HOW BAD? REAL BAD.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/19/nyregion/19yards.html

July 19, 2006

Measuring a Project’s Shadow, and Its Burden
By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE
A new school’s worth of classrooms would be needed to handle all the children. Dozens of crowded intersections would be choked with more traffic. Brownstone neighborhoods would find themselves in shadow. The city’s sewer and water systems would face new challenges. And good luck getting a parking space on game day.

These were among the most striking findings of a 1,400-page study released yesterday that for the first time lays out all the potential effects of the proposed Atlantic Yards project, an 8.7-million-square-foot residential, commercial, and arena development that would spread over 22 acres near Downtown Brooklyn.

The study, released by the Empire State Development Corporation, was accompanied by a project plan that estimated the cost of the development at $4.2 billion, much more than the original cost, $2.5 billion.

Residents have known for more than two years that something big may be coming to the corner of Atlantic and Flatbush Avenues, something that would affect their lives and neighborhoods in countless ways. But until yesterday, they did not have a picture of the details.

The draft environmental impact study provides the clearest view yet of what the Atlantic Yards would do for Brooklyn, and to it, with a welter of diagrams and cold hard facts.

Some of them are sure to be controversial. According to the study, the project would worsen what is already a tangled web of traffic. When it is fully built a decade from now, 68 of 93 intersections included in the study, all within about a mile of the project, would have significantly more congestion at one or more peak hours, most markedly during the morning rush hours and after Saturday games at the 18,000-seat basketball arena for the Nets.

The tallest of the project’s 16 buildings would block many views of the Williamsburgh Savings Bank. The new buildings would also throw more of the surrounding neighborhoods into shadow during the day, while street-level signs would create a new burst of neon at night, concentrated at the commercial corridors on the project’s western tip.

The project’s thousands of residents would impose new demands on the city’s sewage and storm drain systems, and include enough children to fill a new elementary and intermediate school.
Changes to the project and the city infrastructure supporting it may eliminate or minimize some of the predicted problems, the project’s backers have promised. In exchange, they say, Atlantic Yards would create 6,860 units of housing, thousands of construction jobs, and nearly $1.5 billion in city and state tax revenue beyond the amount needed to recoup the government’s contribution to the project.

“It’s a project of enormous magnitude, something that certainly will be important for the future and the economy of the city and state,” said Charles A. Gargano, the chairman of the development corporation, which is sponsoring the project.

The project’s developer, Forest City Ratner Companies, is the development partner of The New York Times Company in building its new headquarters on Eighth Avenue in Manhattan. The study was commissioned by the development corporation and paid for by Forest City Ratner, as required by law.

The study found that if all the project’s children attended a primary or intermediate school within half a mile of their new home, the existing schools would be “over capacity,” and new satellite classrooms in less crowded schools, new school buildings or other measures would be needed.

In a detailed examination of the shadows cast by the new buildings in each season, the report found that new shadows would be cast on many existing parks, as well as on open space incorporated into the new project, “throughout the year,” with a “significant adverse impact” for only one such area, near the Atlantic Terminal public housing complex.
The study also included extensive mitigation measures that the developer said would alleviate most of the project’s negative impacts. An ecologically friendly storm-water-capture system centered on the arena’s roof, for instance, is expected to help prevent sewage overflows.
The report’s release sets into motion a public comment period during which the project is likely to come under the closest scrutiny it has yet received, before a final vote by the development corporation’s board this fall. Should the development corporation approve the project, a prospect that appears likely, it will face a vote by the Public Authorities Control Board, the state entity that eventually derailed the West Side stadium project last year.

Critics of Atlantic Yards have questioned whether the scope of the impact study was comprehensive enough, and may choose to fight the project in court on those grounds. The City Council, which has no formal role in approving Atlantic Yards, announced yesterday that it would pay for an independent review of the study, at the behest of the Council of Brooklyn Neighborhoods, a community group, and Councilwoman Letitia James, a leading Atlantic Yards opponent.

Opponents have already promised a vigorous legal struggle against the development corporation’s efforts to condemn the small amount of property that Forest City Ratner has not been able to acquire privately. Those efforts, in effect, began yesterday with the corporation’s formal declaration that the blocks on which the project would be built meet the state’s definition of “blighted,” and thus qualify for eminent domain.
Critics of the project complained yesterday that the 60-day public-comment period was too short to allow residents enough time to wade through the environmental study. Others questioned why it had been released in the middle of the summer, when the borough’s community boards are in recess.

“The E.S.D.C. is making a mockery of what has already been a completely flawed process,” said Daniel Goldstein, the spokesman for Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn, an umbrella group for opponents of the project.

At a press conference yesterday, Mr. Gargano, the development corporation’s chairman, tried to deflect criticism of the project’s scale, one of the main issues cited by Brooklyn residents. When asked whether he thought the project could be made smaller, he replied, “I don’t think it can be.” Later, however, he gave a slightly different answer, saying that though the developer would prefer to keep the project at 8.7 million square feet, the development corporation would contemplate reductions during the public comment period.

James P. Stuckey, the Forest City executive in charge of Atlantic Yards, said criticism of the project’s scale and other attributes came from “some people, who live close in, not liking tall buildings.”

“And I have to tell you that for most people who need affordable housing, that’s just not an argument that washes,” he said.

Those who oppose the project said that the documents released by the development corporation gave them yet more ammunition. According to the general project plan for Atlantic Yards, the project’s cost, which was originally estimated at $2.5 billion and was reassessed at $3.5 billion last year, is now $4.2 billion, which Mr. Goldstein called “bloated.”

Mr. Stuckey said the increases stemmed from rising construction costs, higher land acquisition costs, and a more detailed accounting of costs than was possible at earlier stages in the project’s development.
The general project plan also projects that Atlantic Yards will generate a total of $1.91 billion in total tax revenue over 30 years, calculated as net present value. The city and state together would contribute about $500 million to the project, a mix of direct payments, tax exemptions and financing costs. Overall, according to those projections, the development as currently proposed would produce about $1.4 billion in net tax revenues to the city and state.