With Less Than 48 Hours' Notice, New York State Announces an Atlantic Yards Meeting
ESD's advisory Atlantic Yards Community Development Corporation will meet in Brooklyn tomorrow at 1 pm. (Clairvoyant) public comments are due by 3 pm today.
At 1:26 pm yesterday, Empire State Development (ESD), the state authority that oversees/shepherds Atlantic Yards, circulated a media advisory announcing a meeting on Thursday, May 28, at 1 pm, of the advisory Atlantic Yards Community Development Corporation, or AY CDC.
The AY CDC is supposed to advise the parent authority, and some Directors press for details, but too often it’s positioned to offer a scrim of legitimacy.
When there’s virtually no time for the public to assess the agenda and submit public comments, or the plan to attend the meeting, legitimate suffers.
Not only is that less than 48 hours’ notice for a meeting scheduled for 1 pm, that left less than 26 hours for those clairvoyant to send comments about the barebones agenda. Comments are due by 3 pm today.
That agenda, which does mention an Executive Session to discuss negotiations with developers Cirrus Workforce Housing and LCOR—would $175 million in reported subsidies represent a cut, or just a new sequence?—was posted without any meeting materials. That further limits meaningful public input.
Not-so-Open ESD
Nearly three years ago, Elizabeth Marcello produced an “Open ESD” report for Reinvent Albany, noting that ESD often posts meeting materials and agendas less than 24 hours before comments are due.
The report recommended that materials be posted “at least three days in advance of Board meetings so the public can meaningfully comment on agenda items.” That has not happened.
ESD in 2021, according to Marcello’s report, has promised a transparency initiative, including “Posting documents required for meetings open to the public at the same time the agenda is posted, to the extent practicable.” Well, that offers significant leeway.
Meeting logistics
In contrast to many previous meetings held at ESD offices in Manhattan, this one will be held in Brooklyn at the Shirley A. Chisholm State Office Building, 55 Hanson Place, 3rd Floor Conference Room.
The meeting is open to the public, but due to purported building procedures, members of the public attending in person must RSVP by 4:30 pm today to (212) 803-3795. The meeting will also be webcast.
Members of the public may submit comments on the Agenda items in writing to AYCDCBdMtg@esd.ny.gov by 3 pm today. All comments received by the deadline will be distributed to the Directors prior to the meeting and will be posted online.
About the agenda
The agenda includes a report on the Final Community Engagement Report and Next Steps, which presumably include the pending Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the state and the developers regarding public resources and obligations.
There’s a complex balance between the state’s willingness to encourage development—thanks to subsidies, additional bulk, and more—and the promised public benefits, including affordable housing, while assessing what the developers really need (as opposed to what they want).
Adding to that calculation is the need to assess the impact of the massive project proposed.
See my coverage:
Here are a few questions I’d hope could be answered in public:
Regarding the Community Engagement exercise, why not allow follow-up questions in real time and for attendees to report back to the group at large?
If, according to the engagement report, a top priority is maximizing affordable units “particularly for moderate and middle incomes,” is that truly reflective of community sentiment or just the subset of relatively well-off people who answered the survey?
It’s been reported that the state is ready to provide $175 million in subsidies, rather than $350 million as previously discussed, to build the platform over the Vanderbilt Yard. Is that a cut in proposed subsidies or just a new sequence? Either way, do the funds cover the first of two railyard blocks, or both? How much might be sought, in total?
How can New York State assess the request for public assistance, including subsidies, tax breaks, and more, without understanding how much it cost the developers to enter the project—remember, Joseph McDonnell of Cirrus called it a “no-brainer”—and their profit expectations? Regarding the latter, what’s reasonable?
Why should New York State commit to subsidies before understanding—and publicizing—the scale and timetable of the project the developers propose? Why have no renderings of the contemplated project been released, aside from unofficial sources like this publication?
Similarly, why should New York State commit to subsidies before an accountability structure—with meaningful guarantees1—is established?
The Executive Session justification
An executive session regards “Negotiations with the Project Developer Regarding Memorandum of Understanding and Development of Property/Project.”
By the way, the justification for the executive session is Public Officers Law Section 105(h), which states:
A public body may conduct an executive session for the below enumerated purposes only:
…
h. the proposed acquisition, sale or lease of real property or the proposed acquisition of securities, or sale or exchange of securities held by such public body, but only when publicity would substantially affect the value thereof.
So another question might be:
How do negotiations involving subsidies and tax breaks for a real estate project fall under “acquisition, sale or lease of real property”?
That’s not a direct fit.
As to whether “publicity would substantially affect the value thereof,” that’s hard to imagine without knowing the full context. It’s not like there’s a competing bid.
I’m not an expert in such contract drafting. We do know, however, that ESD was unwilling to enforce penalties regarding the failure to deliver 876 required affordable housing units by May 2025. So, rather than just contract language, could there be financial commitments, such as posting a bond?