Is Atlantic Yards "Next to" the Arena? Was the Project Delayed Because of Gentrification Fears?
For the New York Times, it's "Atlantic Yards down the memory hole." Stale photo, too.
I was going to take the day off—I’ll send a digest of coverage in a week—but this deserved response, as it’s another example of what I call “Atlantic Yards down the memory hole,” which builds a file of misleading information and wrong lessons.
A New York Times article, published online as Who Is Behind a $5 Billion Development in Atlanta? Yup, a Sports Team., appeared yesterday in print as “A $5 Billion Development Adds a Feather to a Sports Team’s Cap.”
The less-than-skeptical article was marred, in my eyes, by a brief but deeply misleading reference to Atlantic Yards and the Brooklyn Nets, compounded by an out-of-date photo.
From the text:
Billionaire sports owners have the wherewithal to redevelop land — and that’s usually welcomed by public officials — but they still face opposition that have slowed their starts. Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn, the development next to the Nets’ arena, the Barclays Center, for example, was delayed for years because residents feared gentrification of their neighborhood.
Hold on. There’s a lot to unpack.
Alternatively, you might say that sports team owners—Bruce Ratner1, who bought the New Jersey Nets to leverage the 22-acre real estate project in Brooklyn—can use the scarce commodity of a team to gain leverage to redevelop land, gain zoning overrides, benefit from eminent domain, and get direct subsidies and tax breaks.
Was the arena part of Atlantic Yards? Yup
Atlantic Yards is not “the development next to the Nets’ arena,” as stated, but rather the development—with eight of 15 (or 16) towers completed—that includes the Barclays Center.
However, the arena and team, while the linchpin of the Atlantic Yards proposal, turned out not to be the linchpin of the development.
So it didn’t guarantee the promised jobs and housing, as I wrote. (See link at bottom of image, below.) That’s one of the risks the article should have addressed.
Why the delays?
Was Atlantic Yards “delayed for years because residents feared gentrification of their neighborhood”? Well, that was one factor in opposition, along with concerns about the project’s scale and impacts, as well as the wired deal behind it.
But what delays are we talking about—the ones before the project was approved in 2006, then renegotiated and reapproved in 2009? Or the ones since then?
Atlantic Yards (aka Pacific Park) is today delayed because two developers, Forest City Ratner and Greenland USA, planned overoptimistic project that could not withstand multiple economic and political cycles.
They’ve been enabled by government agencies that endorsed such estimates and even now won’t enforce contractual deadlines. Empire State Development (ESD), the state authority that oversees/shepherds the project, has suspended $2,000/month fines for each of the 876 affordable units not built by May 31.
The big winners
Even as the jobs and housing have lagged, the new owners of the arena operating company and the Nets, first Russian oligarch Mikhail Prokhorov and Alibaba billionaire Joe Tsai (and his wife Clara Wu Tsai), have profited enormously.
Prokhorov sold to the Tsais, who’ve since sold a minority stake, at a significantly larger valuation, to the family of Julia Koch. The Tsais, who bought the New York Liberty after the Prokhorov deal, invested savvily and have turned that WNBA team into a financial success, selling a stake at notably large valuation.
However, New York State, which offered significant public support both directly and indirectly for the arena, has not tried to ensure that some fraction of those gains serve the public.
Online, the Times article has a subheading: “The number of developments led by professional sports teams has accelerated in recent years, as the price of teams has skyrocketed.”
In Brooklyn, yes, the price of teams has skyrocketed. But that increased value does not cross-subsidize the affordable housing and jobs.
A dated, deceptive photo
The mis-description of Atlantic Yards is exacerbated by a misleading photo caption and out-of-date photo.
The caption, which repeats the article’s text, leaves the impression that the project “was” delayed, but not why it remains delayed.
The photo, taken looking west from the Carlton Avenue Bridge, shows cranes in the background, at left and center, surely for the construction of B15 (662 Pacific St., aka Plank Road) and B4 (18 Sixth Ave., aka Brooklyn Crossing).
The photo above was likely taken in 2019-20. Today, as shown in the photo below I took nearly two years ago (!), both towers have risen.
The railyard awaits a costly platform to support six new towers, three of which would rise in the foreground.
In other words, you can’t simply pull a photo from the file and assume it still depicts current reality.
About that exhaustion
Some longtime readers may know that I got into writing about Atlantic Yards in 2005 as a press critic(!), spurred by the Times’s inadequate (but far more frequent!) coverage, then expanded to broader commentary and reporting.
It’s frustrating, but not exhausting, to see such continued sloppiness.
The recent article’s link, to the phrase “delayed for years because residents feared gentrification of their neighborhood,” is from Nov, 25, 2012, is headlined Opponents of Atlantic Yards Are Exhausted by a Long, Losing Battle.
That was two months after the arena opened. Yes, some people were burnt out, and others had to come to grips with it. (Here’s my critique of the article.) A lot has happened since then, including more delays. So it’s a thin reed on which to rely.
Ratner was not a billionaire, though his successors were.
The NY Times sloppy reporting is definitely disturbing. I don’t recall the fears of gentrification mentioned from the time, rather the fear of insertion of a major 24 hr traffic jam into a major intersection through the use of eminent domain and tax breaks for opportunistic speculators and politicians seeking attention.
Thanks for this article!