Doctroff Disaster....Let the Buck Passing Begin

From No Land Grab:

Doctoroff’s disaster

The Brooklyn Paper, Editorial

We always knew that the Atlantic Yards project would afford The Brooklyn Paper with many occasions over the next 30 years to say, “We told you so.”

We just didn’t expect to get them so soon.
...
There is no question that if Atlantic Yards had gone through ULURP [NYC's Uniform Land Use Review Procedure], many of the project’s worst excesses — its massive scale, its overly generous public subsidies, its use of eminent domain — would have been softened.

article

NoLandGrab: Atlantic Yards developer Bruce Ratner and his political backers obviously felt that ULURP would have stood in the way of Ratner's primary goals — clearly, receiving comprehensive, meaningful input from the community wasn't one of them.

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why all this jockeying? Why does the ESDC (while vigorously defending the project in court) throw up their hands and say that horse has left the barn? Because Politicians are probably keenly aware if built, Atlantic Yards will be a financial, aesthetic and possibly terrorist disaster (the WTC and the notorious Pruitt-Igoe Project all in one!) No one wants to be associated with it - and ground hasn't even broken yet. What does that tell you?

Recently the Intelligence community did the unprecedented -they went straight to the press and announced that Iran had given up nukes- presumably to avoid being blamed for another agenda driven war by Bush - and probably to avert another Neocon induced foreign policy disaster for America - I can imagine the same sort of sentiment is arising in the city and state agencies associated with this project - they will get all the blame - even Ratner will be able to point the finger at them while reaping all the benefits. Likewise, in the same way Bush and the neocons got what they wanted (war) and then said "whoops! well, we thought their were WMD", expect a lot of politicians to engage in this fake remorse.