NEW YORK FORUM ABOUT NEIGHBORHOODS Back to Basics In Brooklyn CITY Edition

• Published in: Newsday
• Main Author: By Rick Cohen and Phil Steinberg. Rick Cohen, left, is
• Format: Newspaper Article
• Language: English
• Published: Long Island, N.Y Newsday LLC 07.09.1990
• Edition: Combined editions

A good place for [Dinkins] to begin is the Atlantic Terminal Urban Renewal plan, a 24-acre, $530-million development project located in Fort Greene near downtown Brooklyn. The project has met with considerable community opposition and a string of lawsuits, two of which are still before the courts. Subsidized by a federal Urban Development Action Grant as well as municipal tax abatements, the city's plans for the site include two 24-story commercial office towers, a 1,000-car parking garage, a 50,000-square-foot supermarket, a 10-screen cinema and 643 middleand upper-income condominiums. Last October, community leaders heard candidate Dinkins pledge to "examine and reexamine" aspects of the Atlantic Terminal project. But in February Deputy Mayor Sally Hernandez-Pinero communicated Mayor Dinkins' endorsement of the project without changes. Our point is not that the mayor went back on a promise. It is, rather, that the Atlantic Terminal project presents him with an opportunity to help fulfill his ambitious plan to construct or rehabilitate, between 1991 and 1994, 63,000 affordable dwelling units, 90 percent of them targeted for households making less than $32,000 a year, and a substantial proportion of that total targeted for households with incomes of less than $16,000.