I'm posting a long-winded, hot-headed letter I just wrote and emailed to some elected officials here about a stadium development project proposed for a few blocks away from my Brooklyn apartment (it seems much longer in this blog than it did on paper). Last weekend, the organizers of "develop don't destroy-brooklyn" hosted a community block party and rally in protest of the development. I just got an email saying that the City Council will vote on Monday. See more here. As I say below in the letter, this whole thing -- claiming eminent domain to push people out of their homes, claiming stadium development brings job growth and economic booms -- has been proven wrong time and time again in cities across the country. Plus, on a very personal note, I love my neighborhood and don't want to see it bulldozed over by developers who don't ensure affordable housing or equal opportunity employment who create more breeding grounds for McDonalds.
The Letter:
To Whom it May Concern:
I came home to my Ft. Greene apartment last week to discover the full-color promotional brochure for the “Atlantic Yards” – the name for the new stadium-and-condo complex planned for my neighborhood.
With its full-color spread of smiling faces and laundry list of benefits of the development, it was still just high-priced propaganda. With its tear-out reply card, it was also a bald-faced bribe to get the community “show” its support: Everyone who checked “Yes, I support the Atlantic Yards!” and sent it in was promised free tickets to a basketball game in the proposed new stadium.
What the fancy brochure failed to mention are the dozens of legitimate concerns that citizen groups have voiced about the development through the organizing work of “Develop Don’t Destroy-Brooklyn.”
The fancy brochure failed to mention how these concerns have been silenced by developers. (The one community meeting I tried to attend was canceled without warning, and community members at the recent public forum had to wait five hours to testify, by which point most of the daily media had already left to begin filing their stories).
In cities across the country, we’ve seen the same process unfold: Rich investors and gung-ho developers promise the world in exchange for stadium development – jobs, tax revenue, family entertainment. The stadiums are built. The jobs are fewer than expected, the tax revenue less than predicted, the benefits of entertainment overshadowed by congestion, traffic, noise, and crowds. In Pittsburgh, Seattle, San Francisco, Atlanta, we’ve seen it all before. The verdict on stadium development is in: Stadiums never bring all the benefits developers promise. Why, then, should hundreds of million of public dollars go to this project? Why, then, should hundreds of families lose their homes? Why should our elected officials, those who are supposed to represent the interests of the majority of the community, bow to the demands of high-rolling developers?
One of the defining characteristics of our neighborhood (Ft. Greene and Prospect Heights) is the local, small businesses that make up the commercial real estate here. By bringing in multinational franchises such as Red Lobster, KFC, and McDonalds, the proposed plan would fundamentally change the nature of the neighborhood.
Economists and urban planners have proven the strongest urban economies are localized ones, where dollars circulate within communities. With the influx of these mega-chains we will not only lose local flavor, we will lose our strong, localized economy.
Traffic, already at extraordinarily high levels (haven’t we all been stuck in stop-and-go Flatbush traffic at 3 in the afternoon, 3 in the morning, and every hour in between?), will be worsened by the presence of more than 15,000 visitors on game nights and thousands more in the stadium, condos, and mall slated for development.
Air quality will further be affected by increased congestion and development.
Cultural traditions, on which this borough was built, will be eviscerated with the imposition of high-rises in place of Brownstones and sports bars in the place of corner stores.
It would be a travesty to the cultural legacy and the economic health of this incredible borough – not to mention the democratic process – for Bruce Ratner’s Atlantic Yards plan to be approved.
As a resident of this community, I strongly oppose the plan, as do hundreds of my other like-minded neighbors.
Sincerely,
Anna Lappé
Ft. Greene, Brooklyn
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