Claiming that their elected officials have not represented their concerns,
a broad-based group of activist, neighborhood, block and civic associations
have come together to represent their own concerns about the Atlantic
Yards project.
Incorporating leaders of the Boerum Hill Association, Atlantic Avenue
Betterment Association, Atlantic Avenue Local Development Corporation,
Park Slope Neighbors, Fort Greene Association, Prospect Heights Neighborhood
Development Council and Develop-Don’t Destroy Brooklyn, the newly
formed Council of Brooklyn Neighborhoods (CBN) is in the early stages
of identifying the concerns of the communities neighboring the project
as it moves through procedures specified in the State Environmental Quality
Review Act (SEQRA).
The CBN came to be after civic leaders and others who had been outwardly
critical of developer Bruce Ratner’s proposal were barred from closed-door
meetings called by Borough President Marty Markowitz to discuss the Atlantic
Yards project.
An aide to Markowitz said at the time that the meetings — held Sept.
29 and March 4 — favored “neutral” organizations.
Daniel Goldstein, who lives in the footprint of the proposed development
and is a member of Develop-Don’t Destroy Brooklyn (DDDB), was one
of those barred from the meetings, for being, as he called it, “a
figurehead of the opposition.”
He is now one of several leaders steering the agenda of CBN in creating
an outline of the community’s concerns with respect to the Atlantic
Yards environmental review.
“DDDB wanted representation in any sort of [Environmental Impact
Statement] group that would be forming,” Goldstein explained. “The
majority of those groups that had been invited [to Borough Hall] started
meeting regularly and made demands on Borough Hall that any stakeholder
groups interested had to be present at these meetings.”
The coalition now includes members of 14 groups, he said, and they’re
all doing their best to prepare for the EIS.
“We haven’t really gotten much help from Borough Hall to date,”
Goldstein added.
But it was Markowitz’s own idea that brought the CBN together, said
Greg Atkins, the borough president’s chief of staff.
“Marty held those meetings to bring in community leaders to develop
a process,” Atkins said. “One of things [that came out of the
meetings] is that the communities which were coalescing, a lot of these
people started meeting on their own, which we saw as a positive outcome
of these groups.”
Although Markowitz turned down the CBN’s request that he hire an
expert to represent the community during the EIS proceedings, Atkins said
Markowitz supported the idea in principle.
“The stakeholder group really wants to have this community-based
planner to articulate concerns of the community in the EIS process, and
to translate EIS stuff to the community. They’re working out all
that stuff,” Atkins said.
“They asked our elected officials [for the funds],” he said.
“I have no idea how successful they’ll be.”
“We don’t have money to give out like that,” Atkins added.
CBN member Bill Batson, who sits on Community Board 8, said the new group
needs the help of an urban planner to prepare their scoping draft.
“People really can’t have an even playing field with a major
developer without technical assistance,” he said. “We needed
technical assistance and we were very fortunate to have the pro-bono services
of Community Consulting Services.”
That company, run in part by Brian Ketcham, a Brooklyn Heights-based urban
planner, said his input helps codify the concerns of the community.
“Unless this community wants to go through the same thing they went
through with the city in the Downtown Brooklyn Plan, they have to have
their own process, their own financing and their own commitment to see
that this is real,” said Ketcham.
Gib Veconi, president of the Prospect Heights Neighborhood Development
Council, had Ketcham explain the EIS process at a special meeting of his
group on June 16.
Veconi is also working with CBN.
“What we’re doing, we don’t consider it to be proprietary
or anything like that,” he said. “We’re just trying to
get a start as quickly as possible to get these things identified.”
Sue Wolfe, president of the Boerum Hill Association, said that although
Markowitz was to be credited with bringing the groups together, they came
together more over a common desire.
“We’re working together because we feel we’ll have more
power that way,” she said.
“There have been meetings with [Markowitz], but separately we have
also been meeting, and the group has grown, because we felt that we did
have many concern that were not the borough president’s concerns,”
she said. “It’s the immediate surrounding area, and still growing.
We want to be inclusive; we do not want to leave anybody out”
So far, the CBN has only devised a statement of conditions and they’re
working on a mission statement and a statement of principals.
“It’s taken a long time,” Wolfe said. “There’s
a lot of work going on behind the scenes.”
Added Veconi, “Coalitions take some time to come together, but it’s
productive, and it is broad-based.”
Other efforts by the community and elected officials include EIS scoping
sessions by Community Boards 2, 6 and 8, all of which will be home to
parts of the project, and the Brooklyn Borough Board, which includes the
Brooklyn delegation of the City Council and the chairs of all 18 community
boards borough-wide.
Drafts of the community boards’ environmental concerns have been
prepared among all three. CB2’s draft was four pages long, CB6 prepared
a 12-page outline, and CB8, with the help of a dedicated committee specifically
formed to address the project, produced a 40-page document.
