FACTS & MYTHS
Brooklyn United for Innovative Local Development (BUILD) and the
Community Benefits Agreement for the Atlantic Yards Development Project
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| Myth: BUILD members do not represent the community. |
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Fact: BUILD members reflect the ethnic, income and educational attainment demographics of the community. Furthermore, BUILD’s membership and leadership draws substantially from Prospect Heights, Crown Heights, Fort Greene and Clinton Hill. BUILD’s President, James E. Caldwell has resided in Prospect Heights for over 30 years; Mr Caldwell has served and continues to serve the community in a leadership capacity in numerous positions for over 10 years. Three of BUILD’s executive board members are appointed members of Community Board 8- each has been on the board for over 2 years. Local block and merchants association leaders, business leaders, professionals, homeowners, educators, parents and youth are among BUILD’s constituency.
The photos on our website illustrate the racial and ethnic diversity of our membership.
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| Myth: Forest City Ratner “hand picked” the groups negotiating the Community Benefits Agreement. |
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Fact: Brooklyn United for Innovative Local Development (BUILD) launched a movement to negotiate a Community Benefits Agreement with Forest City Ratner for the Atlantic Yards project. BUILD was the first group to present FCRC with a draft agreement on 4/28/2004. The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), The Downtown Brooklyn Advisory & Oversight Committee (DBAOC), NYCHA Tenant Association leaders, The Downtown Brooklyn Neighborhood Alliance (DBNA) and First Atlantic Terminal Housing Corporation (FATHC) have also advocated for the negotiation of a CBA. Consequently, the groups at the table negotiating the CBA are those who have constructively engaged the developer around negotiating a CBA. The only group who has advocated for a CBA not engaged in the negotiations, by their choice, is the Downtown Brooklyn Leadership Coalition (DBLC). The DBLC is a group of 5 ministers, 5 politicians and two community leaders who want to exclusively negotiate the CBA with Forest City Ratner Companies; the DBLC wants grassroots community groups like BUILD, ACORN, NYCHA Tenants Association and the DBNA excluded from the process of negotiating the CBA. |
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| Myth: BUILD is financially supported by Forest City Ratner. |
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Fact: Since its inception BUILD has been supported by its members and community based supporters. BUILD’s faith in God and strong ties to the community has sustained and perpetuates our operations and advancement of our mission. Space, computers, supplies and time has been donated to the organization by its members since its inception this year (1/2004). |
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| Myth: Negotiating a Community Benefits Agreement supplants the public review process. |
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Fact: The CBA negotiation process is in addition to public review. The negotiated CBA will be presented as a component of project during the public review process. BUILD is pro-public review of the project; our position is that the rule of law should prevail. As it currently stands, the state owns the majority of the public land targeted for this project, thus is logically follows that the state is responsible for the public review process for this project. |
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| Myth: ULURP process allows for maximum public oversight of the project. |
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Fact: The Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP) is not a mechanism for oversight. It is a city level public review process. Insinuating that ULURP is an oversight process is a semantic ploy to distort public understanding of the ULURP process. The opposition has adopted a strategy of promoting this city level review process instead of the state level public review process as a tactic to staff the implementation of the Atlantic Yards project. As it currently stands, the state owns the majority of the public land targeted for this project, thus by law the state is responsible for facilitating the public review process for the project. |
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| Myth: Leaders of Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn and the Prospect Heights Action Coalition assert that the “organic” development process that has been going on in the community over the past 20 years is a preferable development model. |
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Fact: The “organic” development process in play has accelerated the depletion of affordable housing in the community and is indifferent to those contending with high rates of unemployment, poverty, incarceration and a failing public education infrastructure. 55% of Black Men are unemployed. The Atlantic Yards Development Project with the Community Benefits Agreement creates a new paradigm for development. A model of development that fuels an economic renaissance in Brooklyn in a manner that connects Brooklynites to jobs, affordable housing, businessess opportunities. The Atlantic Yards Development Project in combination with the Community Benefits Agreement MUST happen to establish a model of development that promotes equitable access to opportunities for all. |
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| SCALE OF PROJECT |
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The bold vision of the Atlantic Yards project re-establishes Brooklyn as a vibrant world class economic center in a way that is unique to Brooklyn. As a whole the project creates six acres of open space that complements the project site’s proximity to Prospect Park, Grand Army Plaza, the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, tree-lined streets of residential housing and neighboring commercial strips as well as local parks; and Atlantic Avenue is redesigned to more resemble neighboring landmark, Eastern Parkway (the first 6 lane roadway in the world). |
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For too long Brooklyn has been synonymous with long term structural economic crisis; for years the unemployment and poverty rates exceed those of the city at large, while Brooklyn’s median household income, educational outcomes and educational attainment levels persistently lag behind the city– generally ranking fourth among the five boroughs. |
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Atlantic Yards represents long overdue movement in the direction of re-establishing Brooklyn as an economic center in a style that is uniquely Brooklyn and complementary of existing local architectural assets. Coupled with a legally binding Community Benefits Agreement, Atlantic Yards is responsive to the needs and challenges of the majority of long term residents in and around the project site as well as builds on the architectural and landscape assets of its target site. |
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A few critique the scale of this project, however, the huge scale of the project maximizes the amount of opportunities generated by the project for the community. It is rare for a single project to present such a varied range of economic opportunities- employment, education, business and housing. More commercial and retail space means more business and employment opportunities for local residents. Reducing the scale of the project means reducing opportunities for the community. |
| Use of public subsidies |
| The Community Benefits Agreement promotes the acquisition of substantive benefits from the project in exchange for public subsidies– tax payer dollars. We know that government alone has not been able to effect economic development strategies to provide the services, opportunities and supports needed by inner-city urban residents and communities contending with unemployment, compacted poverty and high rates of incarceration. Recently displacement resulting from gentrification has compounded the constellation of socio-economic threats to individuals from traditionally marginalized and by-passed constituencies. The CBA is an innovative market-driven approach to addressing longstanding systemic economic challenges facing communities at the local level. |
| Environmental Impact |
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BUILD supports the Task Force formed by the Borough President’s Office to engage community entities in the process of problem solving around environmental impact challenges such as traffic and safety with respect to Atlantic Yards.
As of 11/2004
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