Ratner Roundup

You can't have Thanksgiving without a turkey, and Brooklyn's BIGGEST turkey is Forest City Ratner's Atlantic Yards project. Therefore, in honor of the holiday, I thought I'd offer a cornucopia of tasty tidbits concerning the project.

Pocket Stuffing

According to the Cleveland Plain Dealer (via NoLandGrab), Forest City Ratner has been most generous to underprivileged politicians at the national, state and local level. The reason for all of the handouts? According to Ratner it's because "We believe in democracy... For good people to run for office, you need money. Otherwise, they don't have a chance."

Best line from the article:

Who doesn't get donations from Forest City?
"Whoever doesn't ask," said Cleveland City Councilman Joe Cimperman.

Also from NoLandGrab, it appears that Daily News sports columnist Mike Lupica will is putting together a list of Brooklyn grubbers leaders who have received cash from Ratner. We know Mike will be checking his list twice, but will he tell us whom he considers naughty or nice?

Gehry's Goose Cooked?

At a recent meeting of the American Institute of Architects, celebrity building designer and Simpson's alumnus Frank Gehry appeared to some observers to be a bit on the defensive as he faced members of his own profession and the public. The Brooklyn Papers offered the following headline in their latest edition:

Gehry: My design was ‘horrible’
Architect tinkers to reduce impact of Atlantic Yards

This is quite an attention grabber, but not entirely accurate, even though many local readers were undoubtably appreciative of the sentiment. According to NLG, what Gehry said was that the decision to reveal his concept model in the New York Times while it was still a work in progress, was horrible, implying that he would have never revealed his concept at such an early stage, but other forces prevailed, resulting in premature exposition to a public that didn't have the proper context for evaluating what they were seeing.

That explanation is plausible, but it doesn't make me feel any better about Gehry's design, which was created in vacuum by a self-styled artiste. Gehry may be capable of designing a beautiful, iconic and highly functional building, but a neighborhood is something else entirely. To my admittedly untrained eyes, Gehry's collection of steel and glass weeds may make a compelling paperweight, but it doesn't seem like a place that would support the growth and development of a viable community. A neighborhood is not a collection of buildings, it is a collection of people. The built environment and the people who use it have a strong symbiotic relationship, and in my humble opinion, the people affected  should always be involved in the conceptual stage of design, for it is there that the boundaries of what is possible for the neighborhood are literally set in stone.

Gehry lost me when he failed to hold any public input forums or charettes before he pulled out his popsicle sticks and aluminum foil. Gehry should have insisted on such input as a condition of employment with Ratner. The fact that he didn't makes him unfit for the project in my view. Either he didn't recognize the difference in designing a single building and defining a neighborhood, or he wasn't willing to stand up for what he knew to be the right thing to do.

I predict this project will damage his reputation regardless of wheter he continues to be employed by Ratner or not.

Chestnuts Goading Me to Open Ire

One meaning of the word "chestnut" is "an old, frequently repeated  joke, story, or song." The sentiments expressed in the recent editorials referenced below are frequently repeated, but they are no joke. They may, however, cause some of you to roast.

There are two big chestnuts nestled in the New York Times opinion,  "A Matter of Scale in Brooklyn." The article itself is a rather timid request to the project promoters to maybe, possibly, adjust their plans a wee little bit in the interest of the surrounding residents, who, while they are clearly too selfish or ignorant to appreciate the benefits the project brings, are at least entitled to a modicum of consideration.

OK, perhaps I'm reading a bit too much into the text. I'll let you be the judge. Here's the first chestnut:

The developer, Bruce Ratner (a partner of The Times in developing its new headquarters), earned much good will by reaching out to surrounding communities and pledging that 50 percent of the housing units would be pegged to low- and middle-income residents. That is no longer the case, given the planned addition of nearly 3,000 apartments for sale at market prices, though another 1,000 moderately priced units could be added off the site.

The second sentence has since been shown to be at best a broken promise, and at worst, a mere ruse to give cheerleading politicians the kind of PR cover they needed to weather the local critics. However, the real chestnut is the assertion that Ratner "reached out" to "surrounding communities." The main groups that are usually cited as evidence of this magnanimity are BUILD and ACORN. Neither group has a membership that is primarily drawn from surrounding communities. In addition, BUILD has been exposed as a group funded by Ratner, and ACORN stands to benefit from management contracts they've been promised if the deal goes through.

What is most disturbing to me is that in spite of evidence to the contrary the Times continues to promote the idea that Ratner has made significant efforts to involve local residents in the process. I suppose fact checking is too 20th century for a cutting edge paper like the Times.

Later in the article, the writer offers an even bigger chestnut (emphasis mine):

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. But the residents are absolutely right in pointing out that...

The is one of the most common and most offensive sentiments that I see repeated by politicians, developers, builders unions and corporate media. They totally dodge the question of whether a particular development proposal is beneficial to the community or was arrived at through the correct process. Instead, ALL opposition to ANY development coming from the parties that are going to be the most adversely impacted  is considered short-sighted and obstructionist.  The Times doesn't bother to ask whether the neighborhoods who oppose Ratner's project are also interested in preserving the status quo. Instead, they immediately jump to the conclusion that opposing a specific change is tantamount to opposing all change. This charge is contradicted by statements following this passage where the author describes the residents' current dissatisfaction with the horrible traffic situation in the project's footprint. Can anyone seriously argue that the residents of Prospect Heights, Ft. Greene and Park Slope want traffic to stay as it is? Can anyone seriously argue that these same residents are arguing against any development on Atlantic Yards?

Why isn't all support from the groups most likely to benefit from public subsidies automatically assumed to be suspect? Why are the privileged few who bring these deals to the table in the first place not excoriated for avoiding real public participation until political support is all but sewn up behind the scenes? Why doesn't the Times critically examine the track record of a particular developer with respect to promised vs. actual benefit delivered for the taxpayer dollar before they wholeheartedly endorse a project?

I've got a chestnut of my own:

Cities would be rapidly turned into a dysfunctional hodgepodge of surface parking lots, failed destination attractions, and taxpayer funded white elephants if it weren't for neighborhood opposition groups.

Take that anonymous Times editorialist! I'm certain my viewpoint is just as well-served by the facts as  yours is.

I suppose I should be grateful that a widely read media vehicle like the Times is publicly challenging the scale of the project, and, especially the legitimacy of using public monies for private development. Still, they have a long way to go to regain credibility on this issue in my eyes.

Erroll Louis of the Daily News offers a variation on the theme and adds a chestnut of his own:

In Brooklyn's Community Board 8, the site of the Atlantic Yards project, nearly 26,000 people - 27% of the overall population - receive welfare, food stamps or some other form of public assistance. And as I have written recently, street crime in the area, including homicides, is on the rise.

Such conditions are exactly the kind of situation where government power should be used, if necessary, to stop a handful of people from blocking a multibillion-dollar project that will transform the area by providing jobs and housing to thousands.

But the project could be in danger if efforts to eliminate or impair the use of eminent domain succeed. Such measures are not only shortsighted, they threaten to kill real development projects and real jobs in areas of New York City that need them desperately.

Like the Times' editorialist, Louis portrays the concerned neighborhood residents as pure obstructionists. In addition, he implies by association that opposing the project is essentially a vote to deny opportunity to lower income residents. If you oppose the Ratner project for any reason, you are opposed to jobs, reduced crime, and affordable housing for those who need it most.

This is technically known as bullshit.

There are some implied assumptions required to suppor this argument that don't match reality:

1. The jobs created by this project are jobs that are subtantially better than the ones already available to the working poor in the area. They have to be better, because simply switching from one sub living wage job to another doesn't benefit the wage earner.
2. The jobs created are "new." That is, they aren't simply being moved from another area in the city. Would Louis be OK with creating jobs for people in Crown Heights if it meant taking jobs from the working poor in another neighborhood in the city? The low wage jobs associated with supporting the arena may be "new," but the higher wage office jobs are definitely imports from somewhere else.
3. The track record of developers with respect to keeping promises on housing allocations and contribution to economic growth inspires confidence. It doesn't.
4. That the population he sees as most in need will be guaranteed a place in the new development, and not displaced by a corporate sponsored "gentrification bomb." Organic gentrification can be managed with zoning, incentives and community action. A single huge development project that brings in scads of publicly subsidized luxury units and fails to deliver on promises for affordable housing cannot be managed. Once the trigger is pulled, short of litigation, the fate of the neighborhood is set.

Whew. I think my eyes may have been bigger than my stomach. All this talk about Ratner is giving me indigestion. On the other hand, I detect the faint whiff of doubt in the pro-Ratner camp's recent public statements.  Perhaps an implosion or some major capitulation is on the horizon.

Call it a gut feeling.