Life in the Atlantic Yards Footprint
By Daniel Goldstein
Simon Liu emigrated from China to get away from the Communist country where he was forcibly evicted from his home by the State. For more than 20 years, he has run a successful fine art supply factory, employing 25 legal immigrants in his business on Dean Street in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn. Now, the kind of despotic power Liu fled decades ago is threatening his business in our so-called free market.
Liu and many other residents and businesses in the Prospect Heights area,including myself, are threatened with being forced from our properties and neighborhood for a private sports arena and a lucrative luxury residential mega complex proposed by developer Bruce Ratner. Ironically the proposal’s architect, Frank Gehry, said he has never had the opportunity “to build a neighborhood from scratch in an urban setting.”
In December 2003, Ratner and his real estate development firm Forest City Ratner unveiled their so-called Atlantic Yards development proposal, which would use eminent domain to assemble the properties desired for its 22 acre, six square block development. Standing beside Ratner at his announcement were the most powerful political figures in the state, Senator Charles Schumer, Governor George Pataki and Mayor Michael Bloomberg, giving their support for the proposed project and their personal approval of the use of eminent domain.
Eminent domain is the Constitutional right in the Fifth Amendment where government can take private property for a “public use,” with “just compensation” for the owner. With the Atlantic Yards project, government would be taking private property and giving it to a private developer for a lucrative private use.
Atlantic Yards, in its current form, is a basketball arena that is about 8 percent of a larger 9.1 million square foot development proposal, and 16 skyscrapers of 7,300, mostly luxury apartments. The current project cost is $3.5 billion with a public cost of at least $1.5 billion. In recent years, the proposed site and surroundings have become one of the most desirable locations in Brooklyn to live in and a prime target for developers.
About one-third of the project was proposed to be built over a functioning Metropolitan Transportation Authority rail yard and the rest would be built where people’s homes, businesses and properties currently stand, as well as over three city streets. All told there were approximately 53 properties that the state would take and give to Forest City Ratner, who would demolish the buildings for their project. These properties include luxury condos and a co-op, market and rent-stabilized rental buildings, owner-occupied brownstones, light-industry businesses, nationally owned businesses, investment properties and one beloved pre-prohibition era bar known as Freddy’s Bar and Backroom.
Ratner has benefited greatly from New York State’s condemnation powers both near Times Square where he has partnered with The New York Times to build their new headquarters and Downtown Brooklyn in the 1980’s to build the Metrotech complex. Ratner already owns two mall complexes and a retail property directly adjacent to the proposed Atlantic Yards site, but has been unwilling to utilize some of his own property along with the rail yards; instead he has chosen to take other people’s property. All of the stated goals of the project could be achieved without any use of eminent domain, which is why the proposal’s opponents see the project as a land grab, abetted by government.
WHO’S MINDING THE STORE?
Even though it is the largest development proposal for Brooklyn in at least 30 years, the project completely bypasses the normal New York City Uniform Land Use Review Process. This means our City Council, Department of City Planning, and community boards have no say at all in the project and certainly no vote. It also overrides all local zoning laws and leaves no room for genuine community input. The state agency overseeing the project is the Empire State Development Corporation, which has statutory power to condemn properties.
The power of eminent domain is a governmental power, yet developers like Ratner treat it as their own tool until the state officially takes over. So, for over two years, in a vacuum of government involvement other than sideline cheerleading, the threat of eminent domain has hung over this large chunk of Prospect Heights, despite the fact that the proposal did not even become official and start an approval process until September 2005. The developer has wielded the heavy and threatening cudgel of one of the state’s most awesome powers–taking one’s home, one’s property.
Ratner has successfully used that threat to scare owners to sell to him and bust up the neighborhood. In those buyout deals Ratner has taken advantage of owners’ fear of condemnation, the strain and limbo it brings to families, by requiring sellers to sign a “gag” order in their contract which subverts their First Amendment rights to free speech
WHAT’S AT STAKE?
Shortly after the project was announced a community-based organization, Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn, formed in opposition to the proposal.
Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn and the Prospect Heights Action Coalition undertook three door-to-door censuses of the proposed development footprint and found a total of 334 residents, 33 businesses
with 235 employees, and a 400 person long-term homeless shelter.
Within the footprint there are four historically significant buildings, which are not landmarked. One building, which I live in, is a renovated 1926 warehouse designed by George S. Kingsley with ornamentation inspired by the Egyptian Revival Movement of the 1920s. It’s the only New York example of the ornate storage warehouses that Kingsley became nationally known for (in Chicago his building is landmarked). The Kingsley building and the 1885
Spalding Building, the former factory of the sporting goods manufacturer, are adaptive re-use success stories. The renovated condos in the Kingsley warehouse opened to residents only six months before “Ratnerville”–as opponents call it–was announced, while the former Spalding factory opened only two years prior to the announcement. The Ward Baking Company Building, built in 1911, is remarkable for its glazed white terra-cotta façade and its storied history of innovative baking techniques in the 1920s. At that time it was called “the snow-white temple of bread-making cleanliness.” Ratner now has an option on the building coming due in March - and intends to demolish it.
But the histories of social significance cannot be summed up in a few extraordinary edifices instead they are found in the stories of the people and places faced with eminent domain. The history is current and vibrant, readily discoverable in one of the city’s few remaining mixed-use neighborhoods and one of the more economically and racially diverse parts of the city. Among the threatened are people and places such as Vince Bruns, the fish monger who lives in the irreplaceable converted Spalding factory loft he's worked so hard to own, or Hector Gonzalez whose family has lived on my block for 60 years, or Freddy's pre-prohibition era bar (and community center), or 87-year old Victoria Harmon who has lived in her rent-controlled home for 63 years. There is also a burgeoning live/work artists community living in and around the footprint which would be devastated by the proposed development.
Even Robert Moses, known for his extensive eminent domain use, didn't condemn private property to benefit privately owned businesses such as Ratner’s.
BLIGHT AIN’T RIGHT
As Atlantic Yards wends its way through the state’s approval process, facing vast opposition, the Empire State Development Corporation and Ratner will argue that eminent domain is justified because the neighborhood is “blighted.” New York State has rather broad definitions of “blight,” which invites rampant abuse. All New Yorkers should be deeply concerned if Ratner’s proposed footprint is determined “blighted” to justify eminent domain; if such a determination can be made about these six blocks in Brooklyn, then nearly every block in
New York City could be considered “blighted.”
The first official document released by the Empire State Development Corporation argues that the project would “eliminate blighted conditions on the project site, including dilapidated and structurally unsound buildings, debris-filled vacant lots, and economically underutilized properties.”
On any six square block in this city you will find a property that might be “dilapidated” or “structurally unsound” or “vacant,” and all throughout the city nearly every property could be considered “economically underutilized.” This means your home and your business will always be ripe for the taking if developers and their friends in government want it. That is why the “blight” designations used for eminent domain need to be restricted and much more clearly and narrowly defined as part of the eminent domain reform legislation currently in the works in Albany.
Roger Green, the Assemblymember who represents the district where the project is proposed, supports Ratner’s “Atlantic Yards.” But at a recent state hearing on eminent domain Green said, “For the record, that neighborhood is not blighted. I repeat, for the record, that neighborhood is not blighted.” He emphasized this point to The Brooklyn Papers saying, “Under the definition of blight, as related to poverty or environmental degradation, this definition is not related to Prospect Heights.”
It will be over the issues of “blight,” favoritism for one developer, and the total lack of local oversight and planning that Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn will base its vigorous legal challenge to eminent domain for the Ratner plan when the time comes, which could be as soon as June.
Daniel Goldstein lives at the proposed arena’s center court. He is the spokesman for Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn and sits on its steering committee. He is a full time volunteer for the organization and a freelance graphic designer.
Posted by:
Joshua Brustein
Is Ratnerville already here?
Imagine being awakened by the tune of a supersized drill in your back yard, only to find out that your apartment building belongs to Ratner now. If you are David Sheets, who lives at 479 Dean St. at Sixth Avenue, you know that feeling.
[See, "Ratner begins drilling at Yards," Brooklyn Papers]
Is Ratnerville already here:
• when landlords are so ashamed that they've sold out to Ratner that they don't even have the decency to tell their tenants?
• when citizens find out that the state's review process has already started when the heavy equipment arrives?
• when the city offers Ratner acres of land, sidewalks and streets for $1?
Damn, that's cold!
Posted by:
Lumi Rolley
new condos at underhill/dean
what's the deal w/ these condos? looks like there are 6 floors. interested in purchasing, wonder how the neighborhood is like.
Posted by:
james hanson
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Life in the Atlantic Yards Footprint
(Dec 09, 2005)
Is Ratnerville already here?
(Mar 19, 2005)
new condos at underhill/dean
(Oct 27, 2004)
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(Jun 19, 2004)
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(Jun 15, 2004)
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(May 04, 2004)
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(Jul 30, 2003)
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(May 07, 2003)
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