Friday Atlantic Yards #1: Public Comment Period Extended...By a Week

Brooklynites will now have an extra week to digest the thousands of pages of verbiage contained in the Draft Environmental Impact Statement on the Atlantic Yards mega-development. The Empire State Development Corporation abruptly announced the seven-day extension yesterday. The extension changes the deadline from Sept. 22 to Sept. 29. ESDC spokesperson Jessica Copen told the Brooklyn Papers that, "We thought it was appropriate, and wanted to give the public more time to review and comment on the project." A number of prominent New York officials, from City Council Speaker Christine Quinn to State Attorney General and Democratic Gubernatorial Candidate Eliot Spitzer have called for an extension of the public comment period (by more than seven days, however.)

Gowanus Lounge believes that the Atlantic Yards battle is devolving into a game of appearances on the part of project backers. In ESDC's case, this involves trying ot make it look like they are vaguely sensitive to public concerns about ramming Atlantic Yards down Brooklyn's throat Robert Moses-style while doing nothing to change the Mosesian nature of the process in any substantive way. But, in this case, we're probably wrong in making that assumption. Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn offers a very practical reason for the switch in time that has nothing to do with appearances--a letter from their lawyer reminding them the law requires an extension. Specifically:

The ESDC had recently added a new public hearing on the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) on September 18th. By law the ESDC must hold written public comment open for ten days after the public hearing. Until today that comment period was scheduled to end on September 22nd. The ESDC would have been breaking the law if it maintained that date. So today it announced the new written comment deadline is September 29th.