Was the Atlantic Yards Conflict Merely Between Competing Short-Term Interests?
To one critic, the 2011 documentary "Battle for Brooklyn" seems like "ancient history." Still, it depicts the project's enduring taint & leaves lessons about skepticism, as a new phase awaits.
"Rather than a battle for the future of Brooklyn, the conflict over Atlantic Yards devolved into a tug-of-war between competing short-term interests," concludes Willa Glickman in a recent New York Review of Architecture essay, A Yards Bargain, after watching a screening of the 2011 documentary Battle for Brooklyn, in Red Hook.
Thus the conflict in film—misnamed slightly as The Battle for Brooklyn—today seems "ancient history." (The article was published in print in May, but not shared on social media until last month.)
Well, yes, and no. I can see why Glickman reached those conclusions by watching a 93-minute film, already limited in scope, that in some significant ways is outdated and a panel that, perhaps unwittingly, reflected some tensions the film depicts.
But there's so much more to the story.
(I wasn’t at the screening, but I did see video of the panels. I wasn’t an organizer, but I helped edit the announcement.)
The lessons
While the battle to stop Atlantic Yards indeed is history, the project is by no means over, with about half of the promised 6,430 apartments left to build, including 876 promised below-market “affordable” ones.
Its lessons remain meaningful as a new developer moves in, and public officials face new requests for governmental concessions regarding scale, scope, subsidies, and timing—maybe even paying for the costly two-block platform over the MTA’s Vanderbilt Yard.
(Here’s my summary of a recent meeting featuring the project’s new developers; stay tuned for a longer article.)
Glickman concludes, "Organizers will have to listen seriously to the whole neighborhood’s needs if there is to be any hope for genuine political transformation, in Red Hook or elsewhere."
OK, but the onus should not be on community groups, whether reliant on purported gentrifiers or a developer's public relations strategy, to conjure up solutions to pressing neighborhood and borough needs.
In the case of Atlantic Yards--and, to a degree, the BMT plan--the government should assess those needs, ventilate public debate, and invite a fair process to develop crucial public land, not present the public with a "done deal," massaged by unreliable studies.
As I told Gothamist (which excerpted a fraction) before the screening:
While some scorn Atlantic Yards opponents as resisting urban progress (note: they did propose an alternative for developing the publicly-owned railyard), a crucial legacy, as captured in the film, is enduring skepticism of the government-developer alliance. That’s borne out by the project’s many delays, the yet-uncovered (and purportedly 'blighted'--part of the justification for eminent domain) railyard, and the failure to fulfill transformative promises of jobs and affordable housing.
Looking back
Two decades ago, it was a stretch to call Atlantic Yards a battle over the future of Brooklyn, given the size of the borough. From today’s vantage point, it seems far more glaring.
After all, the rezoning of Downtown Brooklyn, approved at about the same time as Atlantic Yards, but gaining far less attention, did far more to shape the skyline. And even Downtown Brooklyn can't speak for the whole.
However, not just the film's antagonists saw the battle as a larger conflict over Brooklyn’s future.
That was the message from developer Forest City Ratner, its political allies, and the press, notably New York Times architecture critic Herbert Muschamp, who upon the proposals launch in 2003 unwisely likened it to Rockefeller Center and called it "the most important piece of urban design New York has seen since the Battery Park City master plan was produced in 1979."
It wasn’t merely a battle for Prospect Heights and environs. It was Brooklyn's biggest civic contest in recent memory, engaging an enormous number of people, especially in the neighborhoods nearby and in groups—whether Community Benefits Agreement signatories or union workers—who expected a benefit.
At the screening, as Glickman points out, State Attorney General Letitia James--who as a City Council member opposed the project and is a key player in the film--recalled, “Twenty years ago, there were no Starbucks. Twenty years ago, the tallest building in Brooklyn was the Williamsburgh Savings Bank, and our saying was ‘Don’t block the clock.’”
Actually, Starbucks had already arrived. Yes, many prized the view of the 512-foot Williamsburgh Bank's clock tower, so much that Forest City pledged that its flagship office tower, which Gehry dubbed "Miss Brooklyn," would, despite being 620 feet, “maintain the view corridor” to the bank.
That pledge was spurious, but the debate is, yes, ancient history. The 461 Dean (aka B2) tower flanking the arena, though only 320 feet, blocks the clock from Park Slope. Other Downtown Brooklyn towers, from a different angle, also block the clock.
Brooklyn now has a new vertical icon, a supertall modestly named the Brooklyn Tower, a spiky black middle finger in the sky, and Downtown Brooklyn has been reshaped—but, as New York magazine architectural critic Justin Davidson recently wrote, disappointingly so.
Addressing scale
If the conflict over scale, from one perspective, seems over, actually, it's not.
First, the full scope of the Atlantic Yards plan, as approved, has not fully been assessed, as six large towers would rise over a two-block railyard, at least after an expensive platform is built.
See below for my article, relying on renderings and animations by my frequent collborator Ben Keel, showing what the project, as approved, might look like.
Moreover, Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park almost surely will not be built as modestly as approved, and depicted.
What’s next for Site 5?
Rather, the project's developers--a shifting cast—have since 2015-16 aimed to transfer the bulk of the unbuilt B1 tower across Flatbush Avenue to the parcel known as Site 5, catercorner to the arena, longtime home to the big-box stores P.C. Richard and the now-closed Modell's, recently reopened as a Brooklyn Basketball youth training facility.
Empire State Development (ESD), the state authority that oversees/shepherds the project, in 2021 signed an interim lease supporting a giant, two-tower project at Site 5.
As proposed, Site 5 would be unusually large, with a proposed Floor Area Ratio, or FAR, of 25.5. (FAR measures bulk as a multiple of the underlying lot.) That’s more than double the maximum FAR in the Downtown Brooklyn rezoning, which was 12. The 80 Flatbush project, now known as the Alloy Block, gained an FAR of 15.75 after a contentious debate.
At what point does the Site 5 building—once downsized by the New York City Planning Commission because it represented a transitional zone—get too big?
Or does the 2025 argument, We’re in a housing crisis, so we must let developers build as much as possible so supply might ultimately lower rents, have an endpoint?
What’s next for the railyard towers?
The surely will be an argument to boost the size not just of Site 5 but the six towers (B5-B10) planned for the railyard, as developer Greenland USA proposed in 2023.
Expect such plans—likely even larger—to recur when a new development team, led by Cirrus Workforce Housing and LCOR, presents its vision.
About the arena
Battle for Brooklyn was released before the Barclays Center opened in September 2012 to acclaim from architecture critics, though not without impact on those on the nearest blocks.
Today the arena, for better and for worse, is embedded in Brooklyn’s identity. It apparently generated little discussion at the Feb. 28 panel, nor did it prompt much discussion in the NYRA essay.
The Barclays Center deserves attention because, somewhat surprisingly, it and its main tenant, the Brooklyn Nets, have proven to be huge economic successes—not for Forest City, but its successors.
The big winners of the project have been the billionaire owners of the Brooklyn Nets (and arena company). Russian oligarch Mikhail Prokhorov bought the team and the arena operator from Forest City, then sold at a huge profit to Alibaba billionaire Joe Tsai. In turn, Tsai sold a 15% share to the family of Julia Koch—of right-wing fame—at an astounding valuation.
Meanwhile, the rest of the project lags, and state officials are unwilling, at least so far, to pressure Tsai’s newly enriched BSE Global to share the wealth from a state-subsidized and -enabled project.
The role of condemnation and subsidies
Glickman’s observation, “Despite fierce opposition from residents living in the project’s footprint, the state declares the area blighted and uses eminent domain to oust recalcitrant homeowners,” deserves more exposition.
First, those facing eminent domain included commercial tenants and owners. More importantly, the developer used the threat of eminent domain to remove most obstacles and pay some residents to leave in what were publicized—as shown in the Daily News cover below—as generous settlements.
Four years later, I reported that such apparent generosity rested on the developer’s use of $100 million in city subsidies.
“The city and state offer enormous subsidies to Forest City Ratner Companies in exchange for guarantees that jobs and affordable housing will be included in the plan,” writes Glickman.
Actually, the jobs and housing were not guaranteed. The promises were contingent on project progress, which was contingent on riding economic and political cycles.
Who were the antagonists?
The film, as Glickman notes, follows Daniel Goldstein and the group he co-founds, Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn: “The activists hold community meetings, lawyer up, and find architects to design alternate plans for the stadium”—actually, the whole project, in the UNITY plan—”that would avoid seizing any property.”1
”But a rival group with its own merch,” she writes, “pushes a different vision: ‘Jobs, Housing & Hoops.’”
No, that wasn’t the vision of the fledgling job-training group Brooklyn United for Innovative Local Development, or BUILD. That was Forest City’s slogan, which BUILD embraced. The developer supplied the merch.
BUILD was one of six groups formed just before Forest City’s overhyped Community Benefits Agreement (CBA) emerged. (Two CBA signatories, including the housing advocacy group ACORN, already existed.)
BUILD is defunct, after a troubling lawsuit filed by former supporters who said BUILD promised a path to lucrative unionized construction careers.
Was BUILD—or ACORN—savvy, deluded, or simply couldn’t take the risk of not trying for a deal, given the project’s seeming momentum? Maybe all of the above.
Sure, BUILD could be “suspicious of the predominantly white Develop Don’t Destroy, whose members they see as gentrifiers,” as Glickman writes. Then again, shouldn’t people closest to a project site have legitimate concerns beyond jobs and housing?
What it all means
Near the end of her essay, Glickman concludes, “It’s a bedeviling fact that community groups have significant power to block or delay developments through lawsuits or by pressuring city council members but rarely any ability to spur construction of the kind of projects they want.”
This YIMBY-inflected posture seems very much of the moment—not wrong, but incomplete. If New York State had wanted to develop the 8.5-acre Vanderbilt Yard, it could’ve put it out for bid. It could have sought suggestions. Instead, it gave Ratner the inside track, only to see new owners and new players.
If the city and state thought that overriding city land use procedures for the heavy-handed state process was correct, it’s also bedeviling that neither ensured the project would be delivered with promised benefits and consistent oversight, or that business success with the arena and team could cross-subsidize project benefits like affordable housing.
About the promises
Glickman observes:
All too often, they are left trying to wrest concessions from whatever megadeveloper comes to town. Local input was particularly important in the case of Atlantic Yards, which went through with the signing of the very first “community benefits agreement” in New York City. The terms of that agreement—2,250 affordable rental units, plus a percentage of the construction jobs for minorities—were at least tangible promises.
Rather, the CBA was a public relations gesture, suggesting local support from financially compromised partners and offering the facade of local input in a state process that otherwise marginalized Council Member James and the local Community Boards.
The agreement’s promises weren’t tangible. The CBA was unenforceable unless the counterparties—those signatories, mostly astroturf—chose to sue. The developer never hired a required Independent Compliance Monitor. Nor were the CBA’s terms incorporated into the project’s binding contracts.
About eminent domain
“Goldstein and other members of Develop Don’t Destroy fail to persuade local residents not in direct danger of losing their buildings that they have anything to gain from joining the ‘no’ camp,” Glickman writes.
Well, many people were worried about “carmageddon”—remember, New Jersey fans of the Nets were expected to drive to Brooklyn—and other arena impacts. Others opposed the project’s scale; even today, it’s a dramatic change, at least from the south and east, in Prospect Heights.
(Update: As Goldstein comments below, many recognized the “corrupt taxpayer ripoff,” as well. “Proof is DDDB raised around $2 million with average donations of $65 from the broad community, we had about 800 volunteers sign up with us, and over 2000 people subscribed to DDDB‘s weekly newsletter. 99% of these people were not in ‘direct danger of losing their buildings,’ via eminent domain.”)
Yes, Battle for Brooklyn, because of the directors’ choices, access to eminent domain plaintiff Goldstein, and support from the libertarian Moving Picture Institute, focuses more on eminent domain than on other contentious aspects. Note the poster’s slogan: “What would you do if they tried to take your home?”
Glickman writes, “There’s more talk of the injustice of ‘eminent domain abuse’ for property owners than of the project’s potential impact on rents or affordability.” Indeed, that may seem myopic, especially, since Goldstein, as a new arrival, was not a classic victim.
The film, by design, scants talking heads and, not surprisingly, fails to ventilate the full suite of urban planning issues, including the rising gentrification, which Atlantic Yards was supposed to stem.
Indeed, while the NYRA quote excerpted in social media suggests it was “immensely satisfying” to watch Goldstein take on the powers that be, my original review in Dissent noted that “sometimes Goldstein’s personal story displaces needed context.”
When I rewatched the film, the time devoted, for example, to Goldstein’s wedding seems a misstep, especially since the directors must flip through headlines to advance the complex story.
Still, as I wrote in the article linked below, the use of eminent domain—whatever your ideological priors—exhibited enormous bad faith.
About housing
As to the project’s “potential impact on rents or affordability,” times have changed.
During the approval process, there was much talk—albeit not captured in the film, given the directors’ access to BUILD rather than ACORN—about what “affordable housing” might mean. DDDB was appropriately skeptical of the promises.
Still, virtually nobody argued, as seems common today, that simply adding supply of market-rate units would help address the housing crisis. (Note that a plethora of competing product in Downtown Brooklyn led Forest City to pause the project in 2016.)
“The Atlantic Yards community benefits agreement mostly fell apart,” writes Glickman. “The arena was built first and opened in 2012, leaving the developers with little incentive to fulfill the housing obligations.”
It’s a little more complicated. The CBA was designed to fail, implemented in bad faith, and faced no oversight. It was less the arena’s arrival than its split ownership that has helped stall the project.
And New York State failed to incorporate the promises in the project’s binding documents. For example, it allowed a 25-year buildout for a project long promised to take a decade.
The lingering fines
“In accordance with the one aspect of the CBA that had any teeth, for every month that the negotiated housing went unbuilt past a May 2025 deadline, the developer would be slapped with $1.75 million in fines,” writes Glickman.
More precisely, the deadline triggers $2,000/month penalties for each unbuilt affordable unit. Given 876 left unbuilt, the total exceeds $1.75 million a month.
However, it wasn’t part of the CBA, but rather a separate agreement negotiated in 2014 by the coalition BrooklynSpeaks, which doesn’t appear in the film, but has endured—thanks to the efforts of a few advocates—long past the demise of DDDB.
That agreement, unlike the CBA, was ratified by the state. Nonetheless, ESD—waiting for a new developer to emerge and somehow giving Greenland a boost—chose first not to enforce it and then to make a compromise deal.
The tensions resume
Glickman reports that a post-screening discussion with DDDB activists got heated when it came to the then-pending Brooklyn Marine Terminal (BMT) , when panelist Karen Blondel, a tenant leader from the Red Hook Houses, expressed support for the proposal, citing jobs and community improvements for a long-neglected neighborhood, and with no displacement.
Blondel’s take deserves notice, but adding her to the panel—as opposed to some in the BMT fray—was akin to inviting BUILD. Other locals have different postures. Glickman writes:
The audience responded in uproar; one Develop Don’t Destroy member warned her not to “believe a thing anybody says” about what the development will do for the community; others said that those in favor of Atlantic Yards had been “duped” and “drank the Kool-Aid.” Blondel had enough. “You don’t speak for us,” she said. “We get nothing at the end of the day—y’all walk away, and we’re still in the same condition twenty years later.”
That raises a larger point about the need for enduring community activism. Since then, however, New York State’s unwillingness to enforced the affordable housing penalties validates the warning about distrust.
Summing up
The final paragraph:
Rather than a battle for the future of Brooklyn, the conflict over Atlantic Yards devolved into a tug-of-war between competing short-term interests. Organizers will have to listen seriously to the whole neighborhood’s needs if there is to be any hope for genuine political transformation, in Red Hook or elsewhere.
Should DDDB, BUILD, and ACORN have found a way to work together to shape a better Atlantic Yards project? Ideally, but in the case, how could it have worked? It’s not so easy when political leaders start with a steamroller.
Elements of a coda
Was the failure to fulfill promises the fault of opponents who put up roadblocks, as some contend, or the developer’s overreach and essential dishonesty, coupled with insufficient oversight and bad luck?
Well, in a rare interview, which could serve as a coda to the film, developer Bruce Ratner offered a cavalier and evasive response when asked about Atlantic Yards.
“Yes, we sold our company in '18,” Ratner told WNYC’s Brian Lehrer in May 2024. "What happened is the Chinese company that bought it wasn't able to finish it. And that's a shame. It's not the end of the world, though.”
"The problem we have in this city is just not enough low-income housing, period," he continued. "That's really where the focus ought to be, instead of worrying about whether the [Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park] units got finished.”
As to the provision of affordable units, Ratner continued to deflect: "We're getting fooled, frankly. It's got to be the government and it always has been." Of course, "whether the units got finished" means the units Ratner promised and purportedly guaranteed through that CBA.
It’s an echo of Ratner’s insincere claim, in a scene captured in the film, that a new alliance with a firebrand minister meant the “Reverend [Herbert] Daughtry has agreed to help us think through the issues of housing and jobs.”
Goldstein’s wise prediction
Another coda might use an interview WABC did with Goldstein after the state and the BrooklynSpeaks coalition announced the agreement, in June 2014, to deliver all affordable units by 2025: "I am a betting man and I would bet you that we won't see this project finished in 2025." He was right.
At that point, schedules released by the developer suggested that the entire project would be finished by 2025, though only the affordable units were required by then. The entire project had a 2035 “outside date.”
Today, the 876 affordable units languish, as the baseline for calculating affordability rises. The railyard platform awaits. That 2035 deadline surely won’t be met.
In 2009, state official Marisa Lago, in a rare moment of candor, acknowledged that Atlantic Yards would take “decades.” She was right.
The alternate UNITY plan, as amplified by developer Extell, would have been significantly smaller, with 2,000 apartments, 600 of them affordable. Then again, one lesson from Atlantic Yards is that faster delivery of a smaller project might have delivered significant benefits, given that the baseline for calculating affordability has risen steadily.
“Goldstein and other members of Develop Don’t Destroy fail to persuade local residents not in direct danger of losing their buildings that they have anything to gain from joining the ‘no’ camp,” Glickman writes.
this may have been what she gleaned from the documentary but the fact is we were persuasive (although we didn’t even need to be persuasive because it was obvious what a corrupt taxpayer ripoff the project was.) Proof is DDDB raised around $2 million with average donations of $65 from the broad community, we had about 800 volunteers sign up with us, and over 2000 people subscribed to DDDB‘s weekly newsletter. 99% of these people were not in “direct danger of losing their buildings,” via eminent domain.