A real win, as he indicates later in his comments, would have been if the mainstream press had been willing to dig. Or even be honest. 

Consider what was probably the biggest coup by Goldstein and Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn, an episode that occurred in September-October 2005, just as I started my predecessor blog.  

Here’s how I tell the story:

The main Atlantic Yards opposition group, Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn, had scored a coup. They’d discovered an Internal Revenue Service filing by BUILD (Brooklyn United for Innovative Local Development), a job training group that was a huge Atlantic Yards cheerleader.

BUILD was set up to negotiate a Community Benefits Agreement (CBA) with Forest City to guarantee local hiring, job training, affordable housing, and minority contracting, among other things. However, the IRS document suggested that the fledgling BUILD was being paid $5 million to be Forest City’s front.

Develop Don’t Destroy fed the document to Daily News columnist Gonzalez. In his Sept. 29, 2005 column, Snake in the grassroots, Gonzalez contrasted the findings with BUILD’s claims of independence; representatives of both BUILD and Forest City insisted the group was not being paid. Later that day, at a contentious press conference captured in the Atlantic Yards documentary film Battle for Brooklyn, BUILD representatives said the filing was a mistake. A viewer might be left confused.

Several news outlets quickly covered the contretemps, but not the Times. More than two weeks later, the BUILD episode had been tucked into a front-page thumbsucker that lauded Forest City Ratner for its strategies. The headline, To Build Arena in Brooklyn, Developer First Builds Bridges, pointed to the conclusion:
But from whatever viewpoint, the project’s seemingly inexorable movement suggests that Mr. Ratner is creating a new and finely detailed modern blueprint for how to nourish – and then harvest – public and community backing for a hugely ambitious development… in the middle of a populous, cantankerous and often sharply divided city.

It was a remarkable swing from “snake in the grassroots” to “modern blueprint.” (Also, it was silly to term a city “populous.”) But the “modern blueprint” was incompatible with a scoop downplayed in the Times’s coverage: BUILD and Forest City had been caught lying.

Both parties had told Gonzalez that Forest City wasn’t paying BUILD, and BUILD officials spoke similarly to reporter Nicholas Confessore. In mid-October, however, Forest City’s flack, Joe DePlasco, and a new spokeswoman for BUILD “revised that account,” in the Times’s delicate parlance. Forest City had given $100,000 to the group in August and provided free office space.

It wasn’t $5 million, but it should have demolished the article’s thesis. Instead, DePlasco–whom I later called a “dark genius” for his manipulative skills–got the last word, piously claiming that support for nonprofits was “at the foundation” of Forest City’s work.The “modern blueprint” has been further demolished… again and again:–the failure to hire an Independent Compliance Monitor–the evasions about same–the lawsuit filed against BUILD–even Mayor Bloomberg’s belated denunciations of CBA.Too few bother to follow up.

First, in my view Jane Jacobs is an original, and the best known urban development activist perhaps in world history, and can’t be duplicated. Having said that, the “eloquence” of the Atlantic Yards opposition and its critique and analyses of cost and alternatives were powerful over the 7 year long fight against Atlantic Yards–heck, we actually found a legitimate developer to propose the community’s plan (a modification of what would later be called the UNITY Plan) and outbid Ratner to gain control of the MTA/LIRR rail yards without needlessly using eminent domain, while building with a density appropriate for the location. I would argue that that episode, if not unique in urban development fights, was very rare and dependent on the smarts, arguments and eloquence of the advocates. Neither Jane’s articulate advocacy nor ours would have changed the fact that the bidding process for the Vanderbilt Yards was a sham process and that the MTA Board would make its decision solely based on whatever Bloomberg and Pataki told them to do. Thus they awarded the rail yards to the lower bidder with the less feasible plan. 

Nothing spoke more eloquently about the dirty nature of the Atlantic Yards deal than that part of the saga; nothing so starkly illustrated the fixed nature of the deal and the fundamental corruption that allowed it to go forward.

The differences between this era, and this fight, and Jacobs’ are too many to enumerate, and differences in the media climate are vast, as Ms. Lange argues. While Robert Moses was extremely formidable, Ms. Jacobs didn’t have to deal with the kind of intense, private developer PR and backroom lobbying that we did (it’s fool’s errand to gauge which was more formidable, the point is the nature of each had their unique challenges.) Add the fact that Mayor Bloomberg has been, perhaps, the most powerful powerbroker the city has seen, and we were up against a more formidable opponent with a much more compromised—also prostrate and stenographic—press, cowed by the power of the Ratners and Bloombergs.

We could have been wordsmiths greater than Shakespeare (or Jacobs) and that wouldn’t have changed the outcome. Alas, discussions about PILOTS, the takings clause, ULURP, SEQRA, FAR, mitigation, jobs per subsidy dollar, AMI, etc will always be informative and can be eloquent, but they will never be as “seductive” (to some) as a curvaceous Gehry rendering with beguiling names such as Miss Brooklyn. (Btw, the architectural critique of the project, while relevant, was not the one that would win the day). But so what? Do the press and public really always need to be seduced by the shiniest bauble?

The real fight was in the streets, in the press and in the courts. I’d argue we won the street fight and the press fights. Is there a person out there who has paid even the slightest attention who doesn’t realize that AY was hugely controversial, and is there anyone who honestly thinks that the outcome has been or will be a success (besides those who can’t see past the understandable excitement of pro sports in Brooklyn?). We also laid the legal and public relations groundwork to win in court. I will go to my grave knowing that we were right on the merits in our eminent domain case, but faced courts lacking in courage and thoroughness. I’d recommend reading some of the legal briefs if you’re looking for eloquence. 

Had established civic, good government and architectural institutions (I’m looking at you MAS, RPA, Citizens Union) paid morerecognition and respect to the leaders of the AY opposition, our megaphone would surely have become even louder. But the power politics apparently were too hairy, and Ratner philanthropy and reach to octopus-like. 

Ms. Lange, understandably, may have missed the scores events—public meetings, rallies, street tabling, leafleting, political club meetings, community board meetings, walkathons, public hearings, oversight hearings, etc.—and white papers, economic analyses, primers and alternative analyses that the eloquent opposition participated in writing and disseminating. While there was plenty of fodder for the mostly vapid, pie-throwing blogs, the substance of the fight happened off of the internet (the exceptions being the invaluable and heroic Atlantic Yards Report by Norman Oder and No Land Grab). 

Is there good activist criticism of design and architecture? I think there is. And eloquent critiques by anti-Atlantic Yards advocates are not hard to come by. 

But NYC’s mainstream press isn’t ready to make a Jacobsian celebrity and hero out of principled activist leaders fighting faulty and corrupt development plans. Quite to the contrary they seem to be giddily eager to vilify them.

Believe me, our biggest struggles in the uphill effort to stop Atlantic Yards and advocate for a project that made financial and planning sense was not due to any lack of eloquence.

The Times published one op-ed about the project–the tone was “pox on both houses*–before the project was approved in 2006. That was in the City section. The first op-ed in the paper at large appeared *after* the project had passed.

It was a longshot, but the only way to stop this project was the courts. And the courts pretty much punted (until the last case, which has been mostly ignored by the press, when they smacked down the Empire State Development Corporation regarding the environmental review for Phase 2). And the press pretty much ignored those earlier cases too, despite some significant eloquence in court.

Failure of eloquence? Maybe, but a lot of other larger failures, including democratic process, press coverage, honesty from government agencies, and developer candor.

Norman Oder
Atlantic Yards Report