Reality warp: judge in eminent domain case agrees Atlantic Yards site would’ve been upzoned; ESD claimed there’d be no changes without project
“Remember how the Empire State Development Corporation (aka Empire State Development, or ESD), in the 2006 Atlantic Yards environmental review, claimed the project site would not “experience substantial change in the future without the proposed project… due to the existence of the open rail yard and the low-density industrial zoning regulations.”
When the very reasonable possibility of a rezoning was raised, the state authority stonewalled, claiming, “While the City, if it desired, could rezone the project site, it has not.”
I called it one of the state authority’s “least credible statements,” and a judge recently confirmed that observation, denying ESD’s claim that there would have been no rezoning.
In a case resolved this month regarding the value of a condemned property within the Atlantic Yards site, Kings County Supreme Court Justice Wayne Saitta agreed with the property owner’s argument that the site, without the project, could have become a 12-story hotel, concluding, “Most probably, the entire M1-1 [one-story manufacturing] district in the Atlantic Yards footprint would have been upzoned.” “
Atlantic Yards Report 29 May 2014.