Downtown Brooklyn's affordable housing policy failure

 6 Sq Ft.

 

As the massive Brooklyn megadevelopment once known as Atlantic Yards reaches its 20th anniversary, news of the project’s progress has been scarce. But recent changes affecting the development anchored by Barclays Center may put the 22-acre site–now known as Pacific Park–back in the spotlight. As The Real Deal reported in a wrap-up of its progress over the past two decades, current developer Greenland USA has defaulted on nearly $350 million in loans attached to the project’s second phase. With foreclosure imminent, an auction, scheduled for next month, may mean a new developer will be responsible for fulfilling crucial affordable housing agreements and inherit penalties for unbuilt units.

According to The Real Deal, Greenland USA, part of China’s state-owned Greenland Group, which owns a 95 percent stake in the project, defaulted on loans tied to its remaining six unbuilt sites–more than 3,200 rental apartments. The U.S. Immigration Fund, which had assembled the loans through its foreign investor program, intends to foreclose on the sites, with an auction slated for January 11, 2024.

Launched with much fanfare and controversy in 2003, helmed at the time by developer Forest City Ratner, the (then) $2.5 billion megaproject was to include a new stadium that would be home to the former New Jersey Nets and 15 residential and office buildings, the highlight of which would be a glassy supertall designed by Frank Gehry. At the project’s center, a platform would be built above the MTA’s Atlantic Yards railyard at the nexus of Pacific Street and Atlantic, Carlton, and Vanderbilt Avenues.

At present, nine of the planned 15 buildings have risen. The Gehry tower, dubbed “Miss Brooklyn,” never happened, though the celebrated stadium–and the Nets, which Ratner purchased and later sold to Russian billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov–have become part of Brooklyn’s colorful urban fabric. (The team is now owned by Joe Tsai, chairman of the Chinese multinational technology company Alibaba Group.).

The project has been plagued with challenges from its earliest days. Legal actions taken by residents and property owners displaced by the developers’ eminent domain agreement with the state delayed work for years; a planned modular residential tower hit snags; the 2008 financial crisis dealt another blow, as did the Covid pandemic.

Post-pandemic prices affecting the cost of building the rail yard platform have been an additional challenge. The Real Deal notes Greenland reached a tentative deal with the MTA in August covering the platform’s first phase, consisting of three residential towers.

A recent setback that may significantly affect the project’s next chapter is the expiration in 2022 of the 421a property tax break. Greenland stated that without the tax break, it could not build the new units.

Atlantic Yards Report

Crucially, Empire State Development (ESD), the gubernatorially-controlled state authority that oversees/shepherds Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park, won't comment on what conditions may be attached to the auction of six development sites over the railyard next month

Will the May 2025  affordable housing deadline, with $2,000/month fines for 876 (or 877) remaining units, transfer? Will the bidder(s) also be responsible for building the platform and paying the MTA $11 million a year for development rights?

Those are major expenditures that significantly affect the value of any bid. How can any potential bidder proceed before they know whether and how they assume those obligations.

Could Gov. Kathy Hochul waive those obligations and/or commit public funds? ESD--which has ignored my queries--would only say Hochul is committed to the “successful buildout and completion of this project" and is reviewing it.

To the Real Deal, City Comptroller Brad Lander and Fifth Avenue Committee head Michelle de la Uz expressed concern that ESD would make a deal without public input. Former Deputy Mayor Alicia Glen, a real estate developer herself, believes the penalties should remain. And Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso worries that it would be precedent to renege on other deals.

I'd add that the state has consistently shown an unwillingness to push the developer, so it offered a 25-year deadline on a project long professed to take ten years, and it allow for "affordable housing" to be defined as any units participating in government programs rather than broad spectrum originally promised by original developer Forest City Ratner.

Also note that--unmentioned in the article--both ESD and embattled developer Greenland USA have lost longtime staff working on Atlantic Yards

Living near Atlantic Yards is no picnic

From the Daily News:

Welcome to life in the shadow of Atlantic Yards, the ambitious and divisive $4.9 billion real estate project that includes 15 high-rise buildings that will eventually tower over central Brooklyn as well as Barclays Center, the rust-colored 18,000-seat home of the NBA’s Nets and the NHL’s Islanders. When developer Bruce Ratner and his political allies — most notably then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg and former Gov. George Pataki, Ratner’s Columbia law school classmate — unveiled plans for a massive real estate project anchored by a Nets arena in 2003, they promised it would be a powerful economic engine that would bring jobs and affordable housing to the borough.

Community activists and longtime residents, however, say many of the promised benefits have yet to materialize — but the headaches and hassles they feared would be generated by the project, renamed “Pacific Park” in 2014 after years of controversy, have arrived right on schedule.

Howard and other residents say the neighborhood feels like it has been taken over by an occupying army. Noise from the construction sites around the Barclays Center is deafening, sometimes roaring on from dawn until well into the night. Traffic is snarled on streets narrowed by construction fences and clogged with trucks. The rat population has boomed and dust and diesel emissions foul the air. Confrontations with the 1,700 workers employed at the construction sites near the Barclays Center and the thousands of fans who regularly attend Nets and Islanders games as well as other events are all too frequent, the residents say.

People in Atlantic Yards area still facing eviction

From Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Report:

Nearly all the condemnees remaining in seven properties in the Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park footprint have left or have agreed to leave, months after the state formally took title to their property.

But not quite all, and that made for some heated exchanges at a hearing last Thursday, 1/28/15, in front of Justice Wayne Saitta, the Kings County judge who oversees condemnation.

The judge gave one longtime homeowner another month to negotiate an exit, even as the state has suggested he consider "comparable" properties a good distance away, in Bedford-Stuyvesant and Crown Heights.

But the absence of another former homeowner meant Saitta issued a "writ of assistance" requested by the state to evict condemnees by the end of February.

Barring a settlement or extension in that case, Saitta's decision sets up some unsavory optics: a sheriff could be used to remove a family with a new baby to help a private developer owned mainly by the Shanghai government build a market-rate tower, albeit with a school.

With eminent domain already approved, Saitta in September conveyed ownership the seven properties--which involved eleven separate owners/leaseholders--to Empire State Development (ESD). All are located east of Sixth Avenue, either along Atlantic Avenue or on the 100-foot strip from Dean Street to Pacific Street.

The only remaining properties in the project footprint not yet condemned are those at Site 5, bounded by Flatbush and Fourth avenues and Pacific Street, currently home to P.C. Richard and the very busy sportswear store Modell's, and slated someday to be the site of a 250-foot tower.

This is what DeBlasio considers to be affordable?

From the Daily News:

Only in New York could you win an “affordable housing” lottery and still wind up paying almost $3,500 a month in rent.

Mayor de Blasio broke ground on a housing complex near Barclays Center in Brooklyn on Monday, where most units will run between $2,500 and $3,500 a month.

More than half the units at Pacific Park — formerly Atlantic Yards — will be set aside for “middle-income” New Yorkers — defined as earning 121% to 165% of citywide median income. Families of four whose income is between $100,681 and $138,435 will qualify.

By comparison, middle income for a family of four is defined as $94,560 in Philadelphia, and $72,400 to $88,300 in Chicago.

The Brooklyn tenants will pay 30% of their income for rent — the standard for all affordable housing, regardless of income. That will bring the rent as high as $3,461.

Still no affordable housing at Atlantic Yards

From the Brooklyn Paper:

A band of politicians and civic groups is calling on the state to stop developer Forest City Ratner from selling off the majority of the Atlantic Yards development until the company fast-tracks the construction of below-market-rate housing.

The Shanghai-based developer Greenland inked a deal in October to buy the rights to the remaining, un-built towers of the stagnated project from Forest City Ratner, leaving just the Barclays Center and the under-construction modular high-rise B2 tower in the hands of the builder. But elected officials, including Fort Greene councilwoman and Public-Advocate-elect Letitia James, said the state should put the brakes on the deal and find someone new to jump-start the so-called “affordable” housing, because Brooklyn does not know Greenland the developer from the Nordic country it shares a name with.

“The governor should consider not-for-profit organizations to build the affordable housing, ones who have a track record of doing it,” James said at a Friday press conference. “Now here Forest City Ratner is, trying to kick out the plan and selling over 70 percent of his interest in this project to an organization that we really don’t have any relationship with and have no experience with.”

Greenland’s purchase includes a planned 15 apartment towers and one office building and a promise of 2,250 so-called “affordable” units, of which only 181 are in progress as part of the 383-unit B2. Officials are demanding that the state’s Empire State Development defer any sale until the state has looked at other ways to expedite construction.

To Letitia James' credit, she was one of the few electeds to speak out Atlantic Yards before construction started, and exactly for reasons such as this. The others aided and abetted Bruce Ratner, so the outrage doesn't exactly come across as sincere.

Ratner wants more tax breaks

From DNA Info:

The developer of the Atlantic Yards project has already gotten at least $761 million in government subsidies — and now it wants even more fiscal breaks.

Forest City Ratner filed a lawsuit last week demanding the city's Department of Finance and the Tax Commissioner slash their appraisal of one of its Atlantic Yards properties. Reducing the appraisal would drastically cut how much FCR pays to the city in the future as part of a deal to build there.

The land in question is known as block 1129 in the city ledger and encompasses the southern side of the Atlantic Yards project. Currently it serves as a parking lot, but FCR eventually plans to build high-rises on it.

The Finance Department put the block’s market value at $11.2 million for its current fiscal year, which began July 1. But FCR says in a lawsuit filed in Brooklyn Supreme Court that it’s only worth about $1.6 million.

FCR wants the court to lower the Tax Commissioner’s and the Finance Department’s final determination.

Ratner a big DeBlasio donor

From the Daily News:

Housing emerged as an issue in the mayoral race Monday when Bill de Blasio came under withering attack for the lack of affordable units in the Atlantic Yards development rising in his Brooklyn backyard.

De Blasio, who has focused his campaign on income inequality, has been uncharacterically quiet on the failure of developer Bruce Ratner to build 2,250 units of affordable housing promised as part of the project, mayoral rival Joe Lhota charged.

“He was silent because he was bought,” said Lhota, standing across the street from the gleaming Barclay’s Center, the anchor of the $5 billion development.

“The people who built the Barclay’s Center and promised to build all of the affordable housing have given contributions to him over and over again.”

As a City Council member from Brooklyn and then as the city’s Public Advocate, de Blasio bucked neighborhood opposition and supported the controversial project.

Ratner has received tax breaks and loans worth more than $760 million to build the project, which is supposed to include the 2,250 units of affordable housing. But nearly eight years after the project was approved, the first 181 affordable housing units won’t break ground until next year. And there is no concrete timetable for the other units.

Ratner and his associates at Forest City Ratner Companies have raised more than $73,000 for de Blasio’s campaign, records show.

Meet the soon-to-be boss, same as the old boss. The rest of the real estate community is also throwing huge wads of cash at BDB.

Judge Rules Plaintiffs in Atlantic Yards Legal Case Entitled to Fees; Forest City Ratner Must Pay

Developer, State Must Compensate Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn,
Other Community Groups
NEW YORK, NY — A judge today ruled that the Empire State Development Corporation ("ESDC") is liable for legal fees incurred by community groups that sued successfully to compel a supplemental environmental impact study (SEIS) for the second phase of Forest City's controversial Atlantic Yards project. She referred the parties to a referee to determine the amount of the award, which under an agreement with ESDC, Forest City Ratner will then have to pay.

The ruling was issued by New York State Supreme Court Justice Marcy S. Friedman, who in July of 2011 held that the second phase of the Atlantic Yards project must undergo re-analysis because of significant changes in the originally claimed 10-year construction timeline. Justice Friedman noted that this review "should lead to ‘consideration of alternatives [to the currently proposed project] that may more effectively meet the ostensible goal of the project to alleviate blight and create affordable and market-rate housing with less adverse environmental impacts.'" ESDC and Forest City Ratner lost their appeal of Justice Friedman's ruling at the Appellate Division, and the Court of Appeals, New York's highest court, refused to hear the case. The ESDC, the quasi-governmental entity overseeing the project, has yet to issue the draft SEIS required by the courts.

In reaching her decision that the plaintiffs were entitled to their attorneys fees as the prevailing party, Justice Friedman expressly denounced ESDC's claim that it was justified in continuing to use a ten year timeline when its own Development Agreement with Forest City Ratner reflected a buildout of up to 30 years, calling the claim "no small audacity, in light of the court's prior findings . . [including] the ESDC's ‘deplorable lack of transparency.'"

"Justice Friedman's ruling today is another reminder of the sordid 10-year history of the Atlantic Yards project, which to this day has largely failed to deliver on the promises that were used to sell it to the people of New York," said Candace Carponter, Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn's legal director. "We're gratified by today's decision, but the fact remains that, as Justice Friedman suggests, had the ESDC and Forest City Ratner not knowingly misrepresented the facts to the court, the entire Atlantic Yards project, including the heavily subsidized Barclays Center, would never have gotten off the drawing board."

"Justice Friedman has rendered a strong decision that vindicates what the community has been saying for a long time. One can only wonder whether this project would have ever moved forward if, as Justice Friedman noted, ESDC had disclosed the project's true timeline", said Jeffrey S. Baker, lead attorney for Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn and a partner in Young, Sommer LLC. "It is time for ESDC to finally engage in an open and honest process that considers the full range of alternatives for Phase II of this project, not just the interests of Forest City Ratner."

Will the real Bill DeBlasio please stand up?

From The Daily Beast:

In 2004 de Blasio was a paid adviser to John Edwards’s presidential campaign. And in this year’s mayoral race, his rhetoric about “a tale of two cities”—a line he has used to critique growing income inequality—has echoed Edwards’s rhetoric from 2004 about the “two Americas.” Yet while serving on the City Council, he frequently found himself on the wrong side of progressives in his district (admittedly not hard in ultraliberal Park Slope) and was sometimes blasted for favoring developers and real-estate interests over community concerns about congestion and quality of life.

For example, he sided with a developer in opposing the designation of the Gowanus Canal as a Superfund site—even as nearby residents said that the city was ill equipped to carry out the cleanup on its own. He pushed to allow luxury housing in Brooklyn Bridge Park. And he was one of the primary backers of the controversial redevelopment of Atlantic Yards into a basketball arena for the Brooklyn Nets—a nearly decade-long fight that pitted local residents against powerful real-estate interests.

De Blasio’s most important maneuver has been to capitalize on liberal frustration with Mayor Mike Bloomberg.

“He said that it was necessary to stop the tide of gentrification, but everyone knows this was the most gentrifying thing to ever happen to Brooklyn,” says Lucy Koteen, a local political activist who backs current City Comptroller John Liu. “He is not wrong about the ‘tale of two cities.’ But look at his record. Did he help level the playing field, or is he on the side of developers who have gotten rich displacing people?”

From the NY Post:

The City Planning Commission rep appointed by Public Advocate Bill de Blasio — a critic of big developers — voted with the administration 93 percent of the time, records show.

One of those votes was to approve Extell’s West Side tower that includes a “poor door” separating subsidized tenants from those paying market rents.

A de Blasio spokesman said the rep actually fought “the poor door,” but Extell found a way around her objection.

De Blasio’s rep has voted in favor of 554 out of 595 projects since 2010.

Capital New York has a good wrap-up of his development stances in the past.

Ratner looking to sell large stake in AY project

From the Daily News:

After years of lording over Atlantic Yards, Brooklyn developer Bruce Ratner is looking for some help to get his apartment towers off the ground.

Ratner's Forest City Ratner Co. is now seeking to sell a 50 to 80 percent stake in the 22-acre development's housing component.

This is not the first time Ratner has sold a stake in portions of the Atlantic Yards project. In 2009, he sold a stake in both the Brooklyn Nets and their arena, the Barclays Center, to Russian billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov, raising more than $200 million to get the arena built. He also sold off a 49 percent stake in 15 of the company's retail centers in the metropolitan region, including the Atlantic Center mall across the street from the arena, to raise cash toward construction.

Plumbers sue Ratner over prefab construction

From the Daily News:

Developer Bruce Ratner's plan to build pre-fab apartment buildings at his Atlantic Yards complex dangerously ignores key building safety rules, union workers charge in a bombshell lawsuit.

The Plumbing Foundation claims in its suit that the Building Department is wrongly allowing Ratner to build the first phase of the $4.9 billion, 15-building residential and commercial project without using licensed plumbers and fire suppression contractors.

Because Ratner is using pre-fabricated — or modular — units, more than 60% of the construction of the project surrounding the Barclays Center is expected to be completed off-site.

The modules currently being built at the Brooklyn Naval Yard includes plumbing, gas and sprinkler piping for the world's tallest modular building, a 32-story residential structure named B2, slated to rise at Dean St. and Flatbush Ave.

But that construction is not being done by licensed workers, a violation of the city's strict building Administrative Code, according to the lawsuit.

Ratner must complete environmental review

From Develop Don't Destroy:

Bruce Ratner has lost his fourth court decision in a row. Today NY State's high court, the Court of Appeals, rejected the developer's (and the Empire State State Development Corporation's) request to appeal the lower court's unanimous upholding of the Supreme Court order that Atlantic Yards must undergo a Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS).

The suit, originally brought by Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn and other community organizations, has had a long and winding path. At the core the case is about the State's bogus claims (and subsequent impact study) that the project build out would be 10 years, when in actuality it will likely be 25 years at minimum, and thus the attendant impacts will be substantially different then the ones studied.

The ruling today and the previous ones show, thankfully, that NY courts can actually be a check against public agencies running amok on behalf of private interests.

The ruling also means that the bulk of the Atlantic Yards project will undergo an SEIS, which will include a public hearing.

The time is now for ESDC and Governor Cuomo to intervene to ensure that Forest City Ratner doesn't hold a huge chunk of Prospect Heights hostage for the next generation.

Did you hear the joke about Megaprojects and affordable housing?

From the Wall Street Journal:

The promise of more than 4,000 units of low- and middle-income housing was a significant selling point for two of the city's largest new developments, Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn and Willets Point in Queens.

Today, they are moving forward, but the housing pieces have been pushed back for years behind other portions of the multibillion-dollar projects, as the boom-era visions are proving to be difficult to see through in a slowly recovering economy.

In recent weeks, the Bloomberg administration reached a tentative deal with the Related Cos. and Sterling Equities to redevelop a large industrial swath of land at Willets Point, in a plan that now calls for housing to be built as a third step with a groundbreaking by 2025, according to people familiar with the matter. The companies would first spend years building a hotel and a large retail center in the area before moving on to constructing the housing in an unproven and polluted site near Citi Field.

At Atlantic Yards, the project's centerpiece basketball arena is nearing completion. But developer Forest City Ratner Cos. has yet to begin any of the 6,400 units of housing it once anticipated being built by 2016—2,250 of which would be for low- and middle-income families. Forest City has cited higher than expected costs and an inclement market, although it plans to break ground this year on its first building with 175 below-market-rate units.

The delays have frustrated officials and given fuel to critics of the project, which went through a contested public approval process before the recession.

Developers buying politicians

From the NY Times:

...the trial is tantalizing for where its tentacles extend — linking political corruption in Westchester to that in Brooklyn, and touching on the curious fashion in which real estate developers pursue their chosen game.

Important details are shadowed in pretrial murk. Ms. Annabi stands accused of taking bribes to cast deciding votes for two large developments in Yonkers. But in the largest of these developments, Bruce Ratner’s 81-acre Ridge Hill project, prosecutors have not said how much money was forked over.

All of which brings us to the role of the politically wired developer, whose projects are catnip to politicians. No prosecutor has implied that Mr. Ratner or his aides played a corrupt role. In Brooklyn, where he has a 22-acre development known as the Atlantic Yards, he was mentioned in the corruption case last year that toppled a Brooklyn Democratic power, State Senator Carl Kruger. Prosecutors called Mr. Ratner “Developer No. 1.” In Yonkers, he appears in Ms. Annabi’s indictment as “Developer No. 2.”

After I wrote last month of Mr. Ratner’s entanglements, several left-liberal sorts, not least former Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum, wrote to object that I had besmirched a fine fellow. The developer is a patron of liberal causes. He has set aside a significant number of apartments in his Atlantic Yards project for working-class tenants.

Much of this is true, as is this: Mr. Ratner wrangled $726 million in subsidies and benefits from the city and state, and he fights for even more by the week. (He was the developer of The New York Times building.) His willingness to tuck affordable apartments into his gleaming towers is perhaps a reasonable political tradeoff rather than a testament to his character.

Mr. Ratner relies, too, on phalanxes of former top officials to make his case. The less polite might call them fixers. So he hired Bruce Bender, a former top City Council aide and south Brooklyn Democratic power, as his senior vice president, and put Scott Cantone, a former Giuliani aide, in another post.

Developers' promises are always empty

From the Brooklyn Paper:

The organization that promised to deliver jobs for black supporters of Atlantic Yards has received hundreds of thousands of dollars from developer Bruce Ratner to help train workers for the positions — but has only secured work for 15 people at the $5-billion mega-project.

The mostly black members of Brooklyn United for Innovative Local Development who were promised some of the 1,500 jobs per year over the project’s 10-year buildout loudly supported Atlantic Yards during the approval process, often appearing in hard hats at rallies and hearings and presenting a contrasting face to the project’s mostly white opponents.

BUILD’s President James Caldwell said that the group has helped 400 people find work around town — but he admitted that only 15 of those positions were on Ratner’s Prospect Heights development, which currently consists of only the under-construction Barclays Center near the corner of Flatbush and Atlantic avenues.

Residents filed a lawsuit against Ratner and BUILD last Tuesday in federal court, claiming that executives at BUILD and Ratner’s company falsely promised them union memberships and jobs in exchange for completing a “sham” 15-week training program run by the Downtown nonprofit in 2010.

Unions take pay cut at Atlantic Yards

From the Brooklyn Paper:

Union workers are coming to Bruce Ratner’s rescue — again! — agreeing to take massive pay cuts to pave the way for the first residential building at Atlantic Yards, a cut-rate, pre-fabricated tower to rise next to the Barclays Center.

Labor unions provided crucial support for Ratner when his controversial, $5-billion project was moving through the approval process five years ago in exchange for a promise of high-paying jobs. But the agreement currently being negotiated between union leaders and Ratner, workers would give up millions of dollars in pay to allow the developer to move forward with the cheaper, modular building.

It is unclear how much money will be lost to laborers, but carpenters make as much as $90 an hour in wages and benefits at real construction sites, but only $30 per hour when working inside the kind of factory where Ratner will build the pre-fabricated units.

Many union leaders merely shrugged when asked about the pay cuts, suggesting that if the workers don’t give back, the project might not go ahead, leaving laborers with no work at all.

Where are the promised jobs?

From the Brooklyn Paper:

A group of unemployed construction workers is suing Atlantic Yards developer Bruce Ratner to recover lost wages for jobs that they claim they were promised but never received at the $5-billion Prospect Heights megaproject.

The workers will announce the federal lawsuit this morning in Fort Greene, steps from the under-construction Barclays Center.

Ratner once boasted that the 22-acre project would create 1,500 jobs per year over a 10-year buildout, but roughly 700 people are currently at work on the arena.

The paltry numbers have prompted disgruntled workers — who backed the project during its approval process five years ago — to rally regularly for jobs.

Unions accepting pay cuts on megaprojects

From Crains:

New York construction unions have reached an agreement to cut the wages of members working on a massive residential project on the far West Side by 20%, sources said. The project, which will include more than 500 units of affordable housing, is being developed by the Gotham Organization Inc.

Meanwhile, Forest City Ratner Cos. has applied to the unions for similar wage cuts as it prepares to begin construction of its first residential tower at the long-planned Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn. There, at least 50% of the approximately 400 residential units will be affordable.

The unions, in conjunction with contractors, began cutting wages and changing work rules for certain projects back in 2009 as part of an effort to lower construction costs and jumpstart projects brought to a standstill by the recession. It was just such an agreement that was a critical element to moving forward with Forest City's Frank Gehry-designed residential tower downtown. At one point, the developer had proposed capping the 76-story tower at roughly half its height, but that never happened. It opened earlier this year.

Typically, the union offers concessions that lower labor costs by 10% to 15%. However, unions make steeper cuts for developers building affordable housing or residential projects in the outer boroughs because they tend to command lower sale prices and rents. Additionally, non-union labor has made greater inroads into those sectors than in major commercial projects in Manhattan.

$300M down the drain, people evicted for nothing?

From Fox 5:

The Atlantic yards complex that will become the new home for the NBA's Nets could be a lot smaller than originally planned.

The developer had promised 16 residential and office buildings, affordable housing, and recreational facilities along with the stadium.

Much of that vision is on the chopping block. Documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission by developer Bruce Ratner and his Forest City Enterprises show that much of the project could be scrapped because of money problems.

Is this guy for real?

From Crains:

The topic of whether New York City has been shortchanged by the 2010 census is certainly a hot button issue. The mayor continues to insist the census takers missed as many as 200,000 residents because they could neither count people in apartment buildings nor find immigrants who had no interest in being enumerated.

Now comes a very provocative piece by Harvard economist Edward Glaeser, an expert on cities, which suggests the Bureau of the Census might be right.

Mr. Glaeser, in a piece on The New York Times' Economix blog, looked at the number of new housing units created in the city in the last decade. He notes that despite the supposed building boom, New York added only 170,000 new housing units in the 2000 decade, an increase of 5.3%.

Typically, he adds, population growth lags the number of new housing units by a couple of percentage points because household size is shrinking. He finds lots of evidence to support the idea that growth is in line with housing creation, which means the less-than-expected 2.1% increase is on the mark.

If true, the Bloomberg administration should start doing some hard thinking. In part, the housing shortfall is the result of the financial crisis that delayed major development initiatives at Atlantic Yards, Hudson Yards, Coney Island and Willets Point, to name only a few. The administration is not responsible for that.

Other administrations, however, would be considering measures to spur more construction, as Ed Koch did in the early 1980s. So far, the administration isn't interested in that approach; maybe it is time for a change in plan.

Why would we need more construction if many of the already built units are sitting empty? Why are taxpayers expected to foot any of the bills for Atlantic Yards, Hudson Yards, Coney Island and Willets Point - all private developments? How about tax incentives to get people to stay here instead of for developers who help drive them out?