The news is getting increasingly worrisome over at Brooklyn's "Atlantic Yards." From an urban environmental perspective, every time a new iteration of the plan comes out it seems to be worse than the plan before. The latest version, as described by the Empire State Development Corporation's Environmental Impact Statement Final Scope of Analysis (PDF file), describes some truly bad urban design ideas that you've really got to hope don't come to fruition, even if you support the project in all it's 17 skyscraper, 19,000-seat arena glory and want to see it succeed.

First off, the new plan is significantly bigger than what was originally announced in December 2003. The New York Times and other media have been reporting the latest plan as a 5% reduction in bulk. In fact, the latest plan is more than half a million square feet bigger than what was originally announced. It is also even more Towers-in-the-Park-ish than the old plan. The new plan has taller buildings with less bulk at street level and more "open space." Forest City Ratner is presenting this as a better urban design and a response to community concerns. But this new design likely only means more big gaps in the street-wall, a less healthy and viable pedestrian environment, fewer opportunities for street level retail and, almost certainly, more dead, semi-useless “open spaces” on the interior. Think: 1960's-era housing project.

The most disturbing change (and one I predicted but hoped would not happen) is the announcement of an interim surface parking lot of unspecified vastness on the eastern end of the project footprint. The lot would be used for arena event parking during Phase I of the project. Phase II of the project isn't slated to start until 2016 but these timelines are notoriously unpredictable. All it would take is a downturn in the residential market (perhaps when the first big wave of 7-year adjustable rate mortgages come due around 2009) and this land could remain a parking lot for decades. You've also got to assume that once a big parking lot becomes an integral part of the arena's transportation "system," it may be awfully hard to get rid of it. The memory of the Hoyt-Schermerhorn urban renewal area is still fresh for locals. Another fine project brought to us by the State of New York, Hoyt-Schermerhorn stayed a parking lot for about 30 years. It is only just now being developed.

I know that a lot of people think that an arena parking lot is a kind of traffic "mitigation." It's not. A big arena parking lot will function as a gigantic traffic magnet. If people know that they can find parking, they are far more likely to drive to arena events rather than use transit. Arena parking is, in many ways, the most onerous kind of parking because huge numbers of vehicles flux in and out simultaneously. This parking lot will put huge stress on the streets and neighborhoods around it. It is the worst possible land use for that area (OK, not as bad as, say, a nuclear reactor or trash incinerator, but it's up there). You've got to wonder what ever happened to the original sales pitch: That an arena could work at the congested intersection of Atlantic, Flatbush and Fourth Avenues because it was being built atop of a major transit hub?

To try to accommodate this additional traffic that will be created by the arena's parking lot, the EIS is also calling for "improvements" such as the widening of Flatbush, Atlantic and Sixth Avenues (page 6 of the PDF). New York may very well be the last major city in the Western World that is trying to solve urban transportation problems by widening roads and creating big new parking lots in its urban core. When you hear traffic engineers announcing "improvements," watch out.

Forest City Enterprises is known for doing relatively innovative and forward-thinking "smart growth" development in other parts of the country. That doesn't appear to be what we're getting in Brooklyn. Rather, the Atlantic Yards project seems as though it is being conceived within an archaic and discredited urban planning paradigm. This is bad news for the city and bad news for the value and sustainability of the Atlantic Yards project itself. I still hold out hope we can get the developer, state and city to come to their senses. After all, it's in their own best business interests not to create an urban environmental, quality-of-life catastrophe in the heart of Brooklyn.

12:11 PM | Link |