With Any Luck It’ll Be Off Limits For Years While Environmental Agencies Conduct Studies . . . But The Only Thing Better Would Be If It Cost Millions Just To Clean Up

A deal that looks better and better with each passing day:

Now that the old-growth trees have been felled and the earth-moving machines have started to dig up Macombs Dam Park, what will the residents surrounding the $1.3 billion new Yankee Stadium project be left with for replacement parks?

Polluted land, according to city and federal documents.

Under the current stadium are two 15,000-gallon oil tanks, which were found to be leaking, and soil in all of the replacement parkland contains “semi-volatile compounds and/or metals at concentrations exceeding [New York State Department of Environmental Conservation] Cleanup Objectives,” noted National Park Service executive Jack Howard when he signed off on the city’s park-swap plan.

Though the contaminated land is cited in this NPS go-ahead as well as the city’s Final Environmental Impact Statement, it’s not mentioned in any of the appraisals performed to comply with federal and state laws.

Miss Brooklyn Always Seemed A Little Too Tall Anyway

The Atlantic Yards project, now six to eight percent more popular:

Facing mounting criticism of its $4.2 billion Atlantic Yards project, the developer Forest City Ratner plans to reduce the size of the complex by 6 to 8 percent, eliminating hundreds of apartments from the largest development proposal in the city, according to government officials and executives working with the developer.

Forest City is also considering reducing the height of the project’s tallest tower, which is known as Miss Brooklyn, to get it under the height of the borough’s tallest building, the nearby Williamsburgh Savings Bank tower, according to real estate executives.

. . .

The development, anchored at Atlantic and Flatbush Avenues, has a number of powerful supporters, including Gov. George E. Pataki, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, some local politicians and advocates for subsidized housing. And a recent Crain’s New York Business poll shows that most New Yorkers approve of the project, although opposition is strongest in Brooklyn.

But both supporters and critics have expected Forest City to reduce the size and density of Atlantic Yards, which has been the focus of a series of raucous, standing-room-only public hearings, most recently on Aug. 24. The stage appeared to be set when the Brooklyn borough president, Marty Markowitz, the project’s chief cheerleader, proclaimed at that hearing that no tower at Atlantic Yards should be taller than the 512-foot Williamsburgh Savings Bank building.

Forest City has been working with city officials on a revised plan after some officials raised questions about the project’s overall density and the design of Miss Brooklyn, which was supposed to rise 620 feet. Officials say the developer will announce the reduction later this month.

“I’ve been told they will modify the project in order to address some of the concerns about the development,” said Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, who has supported the project. “I’m not sure all the criticisms will be addressed or that all the critics will be happy. But I understand there will be modifications.”

. . .

The reduction in the project’s scope comes as the Empire State Development Corporation prepares to hold two more public hearings later this month before voting on the project in October. Officials say the developer is likely to unveil the changes around Sept. 25, when the City Planning Commission is expected to issue design guidelines for the project and recommend changes, including a reduction in density.

At that point, there could be a long line of politicians and activists hoping to take credit, including the Bloomberg administration, Mr. Silver, Ms. Millman and Mr. Markowitz.

“Everyone’s going to take credit for something that everyone knew would happen,” said an executive who works with Forest City. “For these guys, it’s very important.”

Location Scout: Atlantic Yards.

The Only Things More Phallic Than The Williamsburgh Savings Bank Tower Are Headlines In The Brooklyn Papers

Leave it to the Brooklyn Papers to make dick jokes out of the latest Atlantic Yards news — “Size matters; State not discussing Atlantic Yards shrinkage with Bruce Ratner”:

State officials moved swiftly last week to deny they were negotiating behind the scenes with Bruce Ratner to decrease the size of his Atlantic Yards mega-development.

After the New York Sun reported on Tuesday that the Empire State Development Corporation had discussed “a reduction in the size of the project” with Ratner, ESDC blasted the report as untrue.

“ESDC has not been in discussion with Forest City Ratner about reducing the size of the project,” spokeswoman Jessica Copen told The Brooklyn Papers.

But the agency is under pressure — even from the project’s loudest supporters — to scale back Atlantic Yards.

At last week’s public hearing, Borough President Markowitz — the official perhaps most identified by his support of Atlantic Yards — told ESDC that it needed to “get real” about the impacts of the $4.2-billion, 16-tower, arena, hotel, residential and commercial development slated for the intersection of Atlantic and Flatbush avenues. “This project needs to be reduced.”

Fellow supporter, Assemblyman Roger Green (D-Fort Greene), went further, calling a 30- to 40-percent reduction in scale “a moral imperative.”

The state’s own draft environmental impact statement outlined numerous “significant” adverse effects, including increased traffic, more-crowded subways, long shadows, and the need for a new school to handle thousands of Yards kids.

After all is said and done, Gersh explains how this could all happen . . . and you do realize that this whole thing has probably been one big negotiating ploy, right? Er, suck on that . . .

Location Scout: Atlantic Yards.

Who Thinks Subway Maps Can Be Controversial? This Guy!

MTA mapmakers battle it out in the geekiest of geeky subjects:

One day not long ago, in a sunlit apartment on the Upper West Side, John Tauranac could be found examining a large, taped-together draft of a subway map.

Mr. Tauranac, a 66-year-old New Yorker with mussed gray-black hair and gold-rimmed glasses, used to design maps for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, until he was, as he put it, “declared redundant” in 1987.

The draft on his coffee table, published in June, differed from the M.T.A.’s current map in obvious ways. It had separate pages for daytime and late-night service, and stops were marked with tiny box-enclosed letters that interrupted the line. Like Mr. Tauranac himself, it was chatty: in the bottom left-hand corner was a well-written little guide to the subway system that began, “The coin of the realm is the MetroCard.”

. . .

Then a tall, fierce-browed Italian graphic designer named Massimo Vignelli entered the picture. In 1972, Mr. Vignelli designed a completely new schematic map for the M.T.A., one that showed New York’s subway routes as rich, contrasting stripes of color, marching in lock step across a white background, and turning only at 45- or 90-degree angles. In contrast to the brilliance of the subway routes, aboveground New York was almost invisible: the outlines of the boroughs were stubby and squared-off; the parks were gray boxes; and the water was tan.

The map defiantly ignored the city’s geography: the Broadway line was shown crossing the Eighth Avenue line at 42nd Street (they actually cross at Columbus Circle); Bowling Green appeared above Rector Street (it’s below); and Central Park was a small square rather than a tall rectangle.

“Of course I know Central Park is rectangular and not square,” Mr. Vignelli said the other day, sitting at a green marble table in his studio on East 67th Street. “Of course I know the park is green, and not gray. Who cares? You want to go from Point A to Point B, period. The only thing you are interested in is the spaghetti.”

As it turned out, New Yorkers were interested in more than the spaghetti. Almost as soon as Mr. Vignelli’s map arrived at stations, people started complaining about its failure to describe the city’s geography. Tourists were getting off the subway at the bottom of Central Park and trying to stroll to the top, for example, expecting a 30-minute walk.

Mr. Tauranac, who at the time was writing guide books for the M.T.A., criticized the Vignelli map for throwing out what he called the “cartographic verities.” “You can go to any kid in grammar school and ask, ‘What color is water?'” In falsetto, he mimicked the response: “‘Water’s blue.’ ‘What color are parks?’ ‘Parks are green.'”

. . .

Neither Mr. Tauranac nor Mr. Vignelli was eager to revisit the fight. Nonetheless, Mr. Vignelli offered a parting thought. “Look what these barbarians have done,” he said as he examined his copy of the current map. “All these curves, all this whispering-in-the-ear of balloons. It’s half-naturalist and half-abstract. It’s a mongrel.”

See also: The non-mongrel 1974 Subway Map.

Not In My Backyard!

New Yorkers overwhelmingly don’t give a shit about what happens with the Atlantic Yards development:

Brooklyn’s $4.2 billion Atlantic Yards project is supported by 60 percent of city residents, according to a poll in Crain’s New York Business.

Some neighbors of the proposed megadevelopment in Downtown Brooklyn have been trying to kill the project, a 22-acre complex that would include an arena for the NBA Nets, a hotel, high-rise offices, apartments and stores.

“The meaning of the poll is that New Yorkers are broadly pro- development, and that includes people in Brooklyn who are close to this project,” pollster Craig Charner told Crain’s.

Not surprisingly, opposition to the project was highest in Brooklyn, where 33 percent objected to the plan. That compares with 25 percent in the rest of the city.

Location Scout: Atlantic Yards.