To The Editor:
Joe Maniscalco is correct in his assessment that Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries’ plan to create a new governance structure for the Forest City Ratner Corporation’s Atlantic Yards project proposal ‘went over like a lead balloon.’
Municipal Art Society spokesperson was quoted in his article as characterizing the bill as a ‘conservative proposal.’ Maybe that is why the balloon will not float.
Prospect Heights and Fort Greene are liberal to progressive communities where, for years, we have built a wonderful urban lifestyle. We do not want to see it exploited and then destroyed by the privatization of a section of the neighborhood to make a profit for investors building a gigantically and grotesquely out-of-scale development.
The process that authorized the FCR Corporation plan has all along violated the procedures known as the Uniform Land Use Review Process (ULURP). When the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC) took over control (using an arcane section of the state constitution and with the collusion of Ratner-classmate, then Governor George Pataki) the right of neighborhood groups, and then the City government, to make decisions over land-use was effectively abolished.
Now, that the plan has been revised and re-revised and re-re-revised so that no one knows what is the plan, these elected officials move towards legitimizing Ratner’s arrogance by volunteering to govern a ‘train wreck’ as Daniel Goldstein correctly characterizes the present situation.
Elected officials should be fighting to return the project to the ULURP process, which mandates the local community’s and the City’s right to govern our own terrain with the structures agreed upon after years of debate and compromise, and that are written into law and included in the NY City Charter.
These elected officials now have a chance to renew the struggle to return to the City and the locality, to us, the power over decisions about how our region will develop.
It is disappointing to see elected officials lined up to assume authority over the FCR Corporation’s plan just at the moment when litigation, a faltering economy and Governor Paterson may line up to administer a series of blows that would put the whole misbegotten mess out of its and our misery. Then, we could begin again the proper way: Put out a Request for Proposals (RFP) to developers, participate in open and public hearings held by affected community boards, and anticipate a vote of the full City Council.
Another disappointment is that at a recent press conference, the spokesperson for the ‘coalition of community groups’ speaking on behalf of this misguided legislation does not actually represent his own constituency group. Gib Veconi never brought the proposed legislation to the Park Place-Underhill Avenue Block Association to find out whether the oldest-functioning block association in Prospect Heights supports, or opposes, forming a new governance procedure. He continues to act as an individual and claim to represent a group. As painful as it is to call out a neighbor, honesty requires it.
Ask your elected officials for a copy of the proposed legislation so that you can decide for yourself whether you support legitimizing FCR Corporation’s insider, fast-track claim to developing the Yards, or want to go back to the beginning with a legitimate ULURP process that includes a legal procedure for all of us to participate in making decisions over the development of the neighborhood.
Susan Metz
Prospect Heights
