Why Is Spitzer's "New" ESDC Allowing an Old Boondoggle?

Elliot Spitzer ran on reform. He promised change. To that end, he appointed a new ESDC chairman and promised that the ESDC would not become a tool for political patronage as it so obviously was under the charming (if you find sleeze charming) but corrupt "Charles" Gargano.

So why is the "new" ESDC supporting biggest boondoggle from the Pataki era - Ratner's Atlantic Yards? Foye and Spitzer have had numerous opportunities to put the breaks on step back and review this project (instead they have chosen to spend ESDC resources to DEFEND Ratner's project in court). Neither have indicated any interest in doing so. Why?

Do they believe this project is all above board? If so then they are far more incompetent than I had imagined. Unless they have been utterly lied to by Ratner's people (a likely prospect) they have to know about the issues of size, density and the enormous public outlays with no public benefit.

That leads us to speculation #2 - they know its a boondoggle but support it anyway for yet unknown reasons...if that's the case than we know Spizter's 'reform' speech was empty rhetoric and the "new" ESDC is business as usual for corporate welfare queens like Bruce Ratner.

Boondoggle Bruce's Atlantic Mall Loses "Tenant"

Tenant of course would imply a paying customer who rented space for practical reasons...as the latest post at Atlantic Yards Report informs us, the ESDC was nothing of the kind:

Was it favoritism?

Was the mall site chosen out of favoritism, as some critics of the relationship between Forest City Ratner and the ESDC—which has since approved the developer’s Atlantic Yards plan across Atlantic Avenue from the mall—have charged?

That motivation can’t be proven, but it’s clear that the third-floor space should never have been under consideration by the ESDC, since it did not meet the guidelines announced in a 6/14/02 press release about the CNOs.

In the press release, state officials pledged, “Each office will operate from a street-level, retail storefront in a high traffic area of the neighborhood commercial district.” The third-floor site in the Atlantic Center mall—chosen more than a year later--is neither a street-level storefront nor situated in a high traffic area of the mall.

Why was the site selected? ESDC spokesman A.J. Carter, who joined the agency with the administration of new Gov. Eliot Spitzer, said, “That was a decision made by the previous administration.”

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I wonder, when the luxury condo market collapses will ESDC employees be required to live in Bruce's project?

In any event, it like Pataki has left quite a mess to clean up Oder further reports:

A 3/25/07 Bergen Record article broke the news that the Port Authority had spent nearly $100 million since 2003 on projects ranging from cultural support to real estate development, straying far from its transportation mission. The money came from a fund controlled by Pataki and administered by Gargano, who had been Pataki’s chief fundraiser and was appointed vice chairman of the Port Authority as well as head of the ESDC.


Now that there's all this extra space at Atlantic Mall (which is, as clearly illustrated above, a hallmark of poor design, incompetence and stupidity)...maybe Bruce should concentrate on getting 'forward thinking' tenants to fill his previous two failed boondoggles before we fund the construction of (yet) another.

Oder soberly concludes:


Even though the mall has been redesigned, there's not much to do about the blank walls that occupy at least half its perimeter.
Urban planner Ron Shiffman (now on the Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn advisory board) has described the mall as the "only pre-existing blighting influence" in the area around the Atlantic Yards project. Architectural historian and critic Francis Morrone (also now on the DDDB board), writing in the New York Sun (ABROAD IN NEW YORK, 2/23/04), called it "the ugliest building in Brooklyn."

Now there's another space left to let.

Forest City Enron?

With every bubble, comes a burst. And with every burst, a symbol of the excesses is 'executed' in public court. In the 80s, after the collapses of Drexel Burham, it was Michael Miliken** . More recently, Enron and Martha Stewart. The Real Estate market is a long way from bursting, and its assets are a little more solid than empty promises of future earnings, but all the excesses that come with a 'hot' market are certainly here - the desire for money is so insatiable that laws are overlooked or sometimes, broken.

As NoLandGrab reports, there's what's now being called a 'Federal Conspiracy Probe' up in Yonkers, and Forest City Ratner still piously claiming, amid a hailstorm of subpoenas to various council members that they're as honest as a Quaker. It seems odd doesn't it, that all of these politicians are being subpoenaed, the sole beneficiary is Forest City, yet Forest City coos 'Gosh, who, us?!, impropriety?!'.

The odd thing about these big, out of scale, voraciously greedy projects that Forest City has advocated is that they violate the most basic common sense urban planning principles, zoning laws that we made in reaction to such schemes and their effect - both physical and psychological - on the community, and Forest City seemingly glides through the law and processes meant to check bad development with ease. Yet the thought that 'some thing's a little funny here' hasn't occurred to anyone in the mainstream press . Why? I can speculate; Ratner's an insider of the New York establishment, and while they're happy to string up some hicks from Texas, they have a different standard for their own.

Gargano's being investigated, Forest City's very bad project is being investigated, yet Mike Bloomberg, perhaps unaware of the dirty subways, over crowded schools, increasing pollution, crumbling infrastructure, is tossing 200 million to a billionaire developer so that he can buy land that he's already getting at 100 million below it's value. Elliot Ness, where are you?


(**I remember, when I worked in an investment house shortly after graduation - -post Miliken, post boom, a sales assistant reminding me that Miliken's sales assitant spent more time in jail than Miliken. Similarly, during the John Gottfriend bond scandal at Solomon Brothers, the clerk who executed the orders was unceremoniously fired on the spot, while Gottfriend walked away with 100 million for his trouble. So are the ways of Wall Street.)

Who's Watching the Watchers?

We've already seen the results of the ESDC and Forest City hiring 'experts' to analyze environmental impact or assess historical significance of buildings. In what can only be described as a remarkable coincidence, they have a near 100% track record of coming to conclusions favorable for the Developer. Now the ESDC and Forest City are hiring monitors to oversee compliance of the project: From Atlantic Yards Report:

"In-house discretion
Unmentioned in the press release is that FCR would fund the ICM, according to the CBA, with "an annual payment of up to $100,000 to be paid by the Project Developer"

So the sham continues. Forest City has a track record of tying their 'contributions' to charities into specific actions by those charities (which means they aren't contributions at all but bribes). If Forest City & Ratner corrupt the virtue of charity, can we seriously imagine that someone collecting a check from Forest City for actual work to objectively oversee this project? Or will it become a physical manifestation of the FEIS - within the letter of the law(barely), but mocking and insulting the spirit of the law.