Regarding Brooklyn Marine Terminal Plan, BrooklynSpeaks' Leaders Simon & de la Uz at Odds re Atlantic Yards Lessons
With task force vote scheduled today, Brooklyn Eagle offers useful package of nine essays, pro and con. (I'm not convinced BMT can escape Atlantic Yards doubts.)
Update: the vote was postponed, for the fifth time.
Who speaks for BrooklynSpeaks, the current main vector for community response to Atlantic Yards, often joined by local elected officials?
Well, no individual. There's no board. The coalition gathers and tends to speak as one voice publicly, such as when New York State failed to enforce penalties for unbuilt affordable housing.
In 2014, when BrooklynSpeaks established that new 2025 affordable housing deadline, individuals negotiated with the city and state, then got the component civic groups to endorse it.
In the case of the pending 122-acre Brooklyn Marine Terminal (BMT) plan for housing, port improvements, and more stretching below Brooklyn Bridge Park through Red Hook, that's relevant, because two of the three most prominent BrooklynSpeaks leaders--Michelle de la Uz of the Fifth Avenue Committee and Assemblymember Jo Anne Simon--are at odds, praising and criticizing the plan, and in each case invoking Atlantic Yards.1
Oddly, in the Brooklyn Eagle's worthy package of nine separate arguments, pro and con, on the project, only de la Uz is described as a founding member of BrooklynSpeaks. That identifier is unwise. The coalition has no position on the BMT plan.
The setting
After multiple postponements to revise and improve the BMT plan to gain support, a key task force vote is scheduled today. The Eagle writes:
On Thursday afternoon, the 28-member Brooklyn Marine Terminal Task Force is scheduled to vote on a Final Vision Plan that could transform Brooklyn’s neighborhoods and maritime industry for generations. The New York City Economic Development Corporation is proposing a modernized port and mixed-use development with thousands of new homes on industrially-zoned waterfront land. In this special section, the Brooklyn Eagle presents a variety of opinion pieces — both for and against — from many of Brooklyn’s involved elected officials, community organizations, residents and experts, on EDC’s controversial plan.
I've excerpted, and critiqued, a few that touch on Atlantic Yards. To my mind, there's no evidence yet that the BMT plan could avoid the doubts about certainty and accountability that Atlantic Yards has instilled.
So I’m skeptical when BMT supporters say it could avoid the fate of Atlantic Yards, especially since they get some things wrong.
Also note editor George Fiala’s essay in the July 17 Red Hook Star-Revue, Dead Man Walking – EDC’s zombie BMT plan postponed again:
But no doubt they are hoping for another week of arm-twisting recalcitrant Task Force members in order to pass their Vision, which locals overwhelmingly dislike. There have been threats, side deals and sweeteners trying to bring members in line with the EDC. These efforts have so far been in vain, as there are still enough politicians and local stakeholders left with integrity.
Supporting: Gounardes
Our best chance to save Brooklyn’s working waterfront and tackle the affordable housing crisis is now, writes State Sen. Andrew Gounardes:
The plan commits $200 million for repairs at the nearby NYCHA Red Hook Houses and another $50 million to create and preserve even more affordable housing nearby. It includes resiliency initiatives, a robust transportation and environmental analysis and — taking note of the failures of the Atlantic Yards rezoning — strong protections to ensure these community benefits actually come to pass.
(Emphases added)
Um, Atlantic Yards was not a rezoning, but rather an override of zoning.
More importantly, as I've written, there's hardly proof that the proposed structure would ensure that community benefits would come to pass.
As Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso pointed out, mayoral control over a proposed Brooklyn Marine Terminal Development Corporation (BMTDC) would allow the mayor to decide whether to pursue accountability.
Keep in mind that gubernatorial control over the Atlantic Yards plan means New York State controls the project, and suspended the required affordable housing penalties.
Supporting: de la Uz and public housing leaders
Why we support the Vision Plan for the Brooklyn Marine Terminal is credited to "Karen Blondel and Frances Brown, presidents of the Red Hook West and East Resident Associations & Michelle de la Uz, executive director of Fifth Avenue Committee and founding member of BrooklynSpeaks."
They write:
But this waterfront has already endured decay and deterioration, waiting many decades for public investment that has never materialized. And this isn’t Atlantic Yards. The project will be overseen by a separate public body, not private developers. The site will remain publicly-owned, and there will be multiple developers to ensure delivery of public benefits rather than delay.
Yes, multiple developers could help avoid delay, as BrooklynSpeaks has urged with Atlantic Yards. However, complicated projects are subject to multiple choke points, so unless there are true guarantees--upfront bonding?--the promises remain doubtful.
Also, Atlantic Yards, as de la Uz well knows, is not overseen by “private developers.” It’s overseen by Empire State Development (ESD), a state authority controlled by the governor—and, many would argue, significantly congenial to private developers.
The lesson of Gowanus Green?
They write:
Just look at how Gowanus Green evolved. More than a decade ago, Mayor Bloomberg first offered the site for developers who could commit to a minimum of 50% affordability. Fifth Avenue Committee answered the call with our partners but pushed the bar higher, proposing 72% permanently-affordable units. Ultimately, Mayor de Blasio worked with us to arrive at the final plan and today, we’re in the process of developing 955 units with 100% permanently affordable.
Maybe Gowanus Green, also known as Public Place, isn’t the best example. It’s been in process since 2008. On Nov. 19, 2020, the city issued a press release, with no timetable:
The New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development today announced that the Gowanus Green development bordering the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn will be 100 percent affordable, anchoring the Gowanus Neighborhood Plan with approximately 950 new homes and resilient infrastructure for new publicly accessible green spaces. At the same time, the project will open a long-shuttered site to New Yorkers and include a 1.5-acre public park along a revitalized Gowanus Canal and space for a new public school.
In April 2024, however, the Brooklyn Paper reported:
The ongoing environmental clean-up at Public Place — one of the most contaminated sites in Gowanus and the future home of the massive Gowanus Green development — has ground to a halt, threatening to delay construction of hundreds of affordable apartments.
While developer Hudson Companies claims on its website that the six-tower project would be completed by 2027, no construction has started, so that target date is way off.
Sure, projects inevitably hit bumps. But promises of affordable housing within a specific timeline are especially vulnerable to delays, since the baseline for calculating affordability, Area Median Income (AMI), inevitably rises.
Some might argue that delaying the BMT plan would further delay affordable housing. That deserves consideration. However, as we’ve learned with Atlantic Yards, a more credible plan might be worth an initial delay if it delivers more certainty.
Opposing: Simon
I’m done with slogans, I want a real plan, writes Assemblymember Simon:
Brooklyn’s been promised many big “transformative visions” that too often fall apart under scrutiny. Far too frequently, the community points out these problems and the powers that be go ahead anyway, only to later prove the community’s concerns to have been well-founded. A classic example of this has been at Atlantic Yards, which never made practical sense for a host of reasons, including it being too highly leveraged from the get go.
I’m not sure if “too highly leveraged” is the best shorthand, but the real estate project depended on very optimistic assumptions.
While the arena and team were not expected to be as lucrative as the real state, the opposite has happened; the big winners have been the owners of the Brooklyn Nets and the arena operating company.
The lesson, thus, is to structurally ensure some public benefit from the provision of public resources.
Simon adds:
Having engaged with and represented the community as a neighborhood association president and as a leader in multi-community coalitions, I have developed a good sense of what a feasible project looks like. This isn’t it. It feels too much like it is going down the road of Atlantic Yards, which sold a bill of goods to elected officials to achieve support but has failed to deliver even a sliver of the “Garden of Eden” that was promised.
That “Garden of Eden grows in Brooklyn” quote came from New York Times architecture critic Herbert Muschamp and was later deployed in a mailer from the developer.
Another critique
The EDC’s BMT “Vision Plan” is built on nothing but sand, writes Randall Gordon, adata governance executive, citing “a lack of substance to the plan’s financial underpinnings.”
I haven’t read the documents Gordon has, but his critique deserves debate before the task force votes. He writes, for example:
There’s nothing further to account for the major plan changes since [March], including another increase to affordable housing percentage, this time to 40%. Based on the earlier paragraph, that likely costs another $300 million. The UPS site has been eliminated and with it 1,700 units. What will fund these changes? It’s a mystery.
I have no experience planning a public infrastructure redevelopment project... But if I came to a meeting with a plan of this magnitude and impact, with no financial analysis, no detailed pro forma, no disclosure of assumptions, no best-to-worst-case scenarios, I’d be laughed out of the room and my job.
Yes, one lesson of Atlantic Yards is that we always need a range of scenarios, not a best-case one. Gowanus Green deserves that. So too does the BMT plan.
The third BrooklynSpeaks leader, who runs the website and leads public presentations, is Gib Veconi of the Prospect Heights Neighborhood Development Council.