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Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park infographics: what's built/what's coming/what's missing, who's responsible, + project FAQ/timeline (pinned post)

Blight's hard to find: why Mike Bloomberg could never work for AKRF

Mayor Mike Bloomberg has started backing away from claims that Willets Point is blighted. “To take an area which, it’s not fair to say it’s blighted,” he told NY1, as quoted in Crain's and cited by DDDB. “It’s seen its better days is a fair way to phrase it.”

Well, Willets Point is pretty rough--unpaved, no sewers, remember--though the city should take the lion's share of the blame.

But it's curious how unpaved Willets Point has "seen its better days" but a small but well-kept house (the fifth one in) in the Atlantic Yards footprint drawn by Forest City Ratner is, according to consultant AKRF's report for the Empire State Development Corporation, blighted because it doesn't fulfill 60% of allowable development rights.

(Or is it just that Forest City Ratner wants to build a 27-story building there?)

Clearly Bloomberg could not get hired by AKRF.

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