 |
 |
|
 |
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
tel/fax:
718.362.4784
Please note our new postal address when sending
contributions to the legal fund:
121 5th Avenue, PMB #150
Brooklyn, New York 11217
About DDDB
Our coalition consists of 21 community organizations and
there are 51 community organizations formally
aligned in opposition to the Ratner plan.
DDDB is a volunteer-run organization. We have over 5,000
subscribers to our email newsletter, and 7,000 petition
signers. Over 800 volunteers have registered with DDDB
to form our various teams, task-forces and committees
and we have over 150 block captains. We have a 20 person
volunteer legal team of local lawyers supplementing our
retained attorneys.
We are funded entirely by individual donations from the community at large
and through various fundraising events we and supporters have organized.
We have the financial support of well over 3,500 individual
donors.
More about
DDDB...
|
|
|
|
 |
ARCHIVES:
By Date|
By Category|
Text Search
|
Brief to High Court Charges Bias and Corruption by ESDC in Atlantic Yards Case
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: August 4, 2009
Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn and
25 Community Groups
Ask NY State's High Court to Hear Their Appeal
Challenging Atlantic Yards Blight Designation,
Charging Bias and Corruption by the ESDC
BROOKLYN, NY (August 4, 2009) — Raising substantial questions about bias
and corruption in decision-making by the Empire State Development Corporation
(ESDC), Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn, and 25
community group co-petitioners, filed a brief
with New York's highest court. The co-petitioners are asking the New York
State Court of Appeals to hear their appeal on an adverse ruling on their case
challenging the ESDC's Environmental Impact Statement and Blight Study for Forest
City Ratner's Atlantic Yards development proposal.
A key issue in the case is the ESDC's designation of Ratner's handpicked development site as "blighted." The "blight" determination made by the ESDC in 2006 is required to proceed with a Land Use Improvement Project under which most of the Atlantic Yards development proposal is designated.
Earlier this year, the Appellate Division ruled that the state's "blight" designation
had a "rational basis." However, Justice Catterson—one of the four judges on the
panel—wrote a concurring
opinion which raises substantial questions about that basis, strongly suggesting
there was no rational basis, but rather a decision to facilitate Forest City Ratner
in its effort to control 22 valuable acres in the heart of Brooklyn.
Catterson wrote:
"Because I believe that the New York Urban Development Corporation
Act…is ultimately being used as a tool of the developer to displace and destroy
neighborhoods that are ‘underutilized,' I write separately. I recognize
that long-standing and substantial precedent requires a high level of deference
to the Empire State Development Corporation's finding of blight. Reluctantly,
therefore I am compelled to accept the majority's conclusion that there is sufficient
evidence of "blight" in the record under this standard of review. However,
I reject the majority's core reasoning, that a perfunctory ‘blight study' performed
years after the conception of a vast development project should serve as the
rational basis for a determination that a neighborhood is indeed blighted.
…ESDC's contention that as 'a matter of law,' ESDC could only look at conditions
contemporaneous with the study, which was conducted years after the [project's]
announcement, is ludicrous on several levels."
(Emphasis added.)
The petitioners' motion papers focus on the rationality of the ESDC's determination that the project site was "blighted," and that the ESDC improperly designated the Barclays Center Arena as a "civic project" under the Urban Development Corporation Act.
"As Justice Catterson properly noted, ESDC's failure to consider the context of existing economic development trends in Prospect Heights should make the blight determination per se irrational," said lead attorney Jeffrey Baker. "The ESDC's blight determination was clearly pre-determined, and therefore biased, arbitrary and capricious and should be overturned."
Specifically the petitioners have asked the Court of Appeals to address the following five issues:
1. Whether ESDC's purposeful denial and mischaracterization of
the uncontroverted economic conditions and trends in the project area, and its
knowing misrepresentations of crime data in the project area, to support its "blight"
determination, demonstrate a degree of bias and corruption on the part
of ESDC which warrants invalidation of its determination that the area
is "substandard and insanitary" for purposes of designating the project a "land
use improvement project" under the Urban Development Corporation Act (UDCA).
2. Whether ESDC's purposeful denial and mischaracterization of
the uncontroverted economic conditions and development trends in the project area,
in order to justify its rejection of project alternatives, demonstrate
a degree of bias and corruption on the part of ESDC which warrants invalidation
of its rejection of project alternatives under State Environmental Quality Review
Act (SEQRA).
3. Whether ESDC was required to consider the economic conditions and development trends in the project area in order to exercise its authority to designate and undertake the project as a "land use improvement project" under the UDCA.
4. Whether a sports arena leased for one dollar per year to a private, for-profit entity to be operated as a professional sports facility, with trivial civic benefits, may nevertheless be designated a "civic project" under the UDCA.
5. Whether the standard of review of an agency action under CPLR Article 78 is the same as the standard of review in a taxpayer action under section 51 of the General Municipal Law.
The brief can be downloaded at:
http://dddb.net/FEIS/CTofAppeals/090730MOLctofAppeals.pdf
All relevant case files can be found at:
http://www.dddb.net/FEIS/appeal/
Posted: 8.04.09
|
|
|
|
