Tish to Gif: Look here!

“This project is the largest that this borough has seen in over three
decades,” said James, “a project that is going to fundamentally
reshape the borough of Brooklyn and its landscape.”

James said she fears that the mayoral candidate from Manhattan’s
Upper East Side, who has led council opposition to the Jets stadium much
as she has spearheaded the airing of doubts among Brooklyn council members
about developer Bruce Ratner’s Atlantic Yards plan, is hedging on
where he stands on Brooklyn.

“It was announced [in committee] that the hearing was going to take
place in the first part of May,” contends James, which she pointed
out, is now here. James is one of several council members who have called
for the Brooklyn arena plan to go through the city’s Uniform Land
Use Review Procedure (ULURP), from which it is currently exempt as a state-sponsored
project.

Miller’s failure to schedule a hearing about the arena, to which
Ratner plans on moving his New Jersey Nets as soon as 2008, leaves the
rest of the city in the dark about what she often calls “selling
Brooklyn at bargain-basement prices.”

In trying to get a date for a hearing on the Atlantic Yards plan specified
and have a sit-down with Miller, James said she’s been referred to
his staff only.

“I’m getting the runaround,” she lamented.

Miller spokeswoman Leticia Theodore agreed with James’ claim that
a meeting was planned for “early May,” adding, “As soon
as the speaker works it out with his legislative director, we’ll
know when that is.”

She said any claims made by James that a scheduled hearing was canceled
were either incorrect or misunderstood.

“That being said, there will be a hearing on the Atlantic Yards —
it is an item that will be heard during the budget hearings,” Theodore
added.

“We didn’t have a date set,” she said, “and today’s,
what, the 3rd? That’s not to make light of it, but we have how many
days in May?

“It’s on the legislative director’s radar, and we do fully
intend to be scheduling a meeting in May,” Theodore promised. “The
speaker respects the project and the effect on her community, so we fully
expect to work with [James] in the future.”

James said the pressure is on to make sure the issues are heard before
the council approves next year’s fiscal budget, the draft of which
allocates $50 million to the Atlantic Yards project.

The council has only May to draft any changes to Mayor Bloomberg’s
proposed budget before voting on June 5.

While Miller has not weighed in directly on the plan to build a 19,000-seat
arena and 17 high-rises with office space and 4,500 units of housing units,
he said at an economic development committee hearing in May 2004: “Together,
we will find a way to bring professional sports home to Brooklyn and ensure
a vibrant and strong community at the same time.”

Atlantic Yards also relies on the state’s power of eminent domain
to condemn private property. In addition, like in the West Side stadium
plan, it relies on the purchase of development rights over Metropolitan
Transportation Authority rail yards.

Miller has raised the sale of the MTA property to the Jets as one of many
points of contention he has with the developments on the West Side, and
has criticized the stadium as being a “misuse of public money, without
any public approval” that “will be funded on the backs of subway
and bus riders.”

Opportunities, whether they be a spontaneous subway fire on the A-train
line in early March that warranted a Miller press release decrying the
stadium, or the $1.3 billion dollar proposed cut to the city’s education
budget that inspired his “Schools, not a West Side Stadium”
drive in April, seem to constantly present themselves for Miller’s
outspoken press releases against the stadium.

Miller even launched a “Subways, not Stadiums” campaign this
week, announcing on Tuesday that the $60 million cut to the MTA’s
subway repair and rehabilitation budget could be saved by dumping plans
for the West Side stadium.

But not once has he mentioned the Brooklyn stadium plan in a release.

Miller’s words, said James, ring true for both projects.

At a speech delivered to students at Columbia University in February,
he bashed the mayor’s support of the Jets stadium, much as James
is known for criticizing Borough President Marty Markowitz for proudly
championing the Nets arena plan at the cost of residents in its footprint.