The number of retail jobs that state officials say will be created by Bruce Ratner’s Atlantic Yards mega-development ignores the reality of his two existing shopping malls directly across the street, where job performance has fallen short, according to Ratner’s own data.
Ratner’s Atlantic Terminal and Atlantic Center malls created a combined 1,680 jobs — a whopping 42 percent, or 1,220 jobs, less than what should have been created according to the state’s standard job-projection formula.
That state formula — one job for every 300 square feet of shopping area — is now being used to create the impression that Ratner’s Atlantic Yards’ proposed 247,000 square feet of retail space would generate 824 jobs.
But if the job-generation history of Atlantic Terminal, which opened in 2004, and Atlantic Center, which opened in 1996, repeats itself, Atlantic Yards will only create 477 jobs — 347 fewer that Ratner that promised in his “Jobs, Housing and Hoops” scheme.
Officials at the Empire State Development Corporation would not comment on the jobs shortfall.
“We didn’t handle those projects [Atlantic Terminal and Atlantic Center malls],” said ESDC spokeswoman Jessica Copen.
She added that the job projections for the Yards — one of the project’s main selling points — could go down before the final project plan is approved later this year.
The numbers have certainly been fluid. Originally, Forest City Ratner predicted 770 retails jobs at Atlantic Yards, but the number rose to 824 using the ESDC’s one-per-300-square-foot model.
As a result of all this fuzzy math, critics said the state should be looking closely at Ratner’s own recent history in Brooklyn.
“The state should be basing all its decisions on information that is verifiable and creditable,” said Assemblyman Jim Brennan (D-Park Slope).
The shortfall at Ratner’s malls was mostly blamed on the developer’s failure to attract enough retail tenants.
In Atlantic Center mall, one prime location became back-office space for the ESDC. Another became a Department of Motor Vehicles office after the Sports Authority left.
The ESDC job prediction for Atlantic Yards was part of an internal economic analysis memo that was released on Oct. 18 after pressure from Brennan, blogger Norman Oder and The Brooklyn Papers.
But even if the number of new jobs end up being lower, Atlantic Yards supporters said that any job creation is a good thing.
“This is a decent number [of jobs] for a development of this scale,” said Matthew Nerzig, a spokesman for Service Employees International United local 32BJ, which would represent the doormen, maintenance workers and cleaners who would service a projected 6,860-residential units in the $4.2-billion development.
Atlantic Yards would also bring 2,253 office jobs, 108 hotel jobs and 95 parking-related jobs to the 22-acre site in Prospect Heights, according to the ESDC analysis.
New Jersey union members who work at the Nets’ current arena in the Meadowlands swamp will get first dibs on the 400 positions at the new arena, union officials said.
In total, only 30 percent of the development’s jobs will be new, according to the ESDC.
But even new mall jobs create old problems locally.
“[When a new store opens] an [existing] store … fires someone,” said Pat Purcell, a spokesman for the United Food and Commercial Workers, a national union.
But no matter how many retail jobs are created at Atlantic Yards — 824, according to the ESDC, or 477 based on Ratner’s history — job-hungry Brooklynites cheered.
“Those are jobs that [will] go to people in our community,” said Ayesha Morgan, a Fort Greene resident who worked at the Atlantic Terminal Target.
But even the retail jobs may not be “new.” The retail sector around the country has been bleeding jobs as neighborhood shops layoff staff as they compete against low-margin chain stores and lightly staffed discount stores in malls like Ratner’s, as well as the Internet.
In September alone, retailers nationwide cut 12,000 jobs, slashing more paychecks than even the auto industry, according to the federal Department of Labor.