Dope on the Slope

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.

Weeds of Brooklyn #4: Flore des Yards Atlantiques

A flower falls, even though we love it; and a weed grows, even though we do not love it. - Dogen

The three white flowered weeds pictured above were photographed on Pacific Street between Carlton and Vanderbilt Avenues. The butter-and-eggs, which is also known as "toadflax," was particularly striking.  Of course, these are only a fraction of the species growing in the diverse tangle of vegetation that is taking over the vacant lots, fence rows, and sidewalks. I also spotted:

asian dayflower plantain red clover

pokeberry goldenrod thistle

oxeye daisy milkweed wild lettuce

Of particular note were a couple of HUGE specimens of great mullein that easily stood over 6 feet tall. In their dried state, they looked like Brooklyn's answer to saguaro cacti.  There are just so many plants there right now. I'd say a biology class could spend four or five hours cataloging them all. Here's a view of the overrun sidewalk. Brit in Brooklyn has an even better shot of the same scene.

What good are all these weeds?

From an ecological standpoint, weeds are among the earliest colonizers of a disturbed areas such as clear-cut forests or abandoned fields.  They are important because they initiate the process known as succession, where the unique adaptive characteristics of one group of plants transforms the environment so that it can be colonized by subsequent groups. Weeds make way for shrubs, shrubs make way for conifers, and finally, large deciduous hardwoods move in.

I've always thought of gentrification as analogous to succession. The process itself is neither good nor bad. Sometimes the later stages retain a good deal of diversity, sometimes the process results in monoculture. What is certain is that artificial attempts to manufacture a particular type of ecological community are doomed to fail without a lot of costly maintenance. Think of the effort required to maintain acres of a single crop, or to keep a tropical or desert plant community alive at your local botanical garden. Similarly, I predict the exotic luxury high-rises that Forest City Ratner hopes will take root in Brooklyn will require a lot of public investment to keep them from wilting.

But, to echo the quote from Zen master Dogen, are the proposed "Atlantic Yards" high-rises weeds or flowers?

The answer is not as straightforward as it appears when one considers that the designation of "weed" or "flower" is subjective and fluid. What may be a source of delight during a walk through the woods can be infuriating when it appears in a carefully cultivated flower bed. Similarly, the relative risks and benefits associated with any development project ultimately depend on where you are standing.

Will the indigenous wildflower that is Prospect Heights succumb to the scythe of eminent domain and the poison of overdevelopment?  Or, will Ratner's exotic rose of a deal be strangled by the crabgrass of lawsuits, investor doubts and political flip-flops?

Personally, I'm hoping for the latter, but the only thing that is certain is there is bound to be plenty of fertilizer.

---

Related:
The Weeds of Brooklyn #3: Wild Carrot
The Weeds of Brooklyn #2: Asiatic Dayflower
The Weeds of Brooklyn #1: Yellow Wood Sorrel

Would You Like Fries With That, Mr. Ratner?

Atlantic Yards critics throughout the blogosphere are up in arms about the state government's latest gift to longtime corporate welfare recipient Forest City Ratner - a "reform" bill that excludes only one project in the entire state from the requirement to provide affordable housing in order to receive tax abatements (guess which one?).

In other words, FCR may receive tax breaks for building luxury condos to be sold at market prices.

You can read the gory details at Atlantic Yards Report and No Land Grab.

But who needs details at this point? I like my overblown righteous indignation served piping hot, with a big greasy side of shrill.

All you 70s kids will remember this jingle well:

Two Albany patsies.
Special clause
lets us
cheat.
Prickless
minions
want no taxes. Accede. Bunk!

Mmmmmm, mmmmm. That's 100% Grade-A privilege.

Over 1 Billion given away.

Atlantic Yards: Department of Da' Fence

Norman Oder led an extensive if not exhaustive walking tour of the "Atlantic Yards" footprint and adjacent areas Saturday morning. Despite the heat and haze, Norman's tour cleared up a lot about the history and geography of the area, and, while it's clear that our host has grave misgivings about the project and especially the process, he did a decent job of representing the perspectives of various stakeholders, including local developers (not just FCR).

What is apparent when you here the phrase "in hindsight" over and over again, is that New York City seems to have an utter lack of anything resembling a long term vision or set of planning guidelines.  I've often described the "development" process here as a Darwinian competition for limited resources - namely space. It works fairly well with incremental development driven by local residents and small businesses - the only problem is that sort of development does not readily address systemic issues like lack of affordable housing in the face of increasing density, and the ever worsening transportation situation. However, there is simply no indication that the developer entitlement system currently in place is addressing any of these problems either, and, in most cases, I would argue that huge projects like Atlantic Yards are far more likely to make things worse if they are the products of a back room process driven primarily by the interests of the developer.

Which brings me to the fences. I can't think of a better metaphor for our city's approach to public involvement in public projects, particularly in recent history. The world-view of the so-called "political leaders" in this city simply has not matured enough to comprehend, let alone competently execute a long range planning process that includes substantial public involvement from concept to reality. It's not that it's been tried and found deficient, it's that it's never really been tried. 

Obviously this needs to change. Unfortunately, I think it will take a catastrophic failure of one of the current megaprojects before the public will mobilize around this issue in sufficient numbers to force such change.

I sure hope I'm wrong.

Shrill of the Week: Ratner on the Record

Looky what I found in my classic stacks of wax!

Click on the above image for a larger view.

Fun for the whole family! Includes: - Your Money (That's What I Want) - Spinning Wheel - I'm A Steamroller, Baby - When The Walls Come Tumblin' Down - On The Shady Side of the Street - Cheesecake Merengue (for Marty) - Ballad of Frankie & Frankie - Good Golly Miss Brooklyn - Down in the Boondoggles - Goldsteinfinger - (I Hate) Everyday People - The Wreck of the Cleveland Steamer And many, many more. Only $2 Billion in subsidies! Act now! Supplies are limited.

Hats off and a hearty thanks to Stone for providing the album cover image and a nice compendium of the worst covers ever.

Shrill Of The Week: More Atlantic Yards Doggerel

In the spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of shrill...

Brucey-Wucey: Ballad Of A Bad Egg
Brucey-wucey knocked down a wall,
Brucey-wucey caused it to fall.
All of his cronies, and
All of his flaks
Couldn't persuade Brooklynites to relax.

Limerick Memorializing The Great Ward's Bakery Calamity
There once was a fellow named Bruce,
Whose crew knocked a ton of bricks loose.
They fell to the ground
With a horrible sound.
There's a reason, but there's no excuse.

Ratner Rubble Displaces Hundreds

700-CRW_5239 Ward Bakery Collaspe, Pacific Street, Atlantic Yards, originally uploaded by AKinloch.

Several sources are reporting on the collapse of the north parapet of the old Ward Bakery Building earlier this morning. Thankfully, no one was injured, but the 350 residents of a nearby homeless shelter were evacuated indefinitely.

The building was certified as structurally sound prior to the demolition, which leads one to question the safety of Forest City Ratner's demolition practices. Especially given the fact that a demolition related collapse resulted in a gaping hole in 5th Avenue just yesterday.

This is what happens when you a have a developer driven process with no public input or oversight. The ESDC should call a halt to all demolitions within the footprint until the causes are thoroughly investigated and the risk of future collapses mitigated. We don't need a "next time" where pedestrians get crushed in addition to cars.

At least this solved the mystery of the helicopters I heard buzzing around incessantly this morning. I expect there will be some interesting footage on the evening news.

Thanks to Brit In Brooklyn for the excellent photos of the wreckage. There are many more here.

Which Came First...

The graffito or the sparrow?

This little guy was perched right above the Vanderbilt Yards.  Too bad Passer domesticus isn't an endangered species, or we might be able to thwart bad development by raising the specter of habitat destruction. Of course, there are some home and business owners in Prospect Heights that would argue that destruction of habitat for Homo sapiens is occurring right now.

Anti-demolition Coalition

It was hard to get a good look at Ratner's wrecking crew at the corner of Pacific Street and Vanderbilt this morning, but the local media were out in force with their TV cameras anyway.

The folks protesting the demolitions, on the other hand, weren't camera shy in the least. Curiously, one protester I spoke to said the building being demolished in the picture above  was not even on the list that the developer provided to the plaintiffs during the recent attempt to get a temporary restraining order that would block the demolitions.

Four additional demolitions were scheduled to start today, according to a press release from DDDB.

Atlantic Yards: The Over and Under

Speaking of Atlantic Yards, here's my prediction of the "over and under" on this project if it goes through as planned. Call me shrill, but I think this project will have the dubious honor of becoming the textbook example of how NOT to envision, plan, construct, and maintain an urban mixed-use project of unprecedented scale for decades to come. Won't it be great to have the densest residential development project in entire U.S. serving as a living laboratory for more enlightened cities to learn from? How noble for us to provide the example.

OVER	UNDER
Overrated architect Over-promised benefits Over-burdened infrastructure Over-eager glad-handing politicos Overruns on cost Overshot project milestones	Under-informed public Undermined public trust Under-delivered benefits Under-handed PR tactics Under-valued historic buildings Underdogs who will never give up the fight