Flashback, 2012: Atlantic Yards Flack Claims Retail Changes Equal Railyard Revamp
Today, the unfinished project leaves a "scar" that was supposedly gone. "Blasé Bruce Ratner” ignores it.
There’s been ho-hum response—so far, at least—to “Blasé Bruce Ratner,” the original Atlantic Yards developer, who claimed, in a recent interview with WNYC’s Brian Lehrer, that the focus should be on the lack of low-income housing, “instead of worrying about whether the [Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park] units got finished."
That’s astonishing, since it ignores how Ratner promised “affordable housing” and talked up as a priority. Remember, “Jobs, Housing, and Hoops”?
It ignores how Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park was supposed to include 900 low-income apartments, community commitments guaranteed by a Community Benefits Agreement, but has only delivered 254.
Moreover, Area Median Income (AMI), the baseline for calculating affordability, has more than doubled since the project was approved in 2006. That means low-income units, below 60% of AMI, would cost far more than project supporters anticipated.
The sunken railyard
There’s another problem, as well. There are six tower sites over the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s (MTA) Vanderbilt Yard that await development, B5-B10. (One block of the three-block railyard was subsumed by part of the arena block.)
The railyard was considered blighted by Empire State Development (ESD, previously ESDC), to enable eminent domain.
Before his analysis of the “problem,” Ratner recounted this to Lehrer:"What happened is the Chinese company [Greenland USA] that bought [Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park] wasn't able to finish it. And that's a shame. It's not the end of the world, though. There were 3,000 units. We did get a Barclays Center, and sure, I'm unhappy that they didn't finish it. But, y’know, that really isn't the problem."
Not the end of the world for Ratner, currently adding “philanthropist” and “[co-]author” to his biography. But Atlantic Yards was supposed to transform Brooklyn, right?
Flashback, 2012
I was reminded of an April 17, 2012 New York Times article focusing on retail changes near the arena, Impact of Atlantic Yards, for Good or Ill, Is Already Felt:
For Forest City Ratner, the developer of the project, which was strongly backed by many city leaders, the changes are evidence that the arena has already met its goal of transforming a dreary section of Brooklyn — the Long Island Rail Road’s rail yards and surrounding industrial buildings, which the company’s spokesman described as “ a scar that divided the neighborhood.”
“That’s a sign of economic vitality, something that’s good for the borough,” said Joe DePlasco, the Ratner spokesman.
As I wrote at the time, that suggested that the project had successfully removed the blight that was the justification for eminent domain.
It hadn't.
Forest City Ratner hadn’t even paid the MTA for the development rights to most of the railyard. It renegotiated a 22-year schedule to pay. As for the "surrounding industrial buildings," the largest (the Ward Bakery) was torn down for the interim surface parking lot (bookended by a historic district), and other large ones were condo conversions torn down for the arena (Spalding, Atlantic Arts).
So, not so dreary. After all, as Chuck Ratner, then CEO of parent Forest City Enterprises, once said, "it's a great piece of real estate.” So the coming arena, and gentrifying population, had both helped drive up rents.
They just hadn’t transformed the railyard. Still.
“In Bruce We Trust"?
The Brooklyn Paper, under publisher Ed Weintrob, once critically covered Atlantic Yards, and, upon the signing of the Atlantic Yards Community Benefits Agreement in June 2005, reported Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s message, under the headline In Bruce We Trust.
When Ratner was asked about the enforceability of the CBA, which had no governmental signatories, he claimed it was “legally binding,” with economic penalties, mediation, and the possibility of litigation.
Bloomberg interjected: “I would add something else — even more importantly, you have Bruce Ratner’s word. That should be enough for you and for everybody else in the community.”
It wasn’t to some, and it should not have been. (Note: this was before I was actively covering the project.)
The “dark genius” DePlasco
But Ratner had help. Early in my blogging days, on Nov. 1, 2005, I wrote an essay headlined The dark genius of Ratner flack Joe DePlasco--and how some resist. It began:
Forget CEO Bruce Ratner or even Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, the biggest booster of the Atlantic Yards project. Forest City Ratner's not-so-secret weapon is an outside contractor named Joe DePlasco, a hired gun with a golden tongue, who can spin a seeming setback into a rosy scenario, offering distortions and evasions--if reporters let him get away with it, which they too often do.
I catalogued his tactics, including
Tactic #1: Sunny Side Up
Tactic #2: Forest City Ratner as Charitable Entity
Tactic #3: Reality Be Damned
Tactic #4: Changing the Subject
Tactic #5: Stonewall
DePlasco, when he's on, could offer a spectacular mix of tactics.
In this case, yes, it’s not even clear that the characterization—”the arena has already met its goal of transforming a dreary section of Brooklyn”—is a direct quote, though the sentiment is attributed to the developer.
But claiming that buzzy new retail means the “scar that divided the neighborhood” has been healed seems to be a combination of the first, third, and fourth tactics.
DePlasco and the journalism of verification
As I wrote at the time, not every journalist took DePlasco at his word. They recognized that he has an agenda, and that journalism should involve scrutiny, not stenography, or, as Times executive editor Bill Keller says, the "journalism of verification".
At the time, I cited reports by Brian Carreira in the Brooklyn Rail, Nik Kovac in the Brooklyn Downtown Star, and Matthew Scheurman in the Village Voice.
None of the three is still covering Atlantic Yards. Only one is still in journalism. Only one publication—the Downtown Star, always a tertiary player—persists. I’ve tried to take up the mantle, but there’s far less interest and budget for coverage.
DePlasco’s still flacking. There’s a lot more work there.