|
Downtown Brooklyn's Atlantic Yards redevelopment got a huge and welcome shot in the arm yesterday - courtesy of a favorable decision from the highest court in the land.
The US Supreme Court declined to hear the latest in a series of legal challenges to developer Bruce Ratner's mega-project - which would pour some $4 billion in housing and commercial investment into 22 acres of dilapidated Brooklyn real estate.
All told, the development would produce some 6,400 new units of mixed-income housing, a brand-new basketball arena for the soon-to-be Brooklyn Nets - and commercial space galore.
Not that anything this promising ever happens in New York without a fight.
Atlantic Yards, to be sure, has never been a perfect project. For starters, Ratner has relied heavily on special subsidies and tax breaks.
And, of course, the state is threatening to use its eminent-domain authority (a power we've argued should never be used lightly) to acquire some of the land - sparking the court case in question.
Still, at the end of the day, the city can't afford to leave neglected, run-down or under-built areas languishing.
To the contrary: New York needs to grow - continually. Yet Atlantic Yards is a prime example of just how hard it can be for Gotham to do that.
Consider that the eminent-domain case is only the most recent in a long line of legal hurdles for Ratner & Co. (many, far less substantive) that have already pushed construction back years and threatened to scare away investors.
(Yes, this is New York: If you don't like something . . . just sue somebody.)
As it is, the plaintiffs plan to take their arguments to New York's courts.
And Ratner, in any case, can't break ground on the Nets' arena until the state's chief development agency goes before a judge to defend its environmental-impact study of the project.
Again, the city needs this development - not just for the housing, the jobs and the civic pride that comes with a brand new New York sports team, but also for new taxable property that the project would provide.
And even more so, given the city's budget squeeze.
So the court's ruling is a step forward.
The sooner Ratner & Co. gets this project done, the better for Brooklyn - and all New York.
|
|
Editorial: Yes, in their Backyards
Opponents of the $4.2 billion Atlantic Yards project got unceremoniously stuffed yesterday by the U.S. Supreme Court. It was a fitting end to a grand legal hoax perpetrated by a handful of not-in-my-backyard naysayers.
The high court tossed the case without comment, adding to the legal defeats suffered by the development's foes. On the merits, their arguments were losers. But the merits had nothing to do with these court battles.
No, these were all about snarling an extraordinarily beneficial project, approved up and down by the city and state, in endless time-consuming litigation in the hope that delay might prove fatal. And four years of nonsense have at least been damaging.
Presented in headier times by builder Bruce Ratner, the Atlantic Yards plan was conceived as turning 22 down-at-the-heels acres in the heart of Brooklyn into the home of an arena for the pro-basketball Nets, plus 6,000 units of housing, much of it priced to be within financial reach of poor and middle-class New Yorkers.
Now, Ratner is facing the challenge of an economic downturn and tightened credit markets. And his victory in the Supreme Court over 11 - count them, 11 - holdout property owners may prove hollow. He says he's committed for the long term. Let's hope so, because the Atlantic Yards would be great for Brooklyn and the city as a whole.
|
