Sometimes, it can be hard to tell what is really going on at Atlantic Yards. A new video asks about public benefits, accountability, oversight, and the legal challenge to the project's environmental review. Does it have a happy ending? We'll have to wait to find out...

For the last year, Brooklynites have wondered why reconstruction of the Carlton Avenue has not been completed, and why the bridge is not scheduled to reopen until sometime in the third quarter of 2012, almost two and a half years after Forest City Ratner Companies (FCRC) and the ESDC promised it would be done. Yesterday, they may have heard part of the answer.

Contact: Linda Gross, LCG Communications – (917) 767-1141

On March 3, several BrooklynSpeaks sponsors seeking to reverse the Empire State Development Corporation’s (ESDC) 2009 approval of a plan extending construction of the Atlantic Yards project from ten to twenty-five years, filed affidavits with the court from leading authorities in urban planning and sustainable development. The affidavits by Ronald Shiffman of Pratt Institute, James Goldstein of Tellus Institute, and Majora Carter of the Majora Carter Group were submitted in support of BrooklynSpeaks’ supplemental petition challenging ESDC’s response to a November 2010 court decision ordering the agency to explain its rationale for failing to prepare a supplemental environmental impact statement (SEIS) at the time it approved the modified general project plan (MGPP).