Whatever Happened to the [In]famous Atlantic Yards Redevelopment Project?

We just came across an admittedly partisan but revealing post by the Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn folks ([DDDB] 9/12) which informs its readers that the Brooklyn Atlantic Yards redevelopment project — the one that was judicially approved in Goldstein v. Pataki — is having problems. In a nutshell, these folks tell us that apart from the basketball arena, nothing much is being built there. In their words:

“After $300 million of taxpayer dollars, and nearly $1.6 billion in special breaks, government favors and below market public land sales, and two and one half years after the arena groundbreaking, not a single one of the promised 2,250 taxpayer subsidized, “affordable” housing units is under construction, and of the 10,000 “permanent” jobs promised, the developer has announced only 105 full time jobs and 1,900 non-living wage jobs. There is no groundbreaking scheduled for the first of 15 planned residential towers, and the office tower that was to provide space for those 10,000 jobs is unlikely to be constructed in this generation, if ever.”

Sounds like Kelo all over again, doesn’t it?