York Post wrote:
ASSEMBLY Speaker Sheldon Silver is refusing to release the Ethics Committee report on disgraced former Assemblyman Roger Green, despite hopes by committee members he would do so.
"The expectation was that the speaker would release the report," an Ethics Committee member told The Post.
"The speaker has the power to release it. Nothing is stopping him. It's his decision," said the member, who demanded anonymity.
The refusal by Silver (D-Manhattan) to release the report may violate the state Freedom of Information Law, which says "the Legislature shall . . . make available for public inspection" all "final reports or recommendations" prepared by Assembly committees.
A Silver aide contended another section of the law - barring the release of information constituting an "unwarranted invasion of personal privacy" - justified Silver's refusal.
But the 2 1/2-page Ethics Committee report doesn't focus on Green's "personal" privacy, dealing instead with his official actions - legal and illegal - in office, those who read the report say.
Ethics Committee Chairman Mark Weprin (D-Queens) refused to say if the report should be made public.
"I'd rather not comment on that," said Weprin, who was named committee chairman by Silver. '

In a 6/8/04 editorial headlined Release Green report, the Daily News observed:
Speaker Sheldon Silver and Ethics Committee Chairman Mark Weprin refuse to release the committee's report. That's unacceptable.
Silver spokeswoman Eileen Larrabee explained the speaker's position: "The report was given to him in confidence by the committee, and he's going to respect that." What's missing from that nonanswer are some simple facts: The report was paid for by the people of New York, and the people of New York have every right to judge both Green's conduct and the Assembly's response to same. The Assembly's dodge that the public can make its judgments based on the criminal proceedings doesn't cut it.

A 6/14/04 column in the Brooklyn's Courier-Life newspapers directly connected Green's resignation to the report:
Green would rather have not resigned at all, but he did so in a deal with Assembly Speaker Shelly Silver to prevent (or at least forestall) the release of the Assembly Ethics Committee's report on his misconduct, which would have prompted his colleagues to punish him.

The Albany Times-Union, in an 8/25/04 editorial headlined "And now, the cover-up," wrote:
So here's Roger Green, with the gall to run for the state Assembly seat he was forced to resign from earlier this year after pleading guilty to charges of billing the state for false travel expenses. His conviction just isn't an issue to most people, he says.
The scandal on top of the scandal is that Mr. Green, a Brooklyn Democrat, may very well be right. For that, though, thank the Assembly itself. It's so much easier for Mr. Green to pretend that nothing ever happened, or that it was at most a big misunderstanding, when the Assembly refuses to make public the report by its ethics committee recommending that Mr. Green be punished for his travel reimbursement scam.
Worse yet is the excuse that the Assembly offers for its refusal to release the report on Mr. Green. It's saying, in essence, that it's keeping the report secret because the law doesn't require otherwise.
Well, then, the law ought to be changed. It says so much about the arrogance of the state Legislature that it could get away with rewriting New York's Freedom of Information Law so that it was largely exempt from it.

On 11/8/04, the Times-Union referred to "a still-secret Assembly ethics committee report" on Green. So it looks like it hasn't been released after all. And according to Gotham Gazette's Eye on Albany, the Times tried to get the report: The Assembly denied a Freedom of Information request from the New York Times to make the report public.

That same article quoted a good-government watchdog about the issue:
Rachel Leon, executive director of New York Common Cause, said it ultimately is "up to the voters if they want to elect him."
But she noted that the state legislature has refused to release the ethics committee report on Green, keeping from voters information they need. "If it's all on the up and up, people need that information to make an informed decision," she said.

I should add that City Councilwoman Leticia James--now an antagonist on the Atlantic Yards issue--was Green's senior staffer during the period of time he billed the state for expenses he didn't pay for. She defended Green in the 6/4/04 New York Times, which reported: City Councilwoman Letitia James said, "The people in this community are still with him." Also, she told the New York Sun, in a 6/2/04 article: "There was no intent on his part to do anything wrong," said Council Member Letitia James, who formerly served as Mr. Green's chief of staff.

New York Times local political reporter Jonathan P. Hicks has a curious blind spot towards Atlantic Yards, as evidenced when he covered two debates in the recent Public Advocate primary and ignored challenger Norman Siegel's forceful critique of incumbent Betsy Gotbaum's posture toward the development--see Chapter 5 of my report, and this post.

So maybe it's not that surprising that the two profiles he wrote in today's paper, of City Councilman David Yassky and State Assemblyman Roger Green, ignore their controversial and highly public positions on Atlantic Yards, the largest development in the history of Brooklyn. The 12/9/05 piece on Yassky, headlined Brooklyn Congressional Contest Tests Traditions of an Ethnic Turf, discusses how Yassky, who is white, is running for the black-majority Congressional seat held by retiring Rep. Major Owens, but may prevail in part because he has a larger war chest and four black candidates may split the vote. The article describes Yassky thusly:
Mr. Yassky, a former professor at Brooklyn Law School, is among the rising stars on the City Council. He was elected in 2001, and he is considered a political maverick who has a solid grasp of complicated issues and someone who is willing to buck the leadership on matters of principle.

Buck the leadership? Perhaps, but Yassky's position on Atlantic Yards is worth noting for his cautious support of the project, and its racial resonance. Now Yassky is indeed better-informed than many about the project, as his questions earlier this week indicated, but his position does seem to reflect both principle and politics. To overgeneralize, the better-off white constituents in the congressional district have greater concerns about Atlantic Yards (scale, traffic) than the more working-class black constituents, who may be seen to embrace the much-hyped promises of jobs and housing. (The complication, of course, is that incumbent Owens and his son Chris, who is running for the office, are black and oppose Atlantic Yards.) So Yassky must be responsive to the range of opinions.

The 12/9/05 piece on Green, headlined From Conviction to Re-election and Beyond, discusses how Green next year may challenge Rep. Edolphus Towns, a 23-year incumbent. Green is still on probation for billing the Assembly for free rides he got from a prison-services company that sought state contracts and resigned only to run again. He is the sole source for the story, other than a brief quote from Towns defending his record. So there's no one to challenge Green's self-report:
Mr. Green, 56, said he did not view his legal skirmishes as a deterrent to career aspirations. He said that few voters in the 10th Congressional District were likely to be concerned about his conviction on misdemeanor charges nearly two years old.

Here's one concern. In a 9/12/04 editorial (Casting a Meaningful Vote), the Times decried "New York's abysmal State Legislature," the fact that "[o]ur state government has totally broken down," and that "[i]f there is a primary race in your district, vote against the incumbent." And the Times singled out Green:
We would normally make an exception to the anti-incumbent rule for the few lawmakers who at least try to make a difference. But the real story this year is less about good men and women under attack than about terrible lawmakers who are getting a free ride. For instance, former Assemblyman Roger Green, who resigned after he was convicted of petty larceny, is running again for his old seat, without a primary. His Democratic cronies in Albany created a special district for him that carved out one house in particular -- the place where a strong possible opponent lives.

Now a Times news staffer wouldn't ordinarily quote the Times's editorial opinions, but you'd think that level of dismay would prompt the reporter to try to see if anyone in the district--or a good-government watchdog--shares those qualms.

Here's how Hicks sketches Green's career:
Indeed, he has proven to be a popular incumbent who is perhaps best known for his education-related work, including development of the Benjamin Banneker Academy, a charter school.

Perhaps best known? A Lexis-Nexis search of articles in the last five years that include Green and Banneker turns up a trio from 2002, from the Sun, the Daily News, and Newsday. You have to go back to 1997 for an article (One Green Vs. Another In a Primary For a City Post, 7/15/97) by the selfsame Hicks to find a mention of the two in the Times:
An Assemblyman since 1981, Roger Green has long been involved in youth issues. A former junior high school social studies teacher in Bedford Stuyvesant, Mr. Green wrote the proposal for the Benjamin Banneker Academy, a public school with an emphasis on math, science and technology. The school opened in his district in 1993.

These days, Green is best known for his support of Atlantic Yards, which is crucial to gaining state subsidies for the project. Green and Atlantic Yards were mentioned in two recent articles in the Times, (To Build Arena, Developer First Builds Bridges, 10/14/05 and Ferrer Is Chided Over Atlantic Yards, 10/29/05). Also, Green has recently likened Bruce Ratner to RFK and helped sponsor the controversial Community Benefits Agreement. While the school has a longer history, the Atlantic Yards project is a much bigger issue.

Smith College economics professor Andrew Zimbalist, a consultant to Forest City Ratner, is behind some of the highly-questionable economic projections regarding the Atlantic Yards project--see Chapter 3 of my report. I plan to take another look at those projections later, but let's now consider an even more basic issue: who should control own sports teams and thus build sports facilities?

In the 1998 book Field of Schemes: How the Great Stadium Swindle Turns Public Money Into Private Profit, co-authored by Joanna Cagan and Neil deMause, the authors suggested that, if sports teams were municipally owned, sports stadiums would be less expensive:
Existing structures wouldn't have to be razed to satisfy an eager owner's desire to see team profits or his own net worth rapidly increase. Instead, cooler heads might prevail when changes in architecture or money-making cause some to cast a longing eye toward sparkling new facilities. For if they aren't inherently cooler-headed, local politicians at least have some democratic accountability to local taxpayers--something corporate owners are sorely lacking.

And who did the authors find to endorse this? Andrew Zimbalist, who had once tried to create a baseball league that would have had teams owned by a consortia of players, municipalities, and private investors:
"It's a logical thing to happen," says Zimbalist. "Sports teams are just perfect vehicles for public ownership for all sorts of reasons--the most important being the large investment the public is expected to make in these teams, but also because it's really a public good, and it has a cultural dominance that's unlike anything else in our society."

Some six years later, Zimbalist had changed his tune. Before he even issued his first report, dated May 2004, he told Erik Enquist of the Courier-Life chain (Brooklyn Politics, 2/16/04):
"The main reason I've been supportive of this project-and I was supportive before Forest City Ratner asked me to help them with some economic projections-is not because of its potential to raise per-capita income or employment, but because it's wonderful for Brooklyn, for cultural enrichment, cultural identity, to restore something that has been robbed from Brooklyn. I think Brooklyn lost an important part of its heritage when [Walter] O'Malley moved the Dodgers.
"The idea of supporting a sports arena is similar to supporting a public park. You don't do it because it's going to raise per-capita income."

Public parks, however, don't deliver profits to a private owner. Of course Zimbalist later did argue that the project as a whole would have a significant economic impact--calculations that deserve further scrutiny. But it's curious that Zimbalist himself seems to have expressed some of the "idealized nostalgia" that John Manbeck, in his New York Times op-ed, claimed of project critics.

In an 12/6/05 article headlined "A Times Quiz: Gray Lady Scorns Mirror, Urges Battered Ferrer to Count Self-Inflicted Wounds," Wayne Barrett of the Village Voice begins:
The Times' Clyde Haberman berated Freddy Ferrer last week for failing to mention in a postmortem interview with El Diario that he was "his own worst enemy at times," far more responsible for his demise than the press and pollsters he was blaming. Haberman couldn't find "a smidgeon of self-reflection in the interview," so we thought we'd help Haberman's paper do a little of its own in this, the Times Election 2005 Quiz:

Among the charges:
2. How many blind quotes or paraphrases from "aides, associates, donors, Democrats," and other "people who have spoken to the Clintons" appeared in the same story, all questioning or denigrating the candidate Bill Clinton had just endorsed? 19.
3. How many on-the-record quotes raising questions about the authenticity of Clinton's endorsement appeared in the same story? Zero.
4. How many words of direct or indirect quotation from the former president made their way into this 1,503-word story about what Ferrer viewed as his biggest news day? 3, though the News and Post cited 86 and 91 Clinton words.

Barrett stopped at 16 questions, so I'll add some more, based on my previous reports on Ferrer and Atlantic Yards:
17. When Ferrer finally decided to oppose the Atlantic Yards plan for an arena plus 16 high rise buildings, and the Times, like some other papers, decided to make Al Sharpton's support the lead ("Ferrer is Chided Over Atlantic Yards Plan"), how much did the Times question the claim that the project could create "thousands of jobs for minority workers"? None.
18. If Ferrer was "playing politics," in Sharpton's accusation, did the Times point out that Sharpton was doing the same? No.
19. Though representatives of developer Forest City Ratner were present at the press conference and conferring with union supporters chanting opposition to Ferrer, to what extent did the Times mention any factor behind the protest other than "the Bloomberg forces"? None.
20. When the Times quoted a Republican candidate for City Council who yelled, "Don't sell out the minorities, Freddy," did the article mention that he likely would be trounced by incumbent Letitia James, also a minority, who vociferously opposes the project? No. (And he was.)
21. When the Times ended the article with this sentence, "Bruce Bender, an executive at Forest City Ratner, the development partner in building a new Midtown headquarters for the New York Times Company, accused Mr. Ferrer of misrepresenting the facts," did it ask Bender to specify those facts? No.
22. When the Times tried to factcheck the first mayoral debate, did it check Mayor Mike Bloomberg's claim that the project had received scrutiny from community boards and the press, and that it involves "a place that's been vacant for decades"? No.
23. When the Times covered the second debate, did it question Bloomberg's claim that the city was doing no more for this project than for any other projects, even though Atlantic Yards bypasses City Council scrutiny? No.

The Winter issue of BKLN magazine isn't on the web, but in the BKLYN718 section, on page 10, there's a short item challenging Marty Markowitz's posture on Atlantic Yards. The headline is "Better Late Than Never?"

The item, in its entirety:
We were heartened when we heard that Marty Markowitz is now calling for a reduction in the scale of Bruce Ratner's Atlantic Yards development--the project he's been selling to the public since 2003. Could the borough president finally have awakened to at least some of the concerns of so many of his constituents? Still, we couldn't help but wonder what took so long. "I thought it was prudent to wait until the project became real," he told 718, explaining that it wasn't real until the lead agency--the Empire State Development Corp.--and the developer--Forest City Ratner--were formally in place. We wanted to know why it was prudent to wait, but Marty replied, "I don't have to give you 'why.'" Not words you want to hear from a public servant, especially one who has always marketed himself as the quintessential man of the people. But okay. When 718 asked him if he's going to stand firm and demand that Ratner & Co. come up with a proposal more in proportion to the brownstone neighborhoods around it, Markowitz stated, "I don't work for Bruce Ratner and Forest City Ratner. I work for the residents of Brooklyn. Those are my bosses." Well, then, prove it. Demonstrate for us, please, how much sway you have over the Patakis, the Bloombergs, the Garganos, and the Ratners.

The challenge is a good one. After all, a 4/25/05 profile of Markowitz in the New Yorker, headlined MR. BROOKLYN: Marty Markowitz—the man, the plan, the arena, portrayed Markowitz as quite responsive to Bruce Ratner:
In the car, Markowitz’s cell phone rang, and the voice of a female assistant announced that “Bruce” was on the line.
“Yes, sir, how are you doing, Bruce?” Markowitz said, picking up the handset and falling silent as he listened. Bruce Ratner, it appeared from Markowitz’s responses, had some urgent questions about the way discussions concerning waterfront development in Williamsburg and Greenpoint might affect his own project. Markowitz, whenever he could get a word in, tried to be both conciliatory and upbeat. “I understand,” he said; and then, “I wish I knew, but I don’t know”; and “It’s hard for me”; and “That’s absolutely right.” Finally, he told Ratner to call someone in his office—better yet, he would have that someone call Ratner.
Across the street, a small huddle of Boerum Hill residents handed Markowitz a sheaf of plans showing an arrangement of planters and greenery they would like to see in front of the restored subway kiosk. Perhaps, a resident suggested, Forest City Ratner might be persuaded to contribute the funds.
“Does Ratner want to prove he cares?” someone asked.
“I haven’t asked him,” Markowitz replied testily. Then he went to look at the other side of the kiosk, which, another member of the group was telling him, would be a perfect place for a Christmas tree next year.

Anyone stuck at the intersection of Atlantic and Flatbush avenues in a car, or trying to cross by foot, knows that the crossroads can be overburdened and perilous. So the impact of Atlantic Yards--9.1 million square feet of development, mostly high-rise housing plus a basketball arena--stretching east from the crossroads could only make things tougher. When constituents ask him, 'What are you going to do about the traffic?', acknowledged City Councilman David Yassky at a meeting yesterday at Brooklyn Borough Hall, "I don't have an answer."

Such concerns added urgency to the session, the third in a series held by the Atlantic Yards Committee that includes City Council members, elected state representatives, and the chairpersons of Community Boards 2, 6 and 8. Given that the meeting started at 4 pm, there were only a handful of observers besides invited guests. The New York Post covered it briefly (ARENA WILL SNARL TRAFFIC: B'KLYN BEEP, 12/6/05), noting that Borough President Marty Markowitz, a fervent backer of the project, nonetheless shares deep concerns about traffic.

The committee "will serve as a vehicle for research, information and advocacy for Brooklyn during the planning, construction and post-construction phases of the project," but its power is merely advisory. The project is in the hands of the state Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC), which has received much critical testimony. But it's not clear how much the ESDC will increase the scope of the Draft Environmental Impact Statement it is forging, nor who is responsible for implementing (and paying for) changes.

The committee first heard from Ryan Russo, the Downtown Brooklyn Transportation Coordinator of the city Department of Transportation, who described the city's efforts to study traffic--an effort several panelists found wanting. Yassky noted that, with some other issues related to Atlantic Yards, "we can deal directly with the sponsor or the state, but for traffic, we have to work with the city." He added, "The city has does have to be much more proactive, and not wait for [developer] Forest City Ratner to come up with an idea."

Indeed, traffic engineer Brian Ketcham of Community Consulting Services (which works with community groups and public agencies) later warned, "The main entry points to Brooklyn are all at overcapacity, without Atlantic Yards." Noting that some 42 million square feet of development are planned around downtown (and 63 million square feet in northwestern Brooklyn), he said of Forest City Ratner, "It's their responsibility to demonstrate they can come in here and fit."

Ketcham said current methods of estimating traffic use antiquated data and models, and that the city should spend $10 to $15 million--a fraction of the $15 billion in development planned in Brooklyn as a whole--to develop more sophisticated models. Without appropriate studies and subsequent mitigation, "We're going to wake up when this thing's finished to what I observed last Christmas eve: Atlantic Avenue gridlocked for three-eighths of a mile from Atlantic Center." He added that traffic could generate $250 million a year in externalities, including the cost of air pollution, traffic noise, and lost productivity.

"We are heading into a disaster. I think we need to pull back and put this thing on hold for a year," he said after the meeting. "We have 15 years to make development in and around Downtown Brooklyn fit in."

In written testimony, Ketcham offered harsh criticism of the ESDC's Draft Scope of Analysis for an Environmental Impact Statement, noting:
--the study area excludes chokepoints like the Brooklyn Bridge and the BQE
--the method for analyzing traffic does not show how traffic at one intersection affects another
--the time frame for analysis ends at 2016, when the project is fully built out, but state projects use a 30-year horizon for road and transit projects
--the DEIS must heed the Borough President's recommendation that estimates of trips (driving, public transit) be based on counts in Brooklyn rather than 30-year-old surveys from Manhattan.

"We can't double vehicle trips without new roadway capacity," he said, noting that capacity could indeed be increased by either prohibiting on-street parking or implementing congestion pricing to deter use of Brooklyn bridges and roadways. Other consultants supported the concept of congestion pricing, though they noted that the political decision is beyond the frame of the state environmental impact process.

Several meeting participants seemed interested in new tactics such as residential permit parking, transit discounts built into event tickets, shuttle buses, and even a new trolley system. Still, there seemed to be a disconnect between the immensity of the challenge and the preparedness to respond. When Russo described how the city had recently reconfigured the intersection at Flatbush and Atlantic, Yassky asked, "Do you envision additional mitigation?" The answer: "We don't have specific future plans."

"It's just so startling," observed Assemblywoman Joan Millman. "I was there yesterday, at the intersection. It was impossible, without an arena."

Several transportation consultants also testified about the importance of accurate and thorough models developed by the government, not the developer. "Gridlock Sam" Schwartz, speaking before Ketcham, also observed that the scope of the study area should include major transportation arteries. He suggested that Madison Square Garden was the best model for Atlantic Yards arena traffic, with about 50% of visitors using public transit, 40% using cars, and 10% walking. "You want to get as many people as possible underground," he said, citing the importance of subways and trains.

Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, who asked probing questions of several experts, challenged Schwartz, saying, "You can't compare Madison Square Garden to Brooklyn," pointing out that large parts of Brooklyn lack public transit, Manhattan has far more taxis, and that people from Staten Island and Queens might not use public transit. Responded Schwartz, "I'm saying that's what we should strive for."

However, the issue of traffic goes far beyond the arena, as it would account for 19% of the weekday trips, according to Ketcham's statistics.

State Assemblyman Roger Green asked if there were any examples of best practices regarding such projects. Schwartz called it an "excellent request"--and it's possible that, if the Empire State Development Corporation doesn't come up with such a list, Schwartz might be called on to do so. He led off by saying that, when asked two months ago to testify, he had no professional interest in Atlantic Yards, but that last week he was invited by Forest City Ratner to discuss consultant work at an upcoming meeting.

Some of the traffic mitigation tactics mentioned at the hearing--and more--were detailed by transportation analyst and journalist Aaron Naparstek, in a 12/3/05 post on his web site, titled Seven Solutions to the Atlantic Yards Traffic Problem. He canvassed a range of planners to come up with solutions--though, he acknowledges, "The question is whether the city can generate the political will and revenue to make these changes happen."

They include:
1. Improve subway service and facilities to encourage increased use, especially by Manhattanites.
2. Create incentives to take transit, such as free or reduced subway or bus rides connected to event tickets.
3. Limit and manage parking space to encourage use of mass transit, including a residential parking permit program.
4. Design a great pedestrian environment, making the intersection of Flatbush, Atlantic, and Fourth avenues a far more hospitable place. This would require more traffic-calming features at the intersections of residential streets and a redesign of architect Frank Gehry's current plan for superblocks.
5. Get Bus Rapid Transit Rolling (BRT), using dedicated lanes.
6. Make Brooklyn more bike-friendly, encouraging use of the clean and cheap form of transportation with bike lanes and parking facilities.
7. Implement congestion pricing

How to pay for them? Writes Naparstek:
First, it should be remembered that Forest City Ratner is asking for more than $200 million in public subsidies for the Atlantic Yards project. A significant portion of that public money should be invested in improving the public space around the project. It shouldn’t all go into a half-billion-dollar basketball arena, the most expensive ever built.
Second, every transportation expert I spoke to suggested that we take a very serious look at implementing congestion pricing in New York City... Congestion pricing is raising about $175 million a year [in London], all of which is being plowed back into bus, pedestrian and cyclist infrastructure.

Could it work?
If I'm making it sound like these seven ideas will totally get rid of traffic then, yeah, I'm overselling it. But that's not my intent. The truth is that even if they built the Atlantic Yards project and implemented these seven ideas to their fullest, we could still have more automobile traffic coming in and out of the neighborhoods around the development, particularly during arena events.
Still, these seven ideas are some of the very best ways of dealing with that. And, truly, since something like 40% of the rush hour traffic coming down Flatbush Avenue is thru-traffic to the free Manhattan Bridge, a congestion pricing fee really does have the potential of reducing traffic a significant amount in and around Downtown Brooklyn.

So, in essence, the challenge is political more than technical.

In his 12/4/05 column, headlined When the Newspaper Is the News, New York Times Public Editor Byron Calame describes how newspapers sometimes have trouble covering themselves, and suggests a thoughtful solution. He points out:
Even the best newspapers sometimes have difficulty covering themselves with the same high-quality journalism they offer readers on other topics...
Clear-cut scandals at a newspaper spur the better ones these days to have staffers with special independence do an autopsy or in-depth explanation for their readers.
He cites as examples the Times "explanations of the recent Judith Miller matter and the 2003 Jayson Blair scandal," as well as the Los Angeles Times's 1999 postmortem on an ethically questionable deal with the Staples Center, and the Washington Post's 1981 retrospective on how a Pulitzer Prize-winning story had been faked.

He gives the Times generally good grades, though he doesn't mention the newspaper's coverage of its parent company's 2001 real estate deal to build a new headquarters, the Times Tower, on Eighth Avenue in partnership with developer Forest City Ratner:
My review of The Times's coverage of several business transactions involving its parent company over the past five years suggests that the paper has done a pretty good job. But for a paper with The Times's aspirations and the quality of its staff, it could do better.

One example is inadequate coverage of the C.I.A. leak investigation. Also, he notes:
When the paper's parent, The New York Times Company, acquired About.com last February, it appears that the paper never published any quantification of the tax benefits - even after The Washington Post had quoted a named tax expert who pegged the benefits at about $160 million over 15 years.

The Times Tower deal--perhaps the subject for a future column?--presents a similar situation. Other newspapers have detailed benefits accruing to the Times Company that the Times has downplayed; I'll describe them below. Also unmentioned in the Public Editor's column is a somewhat different challenge: the Times's coverage of Forest City Ratner's Atlantic Yards project, which is the subject of this blog and my report. (Another future column?)

Calame suggests a solution, both to fill in coverage gaps and to "offset any reader assumptions about the impact of the paper's self-interest":
Make an arrangement with several respected newspapers so that nytimes.com can provide links to their articles about a news-making development at The Times. The links would give Times readers access to a full range of views that could counter the perception problem and fill any real gaps in information. If The Times does an article, an adjacent note could alert readers to the online links. Absent a Times story, the links could simply be posted online in a special box called "Coverage of The Times."
It's not a perfect solution. Competing newspapers may tend to give minor problems at The Times more space than they merit, or quote sources who contradict this paper. Times editors should be free to decide not to post an article from another newspaper that seems too far off the mark.

Calame suggests a topic for a test of this concept: the trial of I. Lewis Libby Jr.

Could his solution work for Atlantic Yards? Would the Times post links to stories in competing daily newspapers that show the Times lagging in its coverage? Would it post links to a critical blog that collects all coverage of the topic, or this blog, which scrutinizes selected articles in detail. Doubtful, especially since Atlantic Yards isn't directly about the Times, and the Times might cover stories later but in greater depth.

But it would be worth a try regarding the Times Tower, a more manageable subject that directly concerns the newspaper company. Most recently, the New York Observer reported, in a 10/24/05 article headlined As New HQ Rises, Old Owners Cause Trouble Underfoot, that ten of 11 landlords--who were paid $86 million after the state condemned their properties for the Times Tower--will go to court. The landlords argue that their property was worth far more. But even if the landlords win, the Times Company and Forest City Ratner must only pay $86 million, according to the development agreement, and state taxpayers would pick up the rest.

Neither the suit nor the terms of the deal have been reported in the Times, even though the Village Voice first detailed the terms in a 6/17/02 article headlined The Paper of Wreckage. That article noted tax breaks to the Times Company worth up to $79 million, which were described in the Times's own 12/14/01 coverage merely as "millions."

The recent Observer article also cited legal papers, first reported in an 8/16/05 Village Voice cover story headlined 'Times' to Commoners: Go Elsewhere, that prohibit the developers from leasing to fast-food restaurants like McDonald’s, but allow rentals to more-upscale companies like Cosi or Starbucks. The lease terms haven't been reported in the Times.

Coverage of the Times Tower through 9/1/05 is detailed in Afterword B of my report on the Times's coverage of Atlantic Yards. Notably, the Times has failed to report on the value of the subsidies for the Times Tower project, the fact that the rent sought by Forest City Ratner for its share of the tower is considered high, and the reason that the developer couldn't get the Liberty Bonds it requested (because it refused terms that could have required it to pay back some money). The Times also failed to report, as the Village Voice explained in an 11/20/04 article headlined The Times' Sweetheart Deal, that the Times Company had underestimated the profit on the sale of its current building by some 50 percent, which might have eliminated the need to subsidize the new headquarters.

These issues are worthy of public discussion, especially because taxpayers are subsidizing the new Times Tower, perhaps by $79 million. (The state's argument for the subsidies is that the new tower will bring in higher tax revenues.) If the Times can't report on such topics, perhaps it can provide links, in print and online, to other publications that do scrutinize the Times Company more closely.

Could it link to blogs? It may be too soon for the Times to link to the intriguing annotated version or blogs like this one. Then again, the Times has taken some first steps in that direction. Calame points out:
And during the latter stages of the Judy Miller matter, nytimes.com posted links to a number of blogs - including some with sharp criticism of the paper.

Forest City Ratner CEO Bruce Ratner is not exactly known for talking to the press, as noted in Chapter 8 of my report. The Cleveland Plain Dealer recently published a major series on the Cleveland-based company Forest City Enterprises, the country's largest publicly-traded commercial real estate company (of which Bruce Ratner's New York arm is but a part). The 11/30/05 article, headlined Ratners target New York, noted that Bruce Ratner "declined to be interviewed for this story."

Given that the Atlantic Yards project has both grown and been questioned significantly, a new interview with Bruce Ratner could be news. However, as I'll detail below, Ratner added little to our knowledge. I don't know the ground rules of the interview (which was conducted by email after a lunch with Ratner), but it's possible the questions were prescreened--and apparently there was no chance at follow-up questions. After all, Ratner was interviewed by the Courier-Life chain, which has provided less critical coverage of the Atlantic Yards project than the rival weekly the Brooklyn Papers.

[Here's some background. The Brooklyn Papers suggested in in a 4/23/05 article headlined "Chamber bows to Ratner, that the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce, whose chair was Courier-Life co-publisher Dan Holt, agreed to bar residents and merchants critical of Atlantic Yards from a meeting with Ratner officials. Then-Courier-Life columnist Erik Engquist, in his 5/30/06 Brooklyn politics column, noted that Holt "does not interfere with our reporting of the Ratner plan or anything else. Most newspapers have a wall between the business and editorial departments. I’m not sure if that’s the case at the Brooklyn Paper, where Ratner’s people believe publisher Ed Weintrob assigns and rewrites his reporters’ stories to give them an anti-Ratner slant."
Engquist also pointed out that Weintrob bought the URL forestcityratner.com and redirected all visitors there to his paper’s own Web site. Engquist's back and forth with project opponent Phyllis Wrynn concerns the character of the neighborhoods; he argues that creating affordable housing units near public transportation is better than sprawl but says he doesn't support tax breaks for the developer--an interesting prelude to the still-unresolved questions of the proposed project's costs and benefits.]

The 12/02/2005 interview, headlined "Q&A With the Man Who Would Remake Bklyn," begins with a biographical sketch cribbed directly from Forest City Ratner's web site. For example, the article states:
It was while at consumer affairs that Ratner became interested in how major national retail outlets had long underserved inner-city residents and how the city itself had failed to utilize major business and transit hubs to offset corporate flight to New Jersey and the surrounding suburbs.

Ratner's official biography states:
While at Consumer Affairs, Mr. Ratner also became interested in how major national retail outlets had long underserved inner-city residents and how the City itself had failed to utilize major business and transit hubs to offset corporate flight to New Jersey and the surrounding suburbs.

The Q&A leads off:
Stephen Witt: You have been developing in Brooklyn for about 20 years. What are your views toward the future of Brooklyn and how it should be developed?
Bruce Ratner: Brooklyn is a dynamic place, very much its own city with tremendous variety in neighborhoods and people and yet a strong, cohesive character. Clearly, the borough has an amazing future as people from around the world create homes in a place that has already provided other generations with hope and opportunity. The challenge for developing in Brooklyn – for developing anywhere, really – is to respect the character of the place while providing for the needs of today and tomorrow, in terms of housing, work and retail space. That is why we believe the Atlantic Yards project is so important to the continued economic growth and strength of the borough.

Left unsaid is whether and how projects like Atlantic Yards should be evaluated by public agencies. And, as No Land Grab points out, respect and eminent domain don't necessarily mix.

Q: Critics charge that the Atlantic Yards plan is out of character with the neighborhood and that you are changing the Brooklyn skyline. What is your response to these critics?
A: I think if you take a look at what Frank Gehry and Laurie Olin are doing, even in these early stages of design, you will see that they are very sensitive to the design motifs in the surrounding communities without artificially trying to historicize the development. While we are building at a larger scale – don’t forget over a 10-year period – they are designing the project to accent other landmarks and to connect streets with open public spaces.

Are they? It's still under development.

Q: Several neighborhood groups say that FCRC should pay for an independent consultant to help during the EIS process on the project. What is the FCRC position on this?
A: As you know, the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC) is responsible for overseeing the EIS process. As part of the process, the ESDC has hired its own independent consultants which, by law, FCRC pays for. In addition, FCRC is in the process of hiring some of most respected and renowned consultants in the city to work on traffic and related issues.

Ratner hasn't answered the question, since the neighborhood groups want consultants separate from the ESDC, whose chairman, Charles Gargano, has already declared his support for the project as is.

Q: Eminent domain remains a thorny issue. What is your view of the New London case recently heard in the United States Supreme Court and how do you think it pertains to Atlantic Yards?
A: Over a year ago, we made a pledge to do everything possible to avoid the use of eminent domain. As of now, we own or control 92 percent of the private residential units on the site, 63 percent of the rental buildings and around 65 percent of the commercial spaces and we are continuing to negotiate with the remaining owners as we are very serious about our pledge. I cannot comment on the New London case. However, I understand the sensitivity when it comes to private property – especially residential property – and that’s why we made our pledge and paid higher than market rate for the properties we purchased. As you know, we have also created a relocation program for renters and will give them – and other residents – homes to live in while the project is being built and the opportunity to live in new apartments in the Gehry-designed buildings.

Again, Ratner hasn't really answered the question--and the interesting thing about the New London case is that, even though the Supreme Court narrowly approved the exercise of eminent domain, it did so because there was a legislative process behind the redevelopment project--something absent in Brooklyn.

Q: There has been some talk of the affordable housing component moving off-site. Does the commitment remain for the affordable housing on site as agreed with ACORN and are there any plans to developing more affordable housing off site?
A: Our agreement with ACORN has not changed in any way. All of the affordable rental units (roughly 2,250 units) will be located on-site within Atlantic Yards. In addition, we are looking at adding an additional 600 to 1,000 affordable homeownership units either on- or off-site.

Unmentioned is that the housing Memorandum of Understanding states:
It is currently contemplated that a majority of the affordable for-sale units will be sold to families in the upper affordable income tiers.
The upper-affordable income tiers include families earning more than $100,000 a year.

Q: What do you like about the CBA [Community Benefits Agreement] and do you feel that such agreements are the future of urban developments as private/community-based-organization partnership?
A: As far as the CBA being a model for other developments, it is not for me to say, but I do think the ideas behind it are key and that our CBA is a very important step in the right direction. As a company, FCRC has always tried to ensure diversity. We have among the highest percentages for minority- and women-owned business participation. It’s something we’re proud of. We also utilize only union labor and work with the unions to bring in new members. It’s an investment in the quality of our construction but also the quality of our communities.

While Ratner avoids claiming the CBA as a model, the developer's Brooklyn Standard calls it historic, as have several public officials. Perhaps Ratner is mindful of significant criticism of this CBA.

Q: Manhattan-based sports columnist Mike Lupica has taken a very anti-Nets-coming-to-Brooklyn stance, making me wonder if he has something against the borough having a major sports team. He has also personally attacked your commitment to the Nets. What is your commitment to the Nets and response to these columns?
A: I’m not going to comment on what he’s written. He has a right to his opinion, even though I adamantly disagree with most of what he has written, and look forward to talking to him one day to explain why. I am very proud of our team and I would not put all the time, effort and money into this team if I was not in it for the long haul.

Ratner may disagree with Lupica, but some issues in dispute are facts rather than opinion.

I'll ignore the final question about how Brooklyn sports and basketball fans might get season passes to detail what more might have been asked, besides the obvious follow-up questions noted above:
--what do you think about the New York Times's editorial that said that the project should proceed without $200 million in subsidies from the city and state?
--what do you think of critics, such as Cooper Union history professor Fred Siegel, who say your projects rely on subsidies? ("He's the master of subsidy. No one does it better," Siegel told the Cleveland Plain Dealer.)
--what profits do you expect from the investment, given that you did not release, as required by the MTA, your 20-year cash-flow assumptions (see p. 15, or PDF p. 18, of the RFP)?
--what would be the total public cost of the project in its new configuration (note that Jim Stuckey estimated $1.1 billion over 30 years, at the City Council hearing last May, as noted in Chapter 3 of my report)?
--why would the arena be the most expensive ever in the country?
--why do you require those who sell property to you to sign confidentiality agreements that prevent them from criticizing the project (as noted in Chapter 7 of my report)?
--why don't you talk to other press outlets or meet with the public?

The New York Observer's 12/5/05 article on Assemblyman Roger Green and the Community Benefits Agreement (CBA) at Atlantic Yards (oddly headlined "Ratner Sends Gehry To Drawing Board") makes some important points, thoroughly challenging the Times's 10/14/05 "modern blueprint" thesis, which suggested that developer Bruce Ratner "is creating a new and finely detailed modern blueprint for how to nourish - and then harvest - public and community backing for a hugely ambitious development..."

[Apparently the Observer didn't have the space to add some further details about Green's ties to developer Forest City Ratner. So here are those details. As noted in Chapter 4 of my report, the developer hired Randall Toure, a top aide to Green, to be VP for community affairs. (The Times did point this out in the "modern blueprint" article.) Also, Green in his 2002 campaign listing doesn't work.) Also, as reported recently on No Land Grab, Green's son Khalid, the basketball coach at Bishop Loughlin High School in Fort Greene, has received a few thousand dollars for events his AAU team has conducted.]

I previously questioned the Ratner-RFK simile offered by Green in the article's lead. But article is mostly about the Community Benefits Agreement, which deserves scrutiny. As noted in Chapter 4 of my report, significant questions were raised by the Brooklyn Rail earlier this year, as well as in testimony (ignored by the press) by Good Jobs New York and the Pratt Institute Center for Community and Environmental Development (PICCED) at the 5/26/05 City Council hearing. Also, the Observer's blog The Real Estate noted in August that activists in Manhattanville sought to avoid the "Brooklyn model."

So in the new article, the Observer points out that the CBA did not exactly proceed the way such model CBAs began in Los Angeles:
The community-benefits agreement is one of the elements that make Atlantic Yards so politically delicious for its supporters in City Hall and Albany. They think the agreement shows that the community supports the project, and that the community will get something in return.
Politicians say, for example, that the development will create “thousands of affordable apartments”—2,250, to be exact—and “new jobs” for neighborhood people, which is also true. But they never say how many new jobs it will bring.
This isn’t exactly Mr. Ratner’s fault. How can he promise jobs to people whose résumés he hasn’t seen, and who will, in many cases, be hired by his contractors rather than him?
Ideally, as happened with these community-benefits agreements in Los Angeles over the past decade, a coalition of about 15 to 20 groups comes together and presses a developer for concessions: higher-wage jobs, new parks, fancy pollution-control devices. In exchange, the organizations agree to put down their pickets and support the project when it comes time to obtain the City Council’s approval. Mr. Ratner’s development looked like a good opportunity to do the same.
“Growing members of the African-American community want to move away from welfare colonialism, and there is a desire to create new covenants with the markets,” Mr. Green told The Observer. “Ratner’s proposal for the first time presents that opportunity, where we can grow the middle class, where we can build real jobs with benefits both through the construction industry and the service economy.”

However, as the Observer notes, the plan raised suspicions, and a little checking shows that most signatories weren't established:
But in Brooklyn, few very established organizations wanted in. The Pratt Area Community Council, for example, didn’t believe that Mr. Ratner’s company, Forest City Ratner, was willing to compromise, said the council’s executive director, Deb Howard, speaking to The Observer. Instead of existing groups coming together to form a coalition, a mass of interested individuals came together to form new organizations.
Just two of the eight signatories to the agreement—ACORN and the New York State Association of Minority Contractors—existed as incorporated entities before the negotiations. Four of the other groups are still not registered.
A group of black ministers refused to come to the table. James Stuckey, executive vice president for Forest City, said they had demanded that they be the only party to the agreement. The Reverend Dennis Dillon, the leader of the group, gave a different reason: that it was clear from the beginning that the agreement was meant to buy support with favors.

The Observer adds another detail that shows that the "community" can connect to politics:
One group, headed by a politically important ally of Roger Green, was added to the mix at the last minute, after the other members had been negotiating for seven or eight months. Its chairwoman, Freddie Hamilton, is the vice chairwoman of the Brooklyn Democratic Party and the executive director of a child-welfare agency. Among other things, her new organization, the Downtown Brooklyn Educational Consortium, will be in charge of trying to fulfill an old Roger Green dream: a charter school devoted to technology. But the charter school, like some other elements in the agreement, won’t be left up to Forest City to create. It would come under the city’s Department of Education.

A critic acknowledges that signatories to the CBA are getting their half-loaf, as Darnell Canada acknowledged last month:
Some opponents say they understand what motivated these groups. “Certainly, there’s a sense among many folks who have seen this happen before that putting up a fight with a developer won’t get you anywhere,” said Francis Byrd, a former Democratic state committee member and district leader from the area. “So whatever little you can get is the best you can hope for.”
So far, BUILD and other organizations have received $275,000 from Forest City to seed their operations.
Mr. Canada, after getting the community-benefits agreement off the ground, ended up resigning from BUILD in March 2004, saying at the time that his colleagues “see this organization as financial self-gain.” (He has recently returned with a new organization, REBUILD, which is partnering with Ms. Hamilton’s group.)

The Observer has reported closely on BUILD, whose representatives apparently aren't talking:
Now, the president and chief executive of BUILD is James Caldwell, who is currently the head of a local citizens’ committee for police relations. Mr. Caldwell is said to have deep roots in the community, but his online BUILD bio doesn’t mention experience with job training or administering six- or seven-figure annual budgets. The choice of BUILD to funnel the hundreds of thousands (or even millions) of dollars in job-training funds that will come either directly from Forest City or from the taxpayers strikes experts as perplexing.
“My organization is made up of 185 job-training and employment organizations, and I have never heard of this group,” said Bonnie Potter, the executive director of the New York City Employment and Training Coalition, speaking to The Observer. “It’s curious that a developer would choose to put it in charge of its workforce-training program.”
Mr. Caldwell wouldn’t return phone calls, and his spokeswoman, Cheryl Duncan, refused to set up an interview with him. Mr. Stuckey said that BUILD is in charge because BUILD stepped up to negotiate—though he adds that it may subcontract work to established job-training programs.

Note that spokeswoman Duncan is paid for by Forest City Ratner, so this could be seen an example of the developer's unwillingness to be forthright.

The Observer quotes Stuckey as suggesting BUILD could be a savior for the neighborhoods, but then finds some significant countervailing evidence:
“Unfortunately, if these programs were together before this project, I believe the rates of unemployment in many of the neighborhoods—in Crown Heights and Bedford-Stuyvesant and many of the public-housing projects—would not be as high as they are,” he said. “I think it points to the fact that there are many communities in the city that go unnoticed and unhelped.”
Ms. Potter suggests that federally funded employment centers be put in charge of the development’s jobs. There is such a center just eight blocks away from the Atlantic Yards site; it’s run by the city.
It is, in fact, the place where Target and Chuck E. Cheese’s went to recruit workers when they opened stores in a new mall nearby—a new mall, incidentally, that was developed by Forest City Ratner.
Perhaps more importantly, though, is just how many jobs will go to the poor, black neighborhood residents who live on three sides of the project site. The Brooklyn document sets up a hierarchy whereby public-housing residents get first dibs on spots in a job-referral program and a construction-job training program. But the agreement sets no numerical targets for how many local people will get jobs.
The agreement doesn’t mention the 400 jobs Forest City expects to bring when it moves the Nets basketball arena from New Jersey, which Mr. Stuckey said will be subject to union rules and may be filled with current employees.
Nor does the agreement mention jobs in the proposed hotel, which would also be subject to union rules, Mr. Stuckey said.
That leaves the construction jobs, about 1,500 of them over the next 10 years. The agreement sets a goal of employing 35 percent minorities—a reasonable and achievable threshold which Forest City has met on its other projects. In other words, 525 jobs—not reserved for public-housing residents, or even residents of Crown Heights and Bed-Stuy, but for minorities from all over the metropolitan region.

Note that the Observer more accurately describes the construction jobs as 1,500 per year over 10 years, rather than the 15,000 jobs figure used by project proponents.

Then the article quotes me; I was asked to respond to the question: "Isn't 1,000 jobs for central Brooklyn better than no jobs?":
“The question is, how much does each job cost in terms of public investment, and could that money be used more wisely?” asked Norman Oder, a project opponent and author of the Times Ratner Report blog. “If this is going to cost more than a billion dollars over 30 years in terms of total public investment, we should have been having a public discussion about costs and benefits years ago.”
Mr. Stuckey responds that the true value of the agreement is how it sets up a structure for jobs to get into the housing projects and other areas that need them. To this end, though, BUILD’s most important work hasn’t begun: guaranteeing that construction unions give preference to take on local residents as apprentices.
Mr. Green says the true value is in the many other jobs that the project will produce, although Forest City hasn’t issued estimates of how many there will be.

I wasn't asked to respond to Stuckey or Green. Obviously there will be spinoff jobs, as in any large project, and this agreement would set up a new structure to reach out to the community, but my basic point remains: we don't know if it's worth it until and unless we analyze it. After all, not every community should subsidize jobs if the cost is too high, as Good Jobs First would advise.

The Observer finds a left-leaning analyst to suggest the program might work:
David Fischer, project director and workforce-training expert at the left-leaning Center for an Urban Future, thinks that even if the jobs program doesn’t make sense now, Mayor Bloomberg, a supporter of Atlantic Yards, will make it work. The failure of MetroTech, a Forest City Ratner office complex downtown, to employ many public-housing residents across Flatbush Avenue is still too fresh in people’s minds, he said.

Interesting, but that still doesn't address whether the cost is worth it.

The Observer finds Charles Gargano, head of the Empire State Development Corporation, showing a real contempt for public input, and skewers him on that:
“There is no need to scale down the project,” Mr. Gargano said, although the environmental-impact study that will gauge the project’s impact on traffic, sewage, school population and so on is still underway.

The article points out that Roger Green has significant power:
Oddly enough, the only person who can stop this project, or reshape it, will be Roger Green. That’s because the state legislature will have to sign off on $100 million that the state is contributing to cover up the train yards, and the legislature generally follows the lead of the local lawmaker. That is likely to happen again, even though the lawmaker in this case, Mr. Green, pled guilty last year to seeking state reimbursement for travel expenses provided by a private company doing business with the state.

Keep in mind that Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz has called for the project to be scaled down, as has the New York Times. Also note that Assemblywoman Joan Millman has a small piece of the project in her district, and she has expressed significant opposition to it. [Addendum: Millman later said that Site 5 is not in her district.]

Also, the story behind Green is a bit more complicated. As noted in Chapter 4 of my report, Gotham Gazette’s 7/20/04 Eye on Albany noted that Green said he resigned to prevent (or at least forestall) "the release of the Assembly Ethics Committee’s report on his misconduct." Also keep in mind that project opponents may have a strong eminent domain case as well.

The Observer article ends with two paragraphs that hearken back to the story's awkward headline, Ratner Sends Gehry To Drawing Board:
Forest City officials, meanwhile, are denying rumors that they have sent their architect, Frank Gehry, back to the drawing board to come up with a less bulky alternative.
“We will listen; we have said all along that we will listen,” Mr. Stuckey said.

The unanswered question, however, is what would constitute an appropriate scale for this project, and whether that's just the developer's call, or whether it should emerge through a public process.

The New York Observer's 12/5/05 article on State Assemblyman Roger Green and the Community Benefits Agreement (oddly headlined Ratner Sends Gehry To Drawing Board), begins with this tidbit:
Sometime in late 2003, a Brooklyn activist asked State Assemblyman Roger Green what he thought about developer Bruce Ratner, who was about to propose a massive housing development and new basketball arena for Central Brooklyn.
“You’ve got your Bull Connors and you’ve got your Robert Kennedys, and you are going to treat them differently. Ratner is more of an R.F.K.,” Mr. Green said.

What decade is Roger Green living in? It was 1963 when racist Birmingham, AL police chief Connor harassed and arrested civil rights protestors, and Attorney General Kennedy began enforcing civil rights laws even before that.

Let's not doubt that Ratner is more like RFK than Connor, but that's not saying much. After all, RFK--albeit from a wealthy family--said in 1968:
"Too much and too long, we seem to have surrendered community excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things."

Last June, Bruce Ratner told the New York Times Magazine, when asked how he and fellow investors acquired the Nets basketball team:
Like so many things in life, it was just a matter of money.

And no matter how much the Atlantic Yards development might help some segments of the community, the developer's mission is not to serve the public interest. As the company web site states:
Forest City Ratner is an owner and developer of real estate, committed to building superior, long-term value for its stakeholders.