Empire State Development’s Senior Vice President of Community Relations, Anna Pycior, outlined a robust, ongoing community engagement program for the Atlantic Yards project at the May 28, 2026 AYCDC meeting. The final Community Engagement Report has been completed, translated into Spanish, and posted online, and ESD plans further outreach after the anticipated July MOU execution, including meetings with tenant associations, local organizations, neighborhood groups, and advocacy organizations, as well as targeted engagement on public realm elements like placement and design of open spaces and streetscapes. ESD intends to help the public understand the forthcoming Environmental Impact Statement, clarifying that it covers issues beyond traditional environmental topics, and to solicit specific feedback on public realm design and other issues during formal comment windows.While this is framed as internal outreach by ESD, the scale and complexity point to potential needs for external support in facilitation, multilingual engagement, participatory design, visualizations, and digital engagement tools to manage ongoing touchpoints. Firms with community engagement, public realm planning, and EIS communication experience can engage now to offer support for the next phases of outreach and design dialogue.

ESD explicitly invites Board members to connect them with additional local organizations, signaling a broad and ongoing outreach effort that may strain internal capacity.