Weekly Digest: A Case Study of Atlantic Yards (vs. Hudson Yards)
Plus: tonight, the New York Liberty play a decisive WNBA Finals Game 5, at the Barclays Center.
This digest offers a way for people to keep up with my Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Report blog, as well as my other coverage in this newsletter and elsewhere.
Hey, the WNBA’s New York Liberty play a decisive Game 5 tonight in the WNBA Finals against the Minnesota Lynx, which means the area around the Barclays Center should start to get busy by late afternoon.
I have a few not-so-bandwagon thoughts about the Barclays Center as beneficiary of public largesse.
Basketball is pretty much the only sport I follow, so I went to my first Liberty game last year to experience the phenomenon.
I could see a lot of people enjoying themselves, but the noise and promotions were non-stop distractions, with the game seeming secondary. (Maybe that’s changed?) Then again, I’d rather watch basketball on TV and I’m more a fan of the game than any team.
A case study
My long article this week assessed a 2020 case study of Atlantic Yards by two academics from the Penn Institute for Urban Research, which contrasted the project with the more successful Hudson Yards project in Manhattan.
The authors made some valuable points, noting key contrasts with land assembly, density, and public investments in transportation infrastructure.
They missed two key issues, however. Hudson Yards developers were able to raise—but not repay!—an extraordinary amount of low-cost capital via EB-5 investor visas, far exceeding what the Atlantic Yards developers were able to raise.
Also, the paper gets a lot of things wrong. But it’s the only academic study I’ve seen of the project, so it demands a careful read, both with appreciation for some big-picture contributions and with alarm at some major omissions and glaring errors.
From this newsletter
Oct. 16: Penn Case Study: Atlantic Yards Lacked Edge Hudson Yards Had.
From Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Report
Oct. 15: 80 DeKalb, first Brooklyn residential tower built by Forest City, sold yet again.
Oct. 17: After 19 months, state to resume Quality of Life meetings Nov. 6 to hear neighborhood concerns about the project and arena. The (phantom) Pacific Park Conservancy has a new phone number, but it’s just a voicemail.
Oct. 19: With WNBA Finals culminating in a decisive Game 5 tomorrow night, expect a lot of New York Liberty promotion, and action, around the (tax-exempt) Barclays Center.
Programming note: the Digest will return in two weeks.