Upcoming: Atlantic Yards Session

Anyone with a hankering for some Atlantic Yards discussion has another chance tonight. There will be an update on Atlantic Yards tonight (3/13) that is expected to draw some public officials. The session will cover the status of Atlantic Yards litigation as well as the financing issues around the development in a very changed economic environment. As for that, the email says:

Speculation has been increasing recently that Forest City Ratner's Atlantic Yards project could be falling prey to the triple-whammy of a slowing economy, the crisis in sub-prime mortgages and the global credit crunch. Big real estate deals all around the country are being put on hold or are being shelved altogether, and Ratner's planned City Tech tower project, which would have been Brooklyn's tallest building, unraveled two weeks ago (CUNY scuttled the deal because Forest City Ratner's building "would be too expensive, too slow and too controversial").The Atlantic Yards project is turning into the deal that couldn't get done.

The future of the affordable housing (on which the development was sold to the public by supporters) will also be discussed. (There is growing sentiment that much of the affordable housing is threatened if a real estate downturn and recession swamp the project.) The UNITY Plan for the Vanderbilt Rail Yards will also be presented again.

The meeting is sponsored by Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn, Society for Clinton Hill, Fort Greene Association, Park Slope Neighbors, Friends and Residents of Greater Gowanus, Bears Community Garden and the South Portland Block Association. The meeting, which starts at 7PM, is at the Hanson Place United Methodist Church at 144 Saint Felix Street in Fort Greene.