Questions for the Atlantic Yards CDC Meeting
Was the "Feasible Alternative" depicted feasibly? (Not quite.) Do new developers seek just a 20% increase in bulk, & should they get it for free? Why no plans for lower-income units?
A meeting tomorrow of the Atlantic Yards Community Development Corporation (AY CDC) may offer new insight on the emerging contours of Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park, which were revealed publicly at a community workshop on Nov. 18.
The AY CDC is supposed to advise the parent Empire State Development (ESD), the state authority that oversees/shepherds the project.
So ESD will present a report on the workshop and forthcoming “community engagement.” Also, the new project developers, Cirrus Workforce Housing and LCOR, apparently will make a presentation, perhaps much like the one delivered Nov. 18. (Here’s the slideshow, with a key excerpt below.)
This time, questions?
This time, however, the developers and ESD could face questions, if not from the public—public comments are possible, in writing by 3 pm today and at the meeting, but there’s no Q&A—but from the AY CDC Directors.
Here are some suggestions:
Is the developers’ plan to seek 1.6 million square feet of new development rights (for a total of 9,000 apartments) just a 20% increase in overall development rights? Or might it be better framed as a 46% increase in development rights at the Vanderbilt Yard sites?
Do the developers expect to get those additional development rights for free? What’s the value to them, and what’s the reciprocal value to the public?
If the developers already had to bid for 3.6 million square feet development rights (as assessed by an appraiser), why shouldn’t they have to pay for more?
Is the addition of one acre of open space, however well-designed, a net increase in open space per capita, if the project gains 2,570 apartments, for a total of 9,000 units? Or is it a decrease?
How much, if any, affordable housing for low-income tenants, below 80% of Area Median Income, do they plan? How can they justify not delivering such housing if recent city rezonings in the area have required deeper affordability?
Are the variables of Atlantic Yards as simple as presented, or might my annotation, above, add complexity? (Yes, I left out another variable: the cost of infrastructure, which surely ties into the request for public resources.)
To attract the public to the community workshops, two in person (the next is Dec. 8, register here) and then two online, how much outreach have they done the old-fashioned way, such as posters mounted in public, in businesses’ windows, and on apartment bulletin boards?
Does “community engagement” aim to consider local input or to ratify the preferences that the developer has already discussed with ESD? If the former, why didn’t they release more information about the developers’ plans before the Nov. 18 meeting, so attendees could have time to digest it?
Who really owns the project? How many joint ventures are there? How would Cirrus and LCOR make decisions together?
Does original developer Greenland USA have stakes in both the railyard parcels and B1/Site 5? If so, how much? (Same questions for the U.S. Immigration Fund (USIF) and Fortress Investment Group.)
What does it mean to say USIF has a stake? What’s the name of the entity? How much of it is owned by the EB-5 investors and how much by others?
A Feasible Alternative?
In a separate article, I plan to look more closely at the developers’ visual depiction of the Currently Approved Plan and the purported Feasible Alternative, excerpted below.
However, it can’t be feasible if it’s not realistic, and those images, however preliminary, aren’t realistic.
In my judgment, the renderings from LCOR and Cirrus exaggerate the scale of the current plan and understate their ambitious proposals, thus downplaying the degree of change.
Does that look like a 46% increase in bulk at the railyard, sites B5 through B10, especially if they’re eliminating the B8 tower (for open space) but re-allocating its bulk?
Looking more closely
To better compare the images, I extracted segments from each panel, focusing on the sites near the arena.
Originally planned were the B1 tower, located essentially over what’s now the Barclays Center’s plaza and the arena itself, and a single building at Site 5, across Flatbush Avenue, longtime home to the big-box stores P.C. Richard and the now-closed Modell’s.
Long before Cirrus and LCOR entered the scene, the project’s developers, recognizing that it would be tough to build B1 over a working arena, began plans to transfer that tower’s approved bulk to Site 5, creating a giant two-tower project. So the new proposal, the Feasible Alternative, refines previous ones.
For the mash-up image above, I extracted essentially equivalent close-up segments of each panel, then combined them, adding the red rectangle and annotations.
As that rectangle indicates, the approved B1, at 620 feet, seems as tall as the taller Site 5 tower at left, at an announced 775 feet. (The shorter Site 5 tower in the Alternative plan appears to be about 670 feet, relative to its taller neighbor, though it’s shorter than B1.)
Also, the Current Site 5 tower, at 250 feet, is too big. It can’t be half the height of the 512-foot One Hanson, the Williamsburgh Savings Bank tower.
To reinforce that conclusion, I extracted the Current Site 5 tower and stacked two copies at left in the image below. Though the stack totals 500 feet, it easily exceeds the bank tower and nearly matches B1.
The three copies stacked at right suggest a more glaring discrepancy. Though they total 750 feet, they dwarf the purportedly 775-foot Site 5 tower.
Again, that exaggerates the scale of the current plan and understates the ambitious alternative, thus downplaying the proposed change. Such distortions also translate to the depiction of bulk. But I’ll save that for another article.
So this raises another question: shouldn’t we get more accurate, informative renderings?
Good catch on the height illusion. Very sneaky.