Communities: A New Dynamic

Brooklyn, known for its tree-lined streets and historic row houses, is becoming a more popular venue for large-scale development. One of the most controversial new projects is developer Forest City Ratner’s Atlantic Yards. The project - if built as proposed - will consist of 7,300 apartments, several office buildings, over a dozen skyscrapers, retail shops, open space, and the New Jersey Nets’ basketball arena. Forest City Ratner, the Brooklyn-based subsidiary of Cleveland’s Forest City Enterprises, has directed several large-scale New York City developments, including the New York Times’ new Manhattan headquarters and the MetroTech office complex in Downtown Brooklyn. Because of Atlantic Yards’ massive scale and the proposed use of eminent domain to take hundreds of homes and businesses, the project has generated intense debate.

Communities in Brooklyn have frequently divided over new development. IKEA’s entrance into the rebounding industrial neighborhood of Red Hook pitted African-American and Latino public housing residents, who favored the jobs that a new IKEA might bring, against middle-class whites concerned about traffic and aesthetic changes. The current controversy over Atlantic Yards is several magnitudes greater. Atlantic Yards would form several superblocks that occupy over 22 acres in Prospect Heights, a downtown Brooklyn neighborhood of historic brownstones and row houses north of Prospect Park. The project would stretch for half a mile along Prospect Heights’ major semi-industrial thoroughfare, Atlantic Avenue, and would cover the state-owned Vanderbilt rail yards. The current proposal would require the razing of at least three blocks of low-rise brownstones, stores, and warehouses. 

Because of the many delicate issues involved - scale, density, traffic, the sale of public land, inclusionary housing, and gentrification - the community has split over support for Atlantic Yards in unusual coalitions. The far-right Manhattan Institute, generally expected to toe the developer’s line, has come out vociferously against the project’s proposed use of eminent domain and state subsidies. In turn, progressive groups often seen as anti-development have supported the project because of its inclusion of affordable housing and its commitment to hire minorities during the construction process. A closer look at the Atlantic Yards debate sheds light on the complex, changing politics of development in New York.

A Pact With the Community or a P.R. Whitewash?

One of the most controversial components of Atlantic Yards is the Community Benefits Agreement (CBA), signed by Forest City Ratner and eight community groups. While Mayor Bloomberg witnessed the CBA, the government is not an official party to the document. The CBA commits the developer to make 30 percent of the 7,300 housing units affordable to low- and moderate-income families, to hire 20 percent minority-owned construction firms, and to bring local residents, people of color, and women into the skilled and unskilled construction jobs in the project. The signatory groups and politicians have hailed the CBA as a historic commitment to affordable housing and local hiring.

The inclusionary housing component of the CBA alleviates the concerns of advocates for affordable housing. “There are a wide array of significant benefits that will advance building an economically diverse, cohesive community,” said Jonathan Rosen, a spokesperson for ACORN New York, a liberal advocacy group for housing and poverty issues. Rosen hailed the CBA as a “historic commitment to affordable housing.” The minority hiring component of the CBA has sold many others on the project - even Rev. Al Sharpton, a frequent opponent of City Hall - to come out in support of the project.

But not everyone is happy with the plan. Some organizations originally included in negotiations refused to sign the final CBA. The African-American Baptist Brown Memorial Church, just five blocks away from the proposed site, is one of those groups. Its pastor, Rev. Clinton Miller, supports large-scale development and affordable housing at Atlantic Yards, but he became frustrated by the lack of mechanisms to enforce the developer’s promises during negotiations. “We always felt that if we went in and made a quick bargain, there was the risk that the developer would modify the contents of the initial deal farther down the road,” he said.

Moreover, many local groups question the legitimacy of the CBA. Of the eight groups signing the CBA, six were formed by supporters of Atlantic Yards in direct response to the project. One of the most controversial, Brooklyn United for Innovative Local Development (BUILD), is composed largely of African Americans from economically impoverished areas like Bedford-Stuyvesant or Fort Greene who ostensibly look to the project for economic opportunity. Critics note that while BUILD is charged with implementing the workforce development aspect of the CBA, the organization has no experience operating such a program. Spokesperson Marie Louis responds that her senior staff has years of experience in workforce development. Also questionable, Forest City Ratner admits it gave at least $38,000 to BUILD to distribute promotional material supporting Atlantic Yards. Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn - an organization formed in opposition to the Atlantic Yards proposal - unearthed tax documents that indicate BUILD received $5 million from Forest City Ratner. Spokespeople for BUILD had previously claimed this was an error reflecting money they expected in the future to implement the CBA and have said any money received so far was dedicated to that purpose.

Criticizing BUILD and many of the other signatories, Daniel Goldstein, a spokesperson for Develop Don’t Destroy, says that “some of them are really shell organizations that don’t really represent anyone living close to the project. If you’re doing a genuine [CBA], then you have to work with the actual community when seeking the support for the project.” Tom Angotti, an urban planning professor at Hunter College who has advised local community-based organizations in the review process, adds, “In this case, the [CBA] is being used just opposite from the way it was intended. In Atlantic Yards you had a few groups ready to sign on the dotted line before there was a full public debate and discussion within the community.” State Assemblyman Roger Green, in an interview, acknowledged that the groups signing the Atlantic Yards CBA represent only part of the community. Perhaps sensing an electoral challenge in 2006 from the politically savvy opponents of the project, he has surprisingly called for the negotiation of an additional, broader, “neighborhood benefits agreement” to address impacts on quality-of-life, traffic, and municipal services. Forest City Ratner has met with a few neighborhood groups outside of the CBA to discuss such an agreement. As of late spring, the company has not yet engaged the Council of Brooklyn Neighborhoods, a coalition of 42 diverse, well established organizations - both for and against the project - that were excluded from the CBA. This group has provided a forum for local residents to voice their passionate concerns about how Atlantic Yards will impact schools, public safety, traffic, and other issues not addressed by the CBA; at a recent hearing, 600 community members turned out.

The signatory groups have defended the CBA and their involvement in the project. The local chapter of ACORN backed Atlantic Yards primarily because of the CBA’s provisions to include affordable housing in the development. ACORN, through a spokesperson, defends the process by which the CBA was negotiated as fair. Forest City Ratner said that “the door was open to all groups to sit down and negotiate a fair and reasonable agreement that ultimately would benefit the community.” In contrast, Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn’s Goldstein calls the CBA process a “sweetheart, back-room deal that bypasses the democratic public approval process.”

Opponents have critiqued other aspects of the project besides the CBA. Local progressive opponents of Atlantic Yards object to the scale of the development, the potential abuse of eminent domain, and the impacts the project could have on the surrounding community. Goldstein contends that while “every New Yorker wants jobs and housing, and people in Brooklyn may want the Nets here,” the current plan “overwhelms neighborhoods, and displaces neighbors by abusing eminent domain.”

Critics also point out that Atlantic Yards has bypassed the city’s land use review process (see sidebar). In doing so, it has limited the influence of political critics. In favor of the project are Governor George Pataki, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Borough President Marty Markowitz, and the local State Assemblyman Roger Green. Opposed are local State Senator Velmanette Montgomery and City Councilmember Letitia James. Because of the unusual state control of the project, the New York City Council has almost no oversight of the project. The State Senate is Republican-controlled, leaving the Democratic Senator Montgomery without much sway over the project. The result is that only those elected officials already in support of Atlantic Yards - Pataki and Green - have oversight powers.

Forest City Ratner seems to have cultivated minority and progressive support in order to give political cover for the bypassing of the standard planning review. Hunter College’s Angotti notes that the Atlantic Yards process resembles the large-scale post-World War II federal urban renewal programs. Such programs, along with the defeat of the Lower Manhattan Expressway in the late-1960s, propelled activists to lobby for the successful creation of local community boards with an official role in the land use review process. Approval of Atlantic Yards without meaningful community input could signal a renewed era of large-scale public-private partnership projects planned and built without local consensus.

“It’s Race And Class”… Or Is It?

What does the sharp split of opinion represent? Is it a one-time event based on political vagaries, or does it reflect a more permanent shift in the development debate in New York?

Most of the politicians and groups on both sides of the debate would be happy to call themselves progressive or liberal. But because of political pressures and structural changes within the progressive coalition, these groups find themselves on opposite ends of an increasingly strident debate.

Support for Atlantic Yards is not divided along strict racial lines, but proponents have no hesitation about using race or class as a way to distinguish themselves from opponents. The most vocal supporters are largely African Americans who emphasize opportunities for economic advancement and affordable housing. Despite the fact that there are many African Americans opposed to the project, including Councilmember James and State Senator Montgomery, project supporters cultivate an image of speaking exclusively for low-income Brooklynites of color. ACORN, one of the groups supporting the project, splits strikingly with these politicians. “Let me call it as it is - it’s race and class - that’s exactly what’s going on here,” said ACORN New York’s Bertha Lewis in a June public radio interview. She asks how project opponents can claim to represent “black and brown people when the majority of folks who stand with you and march with you are all white and don’t have a problem with the jobs, don’t have a problem with housing at all?”

Gentrification of Brooklyn has been so rapid that those left behind seek any intervention that promises economic relief. The hope of lower-income groups to remain in New York City rests on large-scale public-private interventions, such as the plans for the Far West Side of Manhattan or the Greenpoint-Williamsburg waterfront. The state or city can provide seed funding, development subsidies, and oftentimes eminent domain, while developers arrange the financing and execution of the projects. Progressive groups may find themselves compelled to support upscale projects if they feel that developers will provide certain public goods - like affordable housing - more effectively than government. But as Rev. Miller laments, “Government is pushing privatization of the things it has traditionally been responsible for. How can developers be responsible for some of these things when their only concern is the bottom line?”

Regardless of such concerns, progressives like ACORN and Assemblyman Green will increasingly join the coalition of politicians, planners, construction unions, and developers to promote large-scale luxury development - despite evidence that this development may lead to higher rents, the destruction of local rent-stabilized housing, and the displacement of blue-collar jobs. Atlantic Yards may have a softer economic blow on the surrounding neighborhood than other developments: “The project per se won’t be displacing the long-term residents of the area,” observes Mafruza Khan, Associate Director of the Pratt Center for Community Development. Khan explains that “demographic shifts have already occurred” in Prospect Heights: since 1980, more affluent whites have moved into what was a predominantly working-class African-American community. If approved as planned, the biggest impact of Atlantic Yards will be to radically change the scale of development considered appropriate in Brooklyn.

A Question Of Precedent

Because of the wide scope and high profile of Atlantic Yards, the project is sure to be a defining moment in New York City development politics. If successful, Forest City Ratner will have generated a road map for future developers: get a group of powerful elected officials on your side, choose a group of disempowered, but vocal, supporters in the community, and make an unenforceable promise to provide a few goods that the public sector has failed to deliver, such as community facilities or affordable housing. Because the public review process for Atlantic Yards is so limited and vague, a handful of organizations have negotiated on behalf of the community as a whole. Yet the entire community must bear the impacts on public services and infrastructure of such a large-scale project.

The successful employment of such strategies is not limited to New York or Forest City Ratner. In 2004, Wal-Mart tried to build grassroots support in Chicago among lower-income residents for bringing low prices and jobs to the city. “Wal-Mart did a lot of advance research, and one of the things they discovered is the historical tension between the black community and labor leaders in Chicago,” said James Thindwa, Executive Director of Chicago Jobs With Justice. Wal-Mart “used a broad brush to tar the labor movement as racist, even though most of the black community’s grievance is directed toward one segment of the labor movement - the building trades.” The local African-American community was divided on the issue. According to Thindwa, some “leaders bought into the false choice presented by Wal-Mart: it’s a low-paying job, or no job at all.” This despite the fact that Wal-Mart needs the urban market to maintain its national dominance and will have to conform to the labor standards imposed on it. Ultimately, Wal-Mart curried enough community favor to secure approval for one of two proposed stores.

Atlantic Yards is in flux as this piece goes to press. The Draft Environmental Impact Statement is expected to be released in mid-2006, and modifications to the site plan are rumored to be in the works. Ultimately, who gets to represent “the community” in a development fight is a political question. Can Forest City Ratner obtain political approval with a partial, but vocal, segment of the community on its side? This may hinge on whether opponents can cultivate allies in the State Capitol, where they are making steady, but limited headway. Whatever happens, it is sure to be controversial and the outcome will affect the development debate in the city for decades.

Angotti, Tom. “Atlantic Yards: Through the Looking Glass.” Gotham Gazette 15 Nov. 2005. Online at www.gothamgazette.com

Brooklyn United for Local Development: www.buildbrooklyn.org

Curbed: www.curbed.com

Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn: www.developdontdestroy.com

Forest City Ratner: www.fcrc.com

onNYTurf: www.onnyturf.com

The Pratt Center for Community Development: www.prattcenter.net