Battle of Brooklyn Update: Hidden Towers in Atlantic Yards Plan?

A couple of developments worth noting in the Atlantic Yards battle (besides this morning's appearance of Forest City Ratner's Jim Stuckey and Develop Don't Destroy's Daniel Goldstein on WNYC's Brian Lehrer Show). First, Atlantic Yards Report carefully examines the models of the project and notes the curious possible appearance of three additional towers of up to 30 stories each, across Atlantic Avenue from the massive residential-commercial-arena site around the Atlantic Center mall. AYR also says that project architect Frank Gehry has talked about there being 20 buildings in the project (the current public total is 17).

There is much good analysis of what this implies at AYR. For our purposes, let's simply say three more tall buildings add 15 percent to the project's already massive 8.7 million square feet.

Meanwhile, the Park Slope Courier reports on a bill that Assem. James Brennan will be introducing in Albany to reduce the scale of Atlantic Yards by capping the project at 5.85 million square feet. The catch: Throwing hundreds of millions in public subsidies at developer Forest City Ratner in return for building less. The proposal would reduce Ratner's payment to the MTA from $450 million to $140 million and have the state pay for about 2,000 affordable apartments on the site.