Six elected officials on Thursday again called for an independent security assessment of the Atlantic Yards project, an issue that has resurfaced, at least in the media, after Newark officials announced streets surrounding its new arena would be closed during events because the arena sits too close to the streets. The Newark arena is 25 feet from the street at its closest point, and the Atlantic Yards arena would be, in some places, 20 feet from Atlantic and Flatbush Avenues. Does that alone make the Atlantic Yards arena a sitting duck?
Atlantic Yards supporters call the issue a red herring, used by long-time opponents of the project as merely a tactic to delay its construction, or to prevent it from ever being built at all. Officials from developer Forest City Ratner Companies, project sponsor Empire State Development Corporation and the New York City Police Department have declined to release the specific features within the arena and its glassy masthead, Miss Brooklyn, that would make the structures less vulnerable to a terrorist attack. That, they say, would make the arena a sitting duck, giving potential terrorists a map of the buildings’ strengths and, more importantly, its weaknesses.
At one point, officials even declined to release the specific distance the arena would be from the street, as if that wouldn’t be immediately apparent once the project is built. That probably didn’t do much to calm the fire, since many people equate a secret with something to hide. Later, after The New York Times confirmed the distance, the Empire State Development Corporation released a statement saying, just as Madison Square Gardens operate without any street closures, the agency is confident Atlantic Yards can, too.
A spokesman for Forest City sent along an affidavit from its independent security consultant, Jeffrey Venter of Ducibella Venter & Santore, briefly describing 3,300 hours of work on a security plan for the project, including five meetings with the NYPD Counterterrorism Bureau. Aside from that, it’s been said that the company began considering security issues as early as 2003, and continues to do so today. In contrast, the Newark arena apparently underwent little-to-no security review, given that police decided to shut down streets only two weeks before it was scheduled to open. Since security is found not just in distance from the street, but also in structure, that leads one to wonder what other vulnerabilities afflict the Newark arena.
NYPD spokesman John Kelly said, “The department has met numerous times with the builders, who have been very cooperative and have done everything we have asked.” He also said the department doesn’t foresee any street or land closures, sidewalk widening around the arena or the instillation of bollards. And Bruce Bender of Forest City was more pointed in his response, in a prepared statement: “We do not play around with public safety and neither should politicians who have no experience or background in security issues. Our security plan has been vetted and approved by the NYPD and the best anti-terrorism experts in the city. At some point, a base level of common sense needs to be followed and those people who do not have any security experience need to let the NYPD and the security experts do their jobs.”
But the issue, on the opponents’ end, seems to also be about trust. Councilwoman Letitia James, one of the six elected officials calling for the independent review, said she would like the security assessment to at least be released to elected officials so they can conduct their own independent review (how that would be funded is unclear). Is it that she doesn’t believe the analysis was actually conducted, contrary to the affidavit submitted in court? Or that security issues were taken lightly, and some not considered at all? Not exactly, she said.
“Part of our distrust is based upon our four years of experience with this project,” said James. “They’ve misrepresented the truth, [the project has been] shrouded in secrecy, and there’s been a lot of misinformation. My distrust is based on my frame of reference.” For those who haven’t been following the project for the past four years, the battles have been ugly, to an epic scale (in the urban planning world, at least, no fatalities so far). And James is accurate that Ratner and the state Development Corporation have not exactly been forthcoming about many details regarding the project, including the amount of taxpayer money that would be used.
James said the City Council has little, or no, authority to call on an independent security review for a project in this city because it is being carried out by the state. But instead, the six are relying on a new “political dynamic” now that Gov. Eliot Spitzer has taken office under a promise of greater transparency, and a Democratic Party affiliation.
James said legislators would at least like to see the security assessment. But it seems, at least so far, that the developer and state don’t trust the legislators who have opposed the project too much either.
— Sarah Ryley, Brooklyn Daily Eagle
© Brooklyn Daily Eagle 2007
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Just a reminder, though -- It’s not considered polite to paste the entire story on your blog. Most blogs post a summary or the first paragraph,( 40 words) then post a link to the rest of the story. That helps increase click-throughs for everyone, and minimizes copyright issues.
So please keep posting, but not the entire article. arturc at att.net
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