In 2003 the city and state of New York partnered with a real
estate tycoon named Bruce Ratner and began work on a massive
redevelopment scheme known as the Atlantic Yards. The idea was to
transform a 22-acre spot near downtown Brooklyn into what Ratner
called an “urban utopia,” replete with a luxury hotel, multiple
high-rise office and apartment towers, and a shiny new sports arena
for the NBA Nets, then partially owned by Ratner, to play ball.
The only problem was that more than half of the proposed site
happened to be privately owned and occupied, and many of those
owners and occupants had zero interest in selling their homes and
businesses. So New York turned up the heat and invoked its power of
eminent domain. If the holdouts still refused to get with the
program, in other words, they’d be evicted and the bulldozers would
follow.
Because it never looks good when the government forcibly seizes
private property for the benefit of a rich developer, a few public
relations sweeteners were also added to the deal, such as promises
to build “affordable housing” and other “community benefits.” In
2009, New York’s highest court upheld the land grab, even though,
as the
court itself admitted, Atlantic Yards was most likely the
product of a rigged system characterized by “political appointees
to public corporations relying upon studies paid for by
developers.” One year later the new arena, now known as the
Barclay’s Center, opened its doors to ticket buyers.
The promised “community benefits,” on the other hand, have
failed to appear—with one exception. As Andrew Keh
reports in The New York Times, the Barclay’s Center
recently introduced something called the meditation room, “a
locked, windowless, cinder-block room tucked near the arena’s first
aid office and a sushi stand.” What’s it doing there? As Keh
explains, “the meditation room counts essentially as an asterisk in
the long list of promises that Forest City Ratner, the project’s
developer, made to the borough.” That pathetic asterisk represents
the sum total of the “community benefits” delivered by Ratner and
his government allies.
Is it time to say “we told you so” about this eminent domain
swindle? Yes,
it is. In fact, back in October 2009, Daniel Goldstein, the
lead plaintiff in the legal challenge against the Atlantic Yards,
basically
predicted the outcome. Let’s give Goldstein the last word:
When eminent domain is used in service of building a school, a
railway, or a hospital, we know what we’ll get. But when “economic
development” is the justification, we have no idea what we’ll get
except for false hopes, false dreams, and happy talk, along with a
land grab windfall for the developer and theft of homes.
In the case of Atlantic Yards the so-called “benefits” are
illusory at best. No attempt has been made by the condemning
authority or the lower court to weigh the public versus private
benefits; meaning there has been no cost-benefit analysis of the
project and no analysis of the developer’s benefit. But it doesn’t
take a degree to see who gets the very short end of the stick.
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