September 15, 2006

DAILY NEWS EDITORIAL

Atlantic Yards Win by a Mile

To the runaway victories of Eliot Spitzer and Hillary Clinton on Tuesday night, add one more landslide: The Atlantic Yards project planned for Brooklyn was a huge winner at the polls.

Whether to build the $4.2 billion housing and office complex in Prospect Heights along with an arena for the pro-basketball Nets, was a central issue in five congressional and state races. Candidates who back the development won in four of the contests - and the fifth went to one of Albany's impregnable incumbents.

Anti-Atlantic Yards activists worked feverishly in two federal and three state races, promising wins that would establish, once and for all, a high level of dissatisfaction with builder Bruce Ratner's plan. They succeeded instead in proving that Brooklyn wants the mega-project, with its thousands of units of affordable housing.

In the most high-profile race, Yards supporter Councilwoman Yvette Clarke won Shirley Chisholm's old congressional seat over three rivals. Only one opposed the project, and he came in last. The pro-development field pulled in more than 80% of the vote.

Rep. Ed Towns beat Councilman Charles Barron, who hammered the development. State Sen. Marty Connor, a booster, decisively defeated anti-project gadfly Ken Diamondstone, who spent more than $265,000 of his own money on his campaign. And Bill Batson, a former union staffer who ran a single-issue, anti-development campaign for the Assembly, got creamed - 64% to 25% - by Hakeem Jeffries, who favors Atlantic Yards. Jeffries won 105 of the 109 election districts in the race. Only entrenched incumbent Sen. Velmanette Montgomery managed to survive as a Yards foe.

Add these election results to recent polls, and the result is the same: A solid majority of Brooklynites want the thousands of jobs and affordable-housing units that are included in Atlantic Yards. And the opponents have revealed themselves, once again, to be a small but vocal group that uses press conferences, blogs and bluster to disguise thin support in the neighborhoods they so often claim to represent.

Atlantic Yards News is a publication of Forest City Ratner Companies