This last weekend was the 5th DDDB Walkathon to raise money for the legal challenges against Bruce Ratner's Atlantic Yards scheme. Joy and I have participated in the walkathon each year...and we have taken Jacob along each time, so this has been almost a birthday event for Jacob for each of the 5 years he has been alive.

DDDB, contrary to the lies told by the likes of Marty Markowitz and Bruce Ratner's other cronies, is not an anti-development group. They support community involvement in the development process, oppose the misuse of eminent domain to seize properties for the profit of private developers, and they believe that the other plans for developing the Atlantic Yards area (e.g. the Unity Plan) are better than Ratner's and feel they should get due consideration. Keep in mind that Ratner was the LOW BIDDER for the project but got it anyway, probably because he happened to be a friend of Pataki's and has been generous with political donations.  read more »

I want to do two quick updates on Jo Anne Simon's campaign for the 33rd City Council race. One is another big endorsement, the other is yet another counter to some accusations made about Jo Anne and Atlantic Yards by campaigns that prefer negative campaigning.

First the new endorsement: NYC Veterans for Progressive Change have endorsed Jo Anne Simon for City Council. Here is their endorsement:

City Council, District 33 – There is no incumbent in this race. Out of the
possible 7 strong candidates we looked at, we believe that having worked with
Jo Anne Simon, a nationally prominent A.D.A. lawyer and democratic district
leader on veterans’ issues in the past; she will be an excellent supporter of
veterans’ issues and will take up our issues at City Hall. We believe that she will bring her advocacy talents and political know how to produce results for both
veterans and the district. Ms. Simon is endorsed by the New York Times. We
highly recommend Jo Anne Simon.

Now the other clarification regarding endorsements in the 33rd race. Three of the other candidates in the race have as their main strategy negative campaigning against Jo Anne Simon. Among their attacks have been trying to portray her as pro-Ratner. This is very much not the case. I want to emphsize that Jo Anne Simon is THE candidate endorsed by many of the core anti-Ratner activists. I have highlighted some of them in the past, but let me give a more comprehensive list (with a reminder of some I have forgotten before thanks to the Simon campaign).

Jo Anne Simon has been endorsed by:

Central Brooklyn Independent Democrats
Councilwoman Tish James
State Senator Velmanette Montgomery
State Senator Eric Adams
Candace Carpenter (head of the DDDB legal team fighting Ratner)
Isabel Hill (film maker who made Brooklyn Matters, an award winning documentary about the fight against Ratner)

All of these have been champions in the fight against Ratner and they have ALL endorsed Jo Anne Simon. Believe me that Tish James, CBID, the head of the DDDB legal team and the maker of Brooklyn Matters would NOT endorse a pro-Ratner candidate! So don't believe misleading negative campaigning. A vote for Jo Anne Simon is a vote against not just the Vito Lopez machine but a vote against Bruce Ratner.

Got this from DDDB:

BROOKLYN, NY (August 4, 2009) — Raising substantial questions about bias and corruption in decision-making by the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC), Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn, and 25 community group co-petitioners, filed a brief with New York's highest court. The co-petitioners are asking the New York State Court of Appeals to hear their appeal on an adverse ruling on their case challenging the ESDC's Environmental Impact Statement and Blight Study for Forest City Ratner's Atlantic Yards development proposal.

A key issue in the case is the ESDC's designation of Ratner's handpicked development site as "blighted." The "blight" determination made by the ESDC in 2006 is required to proceed with a Land Use Improvement Project under which most of the Atlantic Yards development proposal is designated.  read more »

Back when David Yassky ran for Congress, he was seen as primarily a supporter of Bruce Ratner, though with more reservations than Ratner supporter Yvette Clarke. My wife took particular notice of how he would always begin any discussing on development in general and Atlantic Yards in particular with the assumption that developers would get their way and that it was up to government to get as much as they could out of developers in return. This was a defeatist view but was a consistent message from David Yassky.  read more »

I'm having a bout of insomnia, so here I am, checking the New York Times in the hope I'll fall asleep from simple boredom. But no, there's news.

Citing financial concerns, the developer of the long-delayed Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn has scrapped plans for a Frank Gehry-designed $1 billion glass-walled basketball arena for the Nets in favor of a less expensive arena.

The new design, which will cost about $200 million less, comes from Ellerbe Becket, an architectural firm based in Kansas City, Mo., that specializes in convention centers, stadiums and arenas and designed Conseco Fieldhouse in Indianapolis, where the Indiana Pacers play. Officials who have seen the design say that while it resembles Conseco Fieldhouse it also bears a likeness to an “airplane hangar.”

snip...

The developer is under pressure to get government approval for changes to the development’s master plan and to start the arena by December, before he loses the ability to use tax-exempt bonds. Mr. Ratner must also hold together a group of corporate advertisers at a time when companies are trying to shed those kind of financial obligations.

If the local opposition plays its cards right, and Bruce Ratner's project continues what is obviously a slow but accelerating disintegration, Atlantic Yards will be dead by January.