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Nice bounce for Brooklyn
With approval at last from an obscure state board, after three turbulent years of legal and political arguments, Brooklyn now takes a giant leap forward with developer Bruce Ratner's $4 billion Atlantic Yards project - a grand vision that will bring jobs, housing, sports and civic pride to the city's most populous borough.
Atlantic Yards will replace a desolate streetscape now dominated by railroad tracks and a junk pile with a basketball arena for the NBA's Nets and more than 6,000 units of new housing, 2,250 of them subsidized rentals for low- and middle-income families.
Thousands of jobs will be created to build the complex, and Ratner has signed agreements with community groups to guarantee locals the first crack at those jobs. Moreover, he went out of his way to satisfy the project's many opponents - paying handsome premiums to most existing property owners and offering families in apartments on the site rent-stabilized units in the new complex at the same rent.
One sour note in this happy story: the last-minute bickering by the men who run the Public Authorities Control Board - Gov. Pataki, Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, who postponed the vote three times Wednesday to engage in outrageous, last-minute bargaining.
Among other things, the back-room dealing chopped more than 100 feet off Ratner's tallest planned tower. It's the PACB's job to review the financial worthiness of state-financed projects, not to use its leverage as an excuse to redraw buildings at the eleventh hour. But at least the PACB wasn't used to delay or kill the project outright, the way Silver sank the West Side stadium and a new Penn Station.
That significant quibble aside, Ratner's triumph marks an important milestone in Brooklyn's renaissance. Not since the Dodgers decamped for the West Coast half a century ago has Kings County had its own major league pro sports franchise, and those who remember those days know what a lift a team can give New York.
More battles loom, including rear-guard litigation from a handful of anti-project die-hards. But the momentum is solidly on the side of Brooklyn's pride and prosperity, where it belongs.
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Thank You, Shelly Silver
Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver came through for New York City big-time Wednesday in approving a huge new development project for Brooklyn.
For that, he deserves the city's thanks.
Within three years, if all goes well, the borough will have its own major-league sports team - the Nets - for the first time in half a century.
Work on 16 buildings and an arena for the team might start as soon as next year.
Mayor Bloomberg called Forest City Ratner's $4 billion Atlantic Yards project "the biggest private-sector investment in Brooklyn history." Think jobs. Customers for businesses. Housing. Office space. Tax revenue.It all adds up to 22 revitalized acres of a moribund section of the borough - an indisputable boon for Brooklyn.
The project got its final, official go-ahead with a unanimous vote by representatives of Gov. Pataki, state Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno and Silver.
Pataki and Bruno had signaled their support early on - but the project needed the backing of all three men to proceed, and Silver remained undecided until the last minute. Plus, in the past two years, he's deep-sixed plans for two other major projects - the stadium for Manhattan's West Side and Moynihan Station.
So there certainly was lots of suspense leading up to Wednesday's vote. In the end, Silver went along. And now, all that stands in the way of this wonderful Christmas gift for the city are - you guessed it - lawsuits.
Hey, whaddya expect? It's New York.
Some of the suits are driven by narrow self-interest; others, by discomfort with plans to use government's power of eminent domain to acquire properties for the site.
Ever since the Supreme Court's ruling last year in Kelo vs. New London, we, too, have had concerns about eminent domain, which lets public officials seize private property (and compensate owners) for "public" purposes, including economic development. But this project will benefit far more than Forest City Ratner; indeed, its positive ripples will cross the East River and be felt by all New Yorkers.
It's an invaluable project for the borough's economic well-being - but the entire city stands to gain, if only in that it gets to boast having yet another pro sports team in town. (Go, Nets!)
Kudos to Pataki, Bruno - and Silver - for helping to make it all happen.
A WINNING SHOT
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