Remember the hulabaloo over the Atlantic Yards project? How it would revive Brooklyn, etc.? The latest dispatch from that front from the New York Times, no less, indicates that it hasn’t been beer and skittles. We will quote from the Times, and let its words speak for themselves,
“[A local] pizzeria sits in the shadow of the $4.9 billion megadevelopment once known as Atlantic Yards, which has promised to deliver thousands of new residents and visitors to the area since it was proposed in 2003. But so far, the biggest change . . . Vanderbilt Avenue merchants have seen is rising rent.”
“The project has been troubled by delays, financial setbacks, lawsuits, and political wrangling. And the opening of the Barclays Center, the centerpiece of the development, in 2012, did not deliver substantial new business to Vanderbilt despite expectations that it would.” Rhonda Kaysen, A Long Wait for New Neighbors on a Brooklyn Street, N.Y. Times, Aug. 31, 2016, at p. B5.
And so it goes. Predictably. As California Court of Appeal Justice, Macklin Fleming once put it: redevelopment project promoters promise they’ll bake a bigger economic pie, with bigger slices for all. But what they often tend to produce is pie in the sky. Of course, the NY Times does the same by duly reporting that in the sweet bye and bye good things will happen. We will await the event and see how it turns out if we are still around then.
For the full NY Times article go to http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/31/realestate/merchants-wait-for-the-promise-of-vanderbilt-avenue-and-wait.html?ref=business