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No-look pass
City Council Speaker Gifford Miller has been as helpful as he could be in trying to block the giveaway of the Hudson Yards to the Jets, but he has come out on the wrong side of the Atlantic Yards giveaway to the Nets.
While all of New York City is focused on the imminent release of the report detailing the reasons why Paris will get the 2012 Olympics (which should kill any state financing for the project), Miller used the weekend to sneak in his first public support for Ratner's Atlantic Yards project:
"[The Hudson Yards] project is going to cost the public up to a billion and a half dollars, which is going to build an 80,000-seat football stadium in an area without a mass transit support and no parking spaces, and that does really nothing in the end for the community," he said. "And on the other hand, [in Brooklyn] you have historic commitment to affordable housing, an open R.F.P., a mass transit support and money going through the public budget process."
All of these are reasons why the Nets project doesn't suck as much as the Jets scam, but that is a long way from it being the right deal for the neighborhood, Brooklyn or New York City. Miller doesn't explain how this RFP is going to be any less controlled than the sham bidding for the Hudson Yards. He doesn't explain what has changed that make the colossal towers (on which the value of the project hinges) a fit for the brownstone neighborhood in which they will be built. He doesn't explain why we need to pay for an arena if all of the value in Ratner's project is from the commercial/residential building.
No joke for this one. I'm disappointed in Miller. He probably thinks he is making a play to raise his profile outside of Manhattan for his mayoral campaign. I hope that Brooklyn makes him pay for it politically.
Posted by Charles Star on 06/06/2005 | Permalink
Comments
ho hum.
your bellyaching about the Jets stadium still sounds exactly like the bally hoo that erupted over the two "colossal towers" NYC built in the 1970s- and everyone who protested their supposed begative effect on the city were dead wrong.
Posted by: hornsofthedevil | Jun 6, 2005 1:55:32 AM
They were? How is something like the utility or aethetic desirability of the WTC towers "proven?" One guesses that you don't live in a neighborhood that would be affected my this monstrous nightmare of architecture and civic planning. I live in Brooklyn precisely because it's all those things than Manhattan isn't -- human-scale, affordable, urban but not insanely dense, not full of rich jerks. I'm not really in favor of publicly-financed (even indirectly) stadiums anywhere, but why ruin a perfectly good neighborhood when there are plenty of dead strip malls emptied by Wal-Mart all around the country?
Posted by: Jason Grote | Jun 6, 2005 3:26:32 PM
i live in Manhattan.
a world class stadium would work out just fine. i'm not blinded by the lustre of pointless progress either - i don't support the arena in Brooklyn and i DON'T support the 2nd Avenue subway proposal either.
but i think the Jets stadium WOULD have been a spectacular step forward for the city.
and i hate those rich jerks in Manhattan too - but carnfarnitt i'm NOT leaving for Brooklyn. they can put matches under my fingernails but i won't settle for less. i live oin monster island where everyday someone os breathing fire.
shit, my parents worked hard to get out of Queens, i'm not moving to Brooklyn. i'd be embarassed.
Posted by: hornsofthedevil | Jun 6, 2005 10:28:15 PM
hornsofthedevil, you are a first-class, grade-A SCHMUCK. Brooklyn doesn't want you anyway.
Posted by: Squinchy | Jun 8, 2005 12:59:29 PM
