If “There Really Is No Accountability,” as Per Former ESD Executive, Why Not Involve Third-Party Experts?
The first Atlantic Yards Project Director came clean after leaving her post. As new project plan looms, the argument deserves expansion.
A public workshop Nov. 18 sponsored by Empire State Development (ESD) seeks community input on the height and density of future towers, but—at least for now—offers little information on what 1) has been approved and 2) is already in process.
In the mash-up image below, contrast the top graphic, provided by ESD, the state authority that oversees/shepherds the project, with the bottom one, an unofficial infographic I’ve produced with the help of graphic designer Ben Keel.
The top graphic, as I wrote, omits the plan, already in process, to create a giant, two-tower project at Site 5, catercorner to the Barclays Center.
It also leaves the two-block railyard site blank, rather than explaining that six towers, of varying height and bulk, have been approved for those parcels. (See dimensions below.)
Changes in the size and configuration of the towers, and attendant open space, are surely contemplated. After all, the new development team likely seeks state permission for more bulk—vertical “land”—and it’s not clear they’d pay for those additional development rights.
Remember, original developer Forest City Ratner had to bid for development rights over the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s Vanderbilt Yard, and the responsibility to pay annually for those rights continued through successor master developer Greenland USA and now the joint venture involving Cirrus Real Estate Partners and LCOR.
Third-party experts
Why can’t we get basic honesty from our government? If not, that’s another argument for third-party experts to represent the public, as I wrote in August 2024.
The coalition BrooklynSpeaks supports a third-party analysis of the project’s financial viability, given unrealistic projections in the past. (Contrast the state-funded analysis by KPMG and the more accurate projection by outside expert Joshua Kahr, who said Atlantic Yards couldn’t be built on the promised timeline.)
An analysis, I’d contend, should extend to the value of public concessions to the incoming development team, including their cost to enter the project. (Those concessions would include direct subsidies, tax breaks, low-cost financing, increased bulk, and benefits like exterior LED signage contemplated for Site 5.)
In 2018, Jaime Stein, then a board member of the purportedly advisory Atlantic Yards Community Development Corporation (AY CDC), proposed that third-party planning, design and construction consultants review a pending proposal for Site 5 to inform the board and the public. (At that point, the remaining project was not on the table.)
That could address the tension between fiscal feasibility and neighborhood impacts. Her proposal got a cool reception from ESD, whose usual consultant, AKRF, is known for producing documents that justify any project changes.
Were the AY CDC truly an advisory body, rather than an appendage of ESD used to provide a scrim of legitimacy, it deserves its own experts. So if ESD won’t fund them, local elected officials or non-profits might step up.
Reasons for distrust
As I wrote in 2016, skepticism toward ESD was bolstered by some rueful reflections by Arana Hankin, ESD’s first Atlantic Yards Project Director, who seemed a good soldier at first.
For example, Hankin unwisely declared faith in Barclays Center sound control measures—which later required a new green roof to tamp down escaping bass. After Hankin left in 2013 for a Loeb Fellowship at Harvard University, though, her qualms about Atlantic Yards surfaced in both a public lecture and a published article.
She criticized the absence of accountability, called promises of jobs and housing overblown, and suggested government officials were overmatched by the powerful real estate industry. It was difficult, she said, to reconcile both the interests of the private developer and community needs.
Hankin also described economic development agencies as “quasi-private entities [that] function more like a private corporation [and] are not required to be as transparent as government agencies.”
Neither her Sept. 9. 2013 lecture (video below) or her 2014 Harvard Journal of Real Estate article, tartly titled Megaprojects’ Exclusionary Benefits: the Case of Local Government Policy Benefiting the Privileged Few, drew public discussion beyond my article published Sept. 19, 2016.
“Prior to approval, government has the leverage to demand more of developers in exchange for public subsidies and incentives,” she wrote. Today, this juncture is crucial.
Criticizing private contracts known as Community Benefits Agreements (CBAs), she said, government should “take a proactive role overseeing implementation of benefits by mandating third party advocates for local communities.” As noted, I think there’s an argument for third-party advocates beyond that.
The culture of no accountability
“There really is no accountability,” declared Hankin in her lecture (see video section beginning at 10:09), after saying public agencies like ESD fail to assess whether estimated jobs actually arrived, though its mission is to promote economic growth.
Project agreements, she lamented, were “purposely drafted to be as complicated and obtuse as possible, to allow for multiple interpretations and maximum flexibility.” One of her roles was to determine “how ESD should respond to developer requests for additional benefits, and there were many.” Surely that pattern didn’t change.
Brooklynites were misled by “affordable housing” claims, she bemoaned . The methodology is “very complicated,” she said, noting that, while colloquially “affordable” means less than the median income but in practice it does not.
Unmentioned: the state’s Development Agreement defined “affordable housing” loosely as participating in a government program restricting incomes and rents signed a deal allowing a broad definition of affordability, failing to match the promises in the much-hyped Atlantic Yards Yards CBA.
That’s on the state. Meanwhile, Hankin rightly called the CBA “constructed so poorly as to give the developer maximum flexibility in delivering benefits.”
When I interviewed Hankin in 2011, she disagreed with my contention that ESD’s role in both overseeing and promoting a project posed an inherent conflict.
Two years later, by contrast, she told academic colleagues that managing Atlantic Yards was “a balancing act, making sure the project can progress, and also responding to community needs. And these interests typically were not complementary.”
I’ve called Atlantic Yards not a “public-private partnership” but a “private-public” one driven by the developer. Hankin called agencies like ESD “quasi-private entities [that] function more like a private corporation.”
Unpacking promises
Not only do CBAs serve “a small subset of the population,” Hankin warned, negotiators are overmatched, as developers aim “to quell the community, not to make sure the benefits they committed to delivering make the greatest impact.”
There’s “no long-term sustainable economic growth plan” for surrounding communities, but CBAs quiet some community leaders, because of gag orders or financial dependency.
That’s no radical statement. A Forest City-hired nonprofit consultant, Ritchie Tye, concluded that the developer compensated CBA partners for community support, not to fulfill programmatic goals, according to lawsuit filings I found. Indeed, in an email that surfaced in litigation, a Forest City executive said of one CBA group, “THEY WORK FOR US.”
Understandably, Hankin suggested that CBAs be executed with government oversight. Today, though, we know that government oversight is only as good and strong as the government implementing it.
ESD State refrained from pursuing full damages for the 876 unbuilt units of affordable housing in Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park because 1) it was afraid of litigation and 2) it wanted to not slow the process for a new master developer to take over.
Splits in the community
There’s no one left “to advocate for the masses, not in any organized way,” Hankin said in her lecture, using a rather undergraduate term.
In her paper, she lamented how public officials representing low-income populations lacked the resources to fight for equity but instead responded to those louder middle-class voices pushing for environmental mitigation.
The only critical voices, she suggested, were “the new community leaders” not part of the CBA, who Hankin claimed were “not concerned with” job creation or with local businesses receiving contracts, and “only mildly care about affordable housing,” but rather focused on quality-of-life issues.
(She also said they had the luxury to commit time to advocacy, not acknowledging the considerable sacrifice it had taken for many.)
Hankin’s take on the split in priorities was partly true, but it’s more complicated, since those activists—see examples on video below—were living through or near a massive construction project, with many corners cut. The state allowed the building of 16 towers and an arena, in just 22 acres, encroaching on a residential neighborhood, while overriding city zoning.
Regarding quality of life issues, Hankin claimed that “New York has done well mitigating the environmental impacts of megaprojects.” That’s dubious; a 2012 report prepared by an environmental consulting firm detailed the numerous violations of protocols during arena construction.
Moreover, local activism has changed, with today the coalition BrooklynSpeaks focused on ensuring that affordable housing gets built, and also calling for the arena operator to fund a quality-of-life enforcement unit in exchange for getting permanent use of the arena plaza. (As I wrote, why not ask for more?)
Long term oversight
Because megaprojects span multiple administrations, Hankin wisely observed that those who inherit a project “often do not feel an appropriate sense of responsibility.”
Indeed, that’s the pattern with Atlantic Yards. Hankin, whatever her flaws, got to know the project. Since she left, Empire State Development had had multiple nominal project managers for Atlantic Yards, as institutional memory diminishes, and now a “team” of relatively recent vintage.
BrooklynSpeaks and some Brooklyn elected officials long sought an entity to provide project oversight. In 2014, they accepted the AY CDC, which is nominally a gubernatorially-controlled advisory body (though there are several vacancies), which has not provided much oversight.
That’s why BrooklynSpeaks has proposed a new oversight structure. ESD is surely mindful of both the need for more accountability and the difficulty in ceding control.
Demanding more of government
Government should be conducting ongoing economic analyses of megaprojects, Hankin wrote, so such projects benefit all:
Policies that have dictated megaprojects have contributed to the widening economic gap in New York, speeding up the impacts of gentrification, displacing residents and local businesses, and supporting the growth of big business. Development in New York has a multitude of complexities. To be truly successful, policies will require a more holistic perspective that includes all of its citizens. New Yorkers should demand more of their government.
Who could argue with that? (Though Hankin, as her reflections indicate, was also sometimes frustrated by a certain slice of New Yorkers who were demanding more from their government.)
Absent from her analysis, conducted at the end of her fellowship year, is a recognition of how politically difficult it would be. After all, New Yorkers can’t always get basic honesty from government.
Hankin surely knew her own agency fell short. In March 2010, before she took the job, a state judge slammed the ESD for “deplorable lack of transparency” in its failure to acknowledge the possibility that Atlantic Yards might take 25 years to build rather than ten years.
Today, that 2035 deadline looks unrealistic. Among the many pending unknowns is a new timetable, and the penalties for not meeting it.