EARL LOUIS STUMPS ON FOR RATNER

Mr. Earl Louis seems to feel that the Brooklyn Atlantic Yards Project is open to any sort of instant fix if the right people would ask Bruce Ratner nicely, Mr. Ratner being the lord of all he surveys. According to his column n the NY Daily News,

“The model of how to do this was laid out by freshman Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries. After winning election last fall - even before he was sworn in - Jeffries began talking with Ratner and put an entirely new demand on the table: creation of 200 subsidized units that people would own, not rent.
Guess what? Ratner agreed. As a result, hundreds more people will own their own homes, in addition to the thousands who will rent apartments at the site.
All it took was a bit of nerve, sharp negotiating skills and a willingness to face the reality that change in Brooklyn is at hand.”
Whoever Mr. Louis is – given the large number of public roles he claims for himself – he is not much of a student of FCRC, Ratner, or the deal he is praising here. The idea that the housing configuration agreed upon for the Atlantic Yards is a contract, or that even that contract would benefit the area is folly. Ratner is building a hitech-slum which -- by the designer’s own proud admission -- will be the most densely populated space on earth. Take that, Hong Kong and Calcutta! What is more, there is no comprehensive plan in place to deal with the sewage it will add to the already overloaded storm drain system.
Mr. Louis and his paper have consistently painted Ratner’s AY Dystopia as good for Brooklyn, good for the people of Brooklyn and Good for the Universe with the same wide, mindless, sloppy brush. They consistently take the position that bigger is better as a matter of form which would suggest that there is no limit to the benefits of development. Never mind that the space is already likely to have trouble finding tenants other than state agencies as is now the case with the Atlantic Terminal. Development should encouraged absolutely and infinitely whatever the cost to the public. Mr. Louis’ column then is nonsense because he has failed utterly to see who will foot the bill for this behemoth, or more likely, he and his paper do not want to do so.
Mr. Louis goes on to say that the resistance to the AY Dystopia and the Barclays Dome is a small, fading band of resisters who have not heeded the words of those better and wiser than them. They would be DDDB and the people of Brooklyn who are not gulled into thinking they will ever stop paying for Ratner’s concrete monster. To Mr. Louis they are on a fool’s errand.
To be a fool, one must disregard the obvious facts in favor of a fantasy you prefer might happen but never will. In this case, that role is not so clearly assigned. Mr. Louis would like to believe that eminent domain in the instance of the AY Dystopia is the same thing as building Lincoln Center. If so, then Mr. Louis should be prepared for an endless public subsidy that is never likely to properly cover the costs of running Mr. Ratner’s Megamess. That is the case with Lincoln Center and has been for forty-some years. Do we need another white elephant? Especially one that, unlike Lincoln Center, is being designed to be inaccessible to most of the populace.
Mr. Louis believes that the housing that will go on sale at AY will be at a price affordable to the average New Yorker, even those who live within miles of the planned structures in Brooklyn. If so, he needs to take a look at the real estate listings for new housing construction in his OWN newspaper. While the rest of the country continues to experience a slump in housing prices, NYC goes right on churning upward with no end in sight. Perhaps Mr. Louis needs to start reading the Business section of the Times.
Perhaps Mr. Louis’ worst error is his belief that only a tiny group of hold outs want the Ratner project reigned in and made to operate within the standard regulations for NYC/NYS development. Only a few citizens want it to pay its own way at least in part, and to be less of an unspeakable blight upon the existing community.
Mr. Louis must be the last man in NYC to believe that anyone who goes anywhere near downtown Brooklyn thinks that the current glut of immobile traffic needs to be increased at Atlantic and Flatbush. In that belief, he would be entirely and utterly alone.
In fact, it would seem to me that one of the few remaining people willing to blindly subscribe to Mr. Ratner’s folly, is Mr. Louis.