Atlantic Yards or Atlantic Lots?
These past few days have been a big one for Atlantic Yards news. Saturday, hundreds of protesters led by three opposition groups and several politicians rallied at the Atlantic Yards footprint, calling for a halt to demolition until developer Forest City Ratner can provide details on its plans and assurances that it has the financing…
These past few days have been a big one for Atlantic Yards news. Saturday, hundreds of protesters led by three opposition groups and several politicians rallied at the Atlantic Yards footprint, calling for a halt to demolition until developer Forest City Ratner can provide details on its plans and assurances that it has the financing to see them through. They were met by a 50 percent larger group of counter-protesters, estimated Atlantic Yards Report blogger Norman Oder, who proceeded to comment on the ethnicity, neighborhood of residence and motivation of each one. On Sunday, Bruce Ratner penned an op-ed piece in the Daily News blaming construction delays on the project’s “rigorous public review” and legal challenges waged by opponents. He said “the delays have pushed us into a time when the economy has slowed, and both financing and tenant commitments are more challenging to obtain. But contrary to rumors, large deals are still getting done, and in the past year alone we have closed on the two largest construction financing in our company’s history, totaling over $1.3 billion. Atlantic Yards will be no different.” Ratner said the company’s first goal is to break ground on the Barclays Center (Nets basketball arena) this year, then the first residential building. “As for Miss Brooklyn, Frank Gehry’s signature commercial tower, a targeted marketing campaign to identify an anchor tenant is currently underway. When that tenant is confirmed, we will finalize plans and start building,” he wrote. He said the whole thing would be completed by 2018, which opponents called crazy talk.
Today, the New York Post obtained renderings commissioned by the Municipal Arts Society depicting how the project’s footprint would look as economic woes stall its construction indefinitely. They name it “Atlantic Lots” after the sea of parking lots that surround the arena and lone tower the developer said he’d work on first. Ratner spokesman Loren Riegelhaupt responded, “Frankly, this is so far from anything even remotely resembling what we are building that it’s not worth commenting on further.” For one thing, he said, the developer would mostly likely plant trees (you know, temporarily) on that big grey slab surrounding the arena. Also today, the Daily News has an article proclaiming “Miss Brooklyn is slashed more than 100 feet in a massive redo” from 620 feet to 511 feet. That of course happened before the project was approved Dec. 2006, but the new model looks substantially different, “replaced by an asymmetrical design that rises like a spiraling Lego structure.” State officials told the newspaper Miss Brooklyn would only have 650,000 square feet of office space and no condos or hotel. But a construction timetable for the project’s signature tower was not given, and an anchor tenant still needs to be secured before it can ever get financing. They also unveiled that red building to the right of Miss Brooklyn, also a revised design. Technically, the Post and Daily News models are not competing visions, they just depict different stages of construction. As usual, the Atlantic Yards Report has a meticulous dissection of everything. And a Metro columnist says the city would be better off if the Nets just went to Newark.
Ratner: AY Dead? Dream On [Daily News]
The Future is ‘Blight’ [NY Post]
Atlantic Yards’ Miss Brooklyn is Slashed [Daily News]
Opponents say Ratner’s Time Line for AY is Pie in the Sky [Daily News]
Nets to Newark Could be a Blessing [Metro]
Bruce Ratner: Put Up or Shut Up! [Daily Gotham]
Not a Done Deal: Time Out Rally Met With Counter-Protest [Daily Gotham]
Original aerial photos in Municipal Arts Society models by Jonathan Barkey
The train yard needs to be turned into an open air park space to accomodate a farmers market and other community related activities.What would solidify local property value (not that it is needed)would be an urban park and plaza because it would be simple to build over the yard and it can be integrated with housing and office space to foster year round business instead of the current publicly financed and privately held goliath of a disgrace. The current plan needs to be scrapped immediately and all involved with the approval process should face federal indictments.When a viable plan like the one presented by extell gets pushed out of the way for this disaster, you can bet that unbridled corruption is behind it and it is done so by our so called leaders who view the public as dispensible sheep.
I am a proud Brooklynite since birth and I have witnessed this area transform for the better without any help from Ratman.He has halted what would have probably been complete developmpent through free market forces. If you want basketball in brooklyn, put the nets in Coney Island like all the other two bit shows.Ratman has shown what greed and corruption has the capability of attempting with pals like Pataki and Bloomberg as well as Markowitz all selling out the general public and our money. It is time for a new plan that works for the people of Brooklyn and the surrounding area, not a Cleveland developer, an upstate political scrub and a two faced Red sox fan.
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/connect-the-g-train
11:09Pm – “Regarding pollution and public transportation – that is why Coney Island would be a great place for this stadium. This has been suggested before – it is has execellent subway and highway access.”
Highway access doesnt reduce pollution or encourage mass transit- being at the end of a subway line doesnt encourage mass transit –
just be honest – advocating CI – is basically another way of saying – we don’t want it – “put it out with the niggers….”
– Heck isn’t the inaccessibility of CI the reason so many projects were built there in the 1st place?
Besides – even if you built “AY” in CI – what would you build at Atlantic and 5th? – anything less than high density would be ANTI- enviroment
While I don’t live in Brooklyn and am simply seeking TO live in Brooklyn, I think my voice must carry less weight than that of others.
Nonetheless, I am dumbfounded by the apparent support of the AY project on Brownstoner.
For the life of me I cannot understand how anyone who lives in these neighborhoods could be wholesale PRO AY. The scale of the project, to say nothing of the cost to taxpayers and the gall of the developer to ask for AND GET such subsidies (only to likely turn around and renig (sp) on virtually all of it with the only exception being the sports arena), is appalling. I just don’t understand it. The huge onslaught of traffic, the probable street closures – MAJOR streets – during games, so many more bodies, trash, sewage (yes, sewage… ever thought of that? whether your current infrastructure is prepared for this massive scale?) the shadows, the amount of time necessary to build the whole thing – many of us won’t even be around to see it completed – it seems so out of line with the neighborhoods that surround it.
Coulda, shoulda, woulda been so much better. A beautiful place with green space and a small amount of living and shopping etc.
I like basketball as much as the next person, being from Indiana and all, but I’ve also lived near MSG before, Ugh, HORRIBLE, and have been to many a sports stadium in my day. They’re not pleasant places to be once outside of said stadiums! At all.
One of the only good things about the proposal was that the stadium at AY seemed to be sort of swallowed up or blanketed by the thoughtfully designed stuff around it. Now that the other stuff is gone baby gone, how can we cheerlead just a stadium?
Two words: Bad. Idea.
Another word: Blight.
And a last word: Ugh.
Regarding pollution and public transportation – that is why Coney Island would be a great place for this stadium. This has been suggested before – it is has execellent subway and highway access.
Flatbush and Atlantic is a choke point for traffic and the stadium would make it a total nightmare. I ride the trains to work everyday and you cannot squeeze another person on – no way it could handle the stadium traffic.
BTW I live in PH and everyone on our block is against AY. It is a waste of taxpayer dollars at a time when the city is cutting education, transportation, etc. It would be a crime to give that sleaze our tax money while the people of the city suffer cutbacks.
Union “protesters” are required by their unions to put in x amount of time in political activity per year. It’s like one or two days. They receive a stipend. Not a day’s salary, but enough to make it worth their while. They are transported to the site and fed — it’s pretty painless. Can’t say about the “community groups” but FCR usually feeds them, at the very least. I wouldn’t call this grassroots. They may hand out “lunch money” — $20 each — a common “organizing” tactic.
that comment about Goldstein’s wife raking in the money was a laugh. She can’t make more than 30K a year. We have to assume she took a pay cut to assume the post. I think I heard somewhere she was a computer programmer before, but maybe I’m wrong. Something along those lines.
“Still no answer…who do you think is going to live in those luxury buildings?”
A rich mix of New Yorkers
You got that right
Eh folks, If someone denies something, then it might be true. Ratner is waiting for the market implosion, this will be his exit strategy!
He will use the market turmoil to back out and go to Newark NJ. After that Brownstone Brooklyn will be fucked!
The What
Someday this war is gonna end…