Goodbye Jumbo???

Well the big news for Brooklyn today revolves around the incredible shrinking white elephant known as the Atlantic Yards development. According to articles in the NYT (here and here), the size of the project will shrink considerably due to the inability of developer Bruce Ratner to secure adequate financing for his big idea in the current financial climate.

While the "affordable housing" component of the project may be evaporating (as if it wasn't all smoke to begin with), one dimension of the project is swelling to super-jumbo proportions - the public subsidies. According to The Brooklyn Paper, "the cost of the publicly financed arena, whose original pricetag was $435 million, but increased to $637 million last year, has now ballooned to $950 million."

What a surprise.

Daniel Goldstein, speaking for Develop Don't Destroy made the following statement:

“We need leadership in the city and the state to face the music. The project needs  to be reconfigured, rethought and renegotiated. The promise was affordable housing.   It’s clearly been put on the back burner, while the arena has been moved to  the front burner.”

Aw, c'mon Daniel. Don't you know the one thing that can carry economically disadvantaged Brooklynites through the coming recession is the knowledge that their tax dollars will bring a HOME SPORTS TEAM for them to root for in 3 or 4 or 5 or maybe 8 years? That, and a giant surface parking lot.

Private profit, public risk.

It's the American way.

Detailed coverage at No Land Grab and Atlantic Yards Report.