I think it remains to be seen how Atlantic Yards will affect Crown Heights in the long term. What is crystal clear to me though is the damage that will be done to our community if the MTA cuts student metrocards, Access-a-Ride, and our local bus lines. In what amounts to a sweetheart deal with Forest City Ratner, the developer of Atlantic Yards, the MTA sold the 8.5-acre Vanderbilt Railyards for over $100 million less than appraised. Ironically, the full appraised value of the AY properties is $214.5 million – exactly the amount it would take to supply New York City public school students with metrocards for a year.

How will AY affect Crown Heights? It’s hard for me to tell. But the MTA’s mismanagement of the Atlantic Yards issue has stripped an already struggling public transit system of precious resources. Take a look at the MTA’s proposed cuts: Crown Heights is not being spared.

I’m going to have to agree with Robert here about the MTA being one of the biggest parts of this story, but dragging student Metrocards or the supposed mismanagement of the agency into this discussion distracts from the very real mistakes the MTA made in this deal. Had the MTA taken more money, it would likely have been marked as capital funding for that project and not helpful in the current budget crisis. That money would have allowed a larger expansion of the underground rail yard, increasing LIRR capacity to meet the current population growth estimates and to meet the increased nationwide use of public transit. The MTA will never have the opportunity to expand that yard again, certainly not when there is a basketball arena above it.

If you must build a sports arena, Atlantic Yards is a good place to do it. In fact the Dodgers wanted to replace CH’s own Ebitt’s Field with the world’s first domed stadium at the corner of Atlantic and Flatbush. There is remarkably more existing infrastructure in place there than at most stadium sites, particularly transit. However, I disagree with underlying tenants of our stadium building impulse and think we don’t actually need this one.

The growing consensus amongst researches is that pro sports venues do not offer nearly the return on investment that most municipalities and states claim they will. Governments generally cover all of the costs of new infrastructure as well as 70-80% of initial construction costs nationally. The number of permanent jobs is often far below the number bandied about by politicians and developers; those numbers generally include temporary construction jobs created by development. In this case millions worth of “condemed” land is a large part of the subsidy. In the end, I don’t think the Barclays Center will be worth what the city, state and MTA gave up to make it happen.

The other pieces that of this deal are almost all housing. The architectural plans released several years ago show the housing as a wall of luxury skyscrapers out of scale with surrounding area. It also included a Frank Gehry designed arena, so who knows what’s left of that plan. Some of the property is promised to be “affordable”. The problem with the affordability claim on a project so large is that these units generally tend to get built last, using money from the sale of the luxury housing to finance the affordable development. The problem with AY moving forward now, is that it may be another ten years before the affordable housing enters the market, if it ever does. If anyone hasn’t noticed the luxury housing market has crashed. Literally blocks away from AY at the corner of Clinton and Atlantic is an almost empty thirteen story condo development, not to mention any number of other troubled Prospect Heights luxury developments. There is no market for giant wall of luxury units, and so there will be no affordable housing there either.

That leads me to the last problem, and the one that I think will affect Crown Heights the most. In recent coverage about the ground breaking, you will see references to temporary parking lots. The details are still really sketchy, but my fear is that Ratner wants to build the arena now, since sports arenas are more profitable than housing in this economy, and warehouse the rest of the land that the city gave him in order to provide “temporary parking” for the first few years of arena operation. Given that all of the plans have the Barcalys Center opening onto the corner of Flatbush and Atlantic, we can only assume that the lots will be behind the structure running east down Atlantic, and south across Pacific, parts of which will be permanently closed. For the first few years (until the next luxury housing boom?), the Crown Heights view of Atlantic Yards may be parking lots leading up to the arena. Instead of an old rail yard, we will have acres and acres of surface parking, and nothing signifies this part of Brooklyn quite like a giant parking lot right?

Any major development project, particularly a stadium, is a bonanza too tantalizing for most politicians to pass up. Even in as controversial a development as this, there is almost no political downside to wielding the shovel at a ground breaking. The rub is that Marty Markoawitz, Mike Bloomberg and David Patterson will be long out of office by the time we can objectively state that Atlantic Yards was failure of public policy.

@Robert – is there any information on why MTA would sell themselves so very short? Did Ratner have more bargaining leverage? Were they just that desperate for additional funds? Are they planning on making additional money on ticket sales to the yard?

@nat – Regarding your point about not being able to do any further expansion, out of curiosity, prior to AY construction do you know if would it ever have been feasible to connect the Atlantic terminal to the LIRR terminal at Penn Station? It’s something I would love to see happen.

Regarding the skewed ROI figures – do you know if anyone has done an actual ROI analysis of AY from the community perspective. Meaning – in light of the amount of tax concessions, condemned property, etc. that was “invested” by the city for this project, what are the returns – in terms of the amount of affordable housing, jobs, and other benefits that it will generate. On a side note, I’m also concerned about the spillover effects on local traffic patterns.

But lastly, regarding the potential delay in building the affordable housing component, I read on Brownstoner just yesterday that it was announced at the groundbreaking that the first yards tower, which they say is supposed get underway next year, will be 50% affordable. So at least one part of the concern has been allayed.

@LaurelB- On the ROI issue, there is some good information out there, the best thing that I have read recently is a piece by John Petro on the Huffington Post. Much of it underlines or draws out what I was saying above. Here’s an excerpt:

While it was always uncertain just how “affordable” the affordable housing was going to be, it is now unclear if and when the affordable housing will be built. There is also the very real possibility that the developer will need substantial public subsidies to build the affordable housing.

And while the amount of public tax dollars going to subsidize the project has more than doubled, from $100 million to at least $205 million, the amount of tax revenue that the project was estimated to generate for the city and state has shrunk by half a billion dollars. This is largely due to reductions in the amount of new office space that was going to be included in the project. Now there are no immediate plans for any new office space. According to Crain’s New York Business:

Initially, the project called for four office towers, but by early this year, only one was on the drawing boards. Asked when it will go up, Mr. Ratner responds with a question: “Can you tell me when we are going to need a new office tower?”

No, I can’t.

On top of that add the loss of an “iconic” design by Frank Gehry, a smaller rail yard than was initially agreed on, and instead of paying the cash-strapped MTA $100 million in cash as was promised in 2005, the developer will pay $20 million up front and the rest over 21 years.

But the real kicker is how the project will create blight, instead of eradicating it. The project is adjacent to some of the most successful pedestrian-oriented neighborhoods in the entire city: Park Slope, Prospect Heights, and Fort Greene. But instead of incorporating the characteristics that make these neighborhoods so successful, Atlantic Yards relies on an urban design that has been thoroughly discredited in cities across the globe.

Since there is no widely accepted objective measure for the “affordability” claim, even the promise of 50% affordable housing in one of the first towers seems dubious to me. The ROI is definitely not there for the city and especially the surrounding communities.

As far as the LIRR connecting Brooklyn to Penn Station, I would seriously doubt that this has ever been looked at. Mainly because the LIRR was never built or designed to serve the needs of city residents, and like most commuter railroads its designed to get suburban workers into a city’s Central Business District. The cost of tunneling under the river, and up the side of Manhattan would make any such project prohibitively expensive. Furthermore the MTA is already digging a new tunnel under the river to bring trains from Queens into Grand Central, which all in all is probably a better use of funds. At least we still have the 3 and the A/C to get from CH to Penn Station.