All the bells and whistles have been stripped from it — most notably “starchitect” Frank Gehry and his expressionist building and arena designs — but the cost of developer Bruce Ratner’s controversial Atlantic Yards project has ballooned by nearly a billion dollars, state officials said today.
The now-$4.9 billion plan re-introduced by the Empire State Development Corp. claims Ratner will deliver a project similar to the $4 billion plan approved in Dec. 2006 that called for an NBA arena and 16 residential and office towers.
But the new plan is filled with many holes. It anticipates a 2019 project completion date for the long-delayed project but leaves the door open to future delays.
There’s also no new renderings or models to address the project’s many recent changes, including the replacement of Gehry’s magnificent glass-and steel arena design to shave its costs from $950 million to $772 million.
Only a few renderings of the new arena design have surfaced. Renderings of the entire plan have yet to be produced.
Following today’s meeting, critics of the plan, many of who supported the original Atlantic Yards concept, questioned whether the 2,250 units of affordable housing Ratner promised to help win community support are now a pipe dream. Some even accused the state and Ratner of trying to dupe the public with a “bait and switch.”
“The sweeping promises of affordable housing made by the developer at the onset of this project have now evaporated to a mere whisper,” said Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries (D-Brooklyn), who supported the original project plan.
“At this point, it is not clear that the developer plans to build anything other than an arena and a few affordable apartment units, and that is simply unacceptable.”
The ESDC says the modifications are strictly financial and don’t require a new application process because key facets of the project remain unchanged, including the arena still calling for 18,000 seats and the project expected to create thousands of jobs.
But opponents say the plan is so dramatically different that the ESDC must start the state environmental review process from square one — a process that could delay the project by months if not years.
That could be its death knell as Ratner, who is scrambling to break ground on the arena by the end of the year to secure crucial tax-exempt financing, hopes to have his New Jersey Nets playing there for the 2011-2012 season.
ESDC Senior Counsel Steve Matlin told the corporation’s board that the project “can’t move forward without these changes” and, that based on the economic downturn, Atlantic Yards “is probably even more important to the city and state now than when it was approved in 2006.”
Ratner has already convinced the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to cut him a break.
The cash-strapped agency Wednesday is planning to help bail the project out by giving Ratner 22 years to pay off $100 million he owes the MTA and by letting him shave off more than $100 million of the $345 million in transit improvements he promised in exchange various state approvals.
As the Post reported online Sunday, the new plan divides the use of eminent domain to acquire private land still needed for the 22-acre project into two phases rather than one.
The state in phase one later this year would secure enough property for the arena and four towers. No set date for phase two is listed except that it’s sometime after 2011, which critics said raises questions about whether the developer plans to only build part of the project.
Ratner has said he plans to eventually deliver the entire project. The agency’s board is expected to rubber stamp the new plan within 60 days after soliciting additional public input.
Daniel Goldstein, spokesman for the anti-Atlantic Yards group Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn, warned that the ESDC and MTA could soon be facing lawsuits over the modified plan.
“The ESDC engaged itself in a charade today that the project it approved in 2006 would still be built. It won’t be,” said Goldstein, whose group has delayed the project through previous litigation.