Critics of Ratner Plan Say Oversight of Project Too Lax
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

These days the city’s biggest development projects are the ones that proceed through the most lax approval processes and receive the least amount of oversight, panelists involved in a discussion at the Municipal Art Society said yesterday.
The discussion focused on the Atlantic Yards project, developer Bruce Ratner’s $3.5 billion plan to build a basketball arena, more than a dozen commercial and residential towers, and a hotel in and around downtown Brooklyn.
Because the state maintains oversight of the project, as stipulated in a memorandum of understanding signed in February, it is not subject to the city’s Uniform Land Use Review Process. Under the more vigorous ULURP oversight procedure, community boards, the relevant borough president’s office, the City Planning Commission, the City Council, and the mayor review proposals. Some of the panelists said they see a worrying trend of circumventing the city’s land use procedures, which are designed to involve neighborhoods in development decisions.
“The evasion of ULURP looks like it’s becoming a habit,” the panel’s moderator, Tom Angotti, a professor of urban planning at Hunter College, said. “Everything is backwards. Two years ago, a developer comes up with a proposal. It is essentially adopted and approved by the governor, mayor, and borough president. Two years later, the scoping process is mapped out. The planning process is after the fact.”
The professor criticized the Empire State Development Corporation, the state agency overseeing Atlantic Yards and other city projects. “The state responds to developers’ initiatives,” he said. “When you have minimal goals, someone else sets your goals for you.”
The Atlantic Yards developer, Forest City Ratner, was invited to yesterday’s panel but did not attend. Supporters of the project, who include the governor and the mayor, say it will bring thousands of units of affordable housing and jobs to Brooklyn.
Mr. Angotti said that in addition to Atlantic Yards, several of the city’s major development projects have evaded the city’s oversight system. The plan to build a Jets Stadium over the Hudson Rail Yards on the far West Side would have circumvented ULURP because it would have been partially on state land. The plan was rejected by the Public Authorities Control Board, a panel controlled by Governor Pataki, the Senate majority leader, Joseph Bruno, a Republican of Brunswick, and the Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver, a Democrat of Manhattan. That board may ultimately vote on the Atlantic Yards project as early as next June, according to a timetable put forth by Forest City Ratner.
Architect Daniel Libeskind’s master plan for ground zero, including the freedom tower, does not need to proceed through the traditional ULURP process because the Port Authority, a bi-state entity, owns the site. Condominium towers slated for development in Brooklyn Bridge Park, also on state land, will also bypass ULURP.
Panelist Daniel Goldstein, who heads the most vocal opposition group to Atlantic Yards, Develop – Don’t Destroy, said that while only about 30% of the development’s footprint belongs to the state, the city is now locked out of the oversight process. Both the city and the state will contribute about $100 million to the Atlantic Yards development.
Mr. Goldstein faulted Mayor Bloomberg and the City Council speaker, Gifford Miller, for handing off the project to the state. “If the administration said to the state, ‘We want to maintain some oversight on this,’ they might have listened,” he said.
Mr. Goldstein said his group had discovered no legal grounds to try to force the project through ULURP. Without the more rigorous review of the ULURP, the projects’ opponents have limited avenues to exert influence. When the developer invokes eminent domain to condemn a property in the project’s footprint, Mr. Goldstein said opponents may challenge it in court. He said opponents may also legally challenge the state or the developer at different stages in the ongoing environmental review process.
Mr. Goldstein said opponents are hoping that proposed legislation will pass in Albany requiring projects that invoke eminent domain to go through a more thorough review process.