A private meeting between Forest City Ratner executives and the executive
committee of Community Board 2 has left some who were excluded up in arms.
Two days after skipping the first public hearing on the environmental
impact of the proposed Atlantic Yards mega-development, the executive
committee met privately with Forest City Ratner Executive Vice President
James Stuckey and other top company brass.
The executive committee consists of the board’s chairwoman, Shirley
McRae, and officers and chairpersons of board committees.
The meeting, described by Forest City spokesman Joe DePlasco as an informal
project update and question and answer session, was not publicly announced
and was not open to the public.
Its privacy provoked criticism from excluded CB2 board members and residents
who say the first meeting between the company and the board in nearly
a year should not have happened behind closed doors.
“As a rule, the [community] board is a public body. You represent
your community,” said former CB2 member Irene Van Slyke. “A
private meeting in this circumstance is almost illegal. It’s highly
inappropriate.”
Furthermore, ask the excluded, where was the executive committee when
the public was speaking, at the environmental scoping hearing on Oct.
18?
That four-hour state-mandated event attracted nearly 800 people —
but no official representatives of CB2 spoke.
“When I left the hearing I was really wondering where the board was,”
said Sandy Balboza, President of the Atlantic Avenue Betterment Association
and a member of CB2. “It makes you ask what their priorities are.”
The invitation to meet with Forest City officials at their Metrotech headquarters
arrived to the CB2 district office at 4:15 on Tuesday, 45 minutes before
the start of the first of two public hearings on the project’s environmental
impact, according to CB2 District Manager Robert Perris.
The Atlantic Yard project footprint includes areas within Community Boards
2, 6 and 8. Five members of the CB6 executive committee testified at the
hearing, along with four from CB8.
The private meeting “was called on short order,” said Perris.
“I think the board felt it was better to hear what they had to say
rather than not hear what they have to say because we couldn’t find
a more open venue for that information to be shared with more people,”
On Sept. 30, CB2 held a highly unusual Friday evening public hearing on
Atlantic Yards where they heard comments from community members and several
elected leaders.
Testimonies given at that forum and at other CB2 meetings will be consolidated
by the executive committee and submitted to the Empire State Development
Corporation, the executive committee says.
Still, because the meeting took place within the 10-day window between
the first public environmental hearing on the project and the Oct. 21
deadline for putting written testimony on record with the state, there
is concern that it will unfairly influence the board’s testimony.
“At this late date to hear just one side of the conversation is a
disservice to the board and to the community,” said Ken Diamondstone,
a community board member who is not on the executive board but came to
the meeting after hearing about it from a private source, later adding
that the questions posed to Forest City by the executive committee were
not “easy.”
“[The meeting] will have no impact at all, and I informed Jim Stuckey
of that fact as [it] was ending,” Perris said.
Jon Quint, a member of the CB2 transportation committee and a former chair
of the committee, said he didn’t see anything sinister about the
private meeting.
“Most of the real work gets done in the committee meetings whether
it’s the executive committee or the traffic committee,” he said.
“That’s where the nitty-gritty gets done and if they had a meeting
with Forest City Ratner, I am sure they got more done then we ever would
at a public meeting.”
