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Posted by
Terrapin Station
on Tue Jul 24 14:37:11 2007, in response to Atlantic Yard, posted by BusRider on Tue Jul 24 12:44:51 2007.
edf40wrjww2msgDetail:detailStr fiogf49gjkf0d I saw in the NY Post yesterday that the city is making or doing work on a yard called the Atlantic Yard does anyone know anything???
I know a lot. The article's photo caption incorrectly implies that VD Yard is named "Atlantic Yards".
ATTN NY POST: AFAIK, "Atlantic Yards" is the name of the development. Is is not the name of a yard, nor is it the name of an area of Brooklyn.
LINK
RATNER'S PLAN HITS BIG $NAG
By RICH CALDER
July 23, 2007 -- The Bloomberg administration is threatening to pull more than $100 million in city subsidies from the controversial Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn unless a deal providing massive tax breaks for developer Bruce Ratner is drastically revised.
"Pure and simple, it's a giveaway," a high-ranking city official told The Post.
At issue is an affordable-housing reform bill hastily passed by the state Legislature that included a special "carve-out" for Atlantic Yards.
The provision, quietly inserted by Assemblyman Vito Lopez (D-Brooklyn), would provide Ratner with an extra $300 million in property-tax benefits. It also exempts Atlantic Yards from a new definition of government-assisted affordable housing that limits it only to low-income households. Atlantic Yards could still include middle-income tenants.
Many developers, city officials fear, would hesitate to build "affordable" housing that excludes the middle class. A city memo says the bill could kill the construction of 10,000 subsidized units citywide for which middle-income families could qualify, including 5,000 units at Queens West.
Another provision eliminates - for Ratner only - the requirement that at least 20 percent of the housing units in each building in a complex be affordable.
Critics say it opens the door to Ratner "segregating" all of the project's 2,500 affordable-housing units into several buildings.
"More sinister, [Ratner] can build the market-rate housing first and wait a decade to do the affordable housing or, even worse, come back after the market-rate housing is done and then say, 'We can't afford to do the affordable housing,' " an official said.
The project plan currently calls for 30 percent of all housing built during the project's first phase to be affordable, and Ratner's staff says there's no plan to change that.
One high-ranking official at Ratner's company said, "Rather than working with Albany to create more affordable housing for New York, the Bloomberg administration is threatening to kill middle-income housing at Atlantic Yards unless they get what they want."
The city committed $205 million to Atlantic Yards to help Ratner acquire property and make infrastructure repairs. It might not hold back all the funds because the area needs the infrastructure repairs anyway.
Additional reporting by Tom Topousis
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