Barclays Watch: Deep Dig
The ink’s barely dry on the Goldstein buyout agreement but the foundation dig is already well underway at the site of the future Barclays Center. The question is now whether this deep hole they’re digging is a metaphor for the entire project. (You sure could fit a lot of taxpayer dollars in a pit that…
The ink’s barely dry on the Goldstein buyout agreement but the foundation dig is already well underway at the site of the future Barclays Center. The question is now whether this deep hole they’re digging is a metaphor for the entire project. (You sure could fit a lot of taxpayer dollars in a pit that size!) As you may recall, the official groundbreaking was back on March 11th. We’ll be documenting this one closely.
You can’t really compare the two Atlantic malls.
The old one does it’s best to be nothing more than a shell for big boxes while turning its back on the neighborhood.
While the new one is not typical New York, it opens up the street on multiple sides and embraces the transit complex below. The inside is set up to be conducive to human-scale traffic flow and interactions.
I’m not sure they could have done a better job fitting a Target, an office tower, and a couple dozen smaller stores in that block.
lalaland,
Thanks for the fascinating link the the NYTimes article.
Regarding Atlantic Mall, Ratner is quoted:
”We decided to redo the interior and do as best we could with the exterior,” Mr. Ratner said. ”Honestly, it isn’t beautiful. It’s not architecturally outstanding. It’s kept clean, and we do try and take care of it. It’s not as bad as a strip center in the burbs, I mean, but it’s not something that we would build again.”
Maybe he learned from his mistakes.
Or, maybe his words were simply part of his attempt to convince us to let him build his basketball stadium.
dc is an excellent example that i had not thought of.
i had same experience as fgc.
hopefully this development will do same and serve to connect some nice bk neighborhoods.
time will tell.
“You sure could fit a lot of taxpayer dollars in a pit that size!”
I can recommend a few…
As for the way the Atlantic Mall is so hostile to the outside world, this Times article always stuck in my mind as a decent explanation: http://bk.ly/rur
FtGreeneCorey,
Downtwon Brooklyn is already a bustling commercial district. It didn’t need a stadium to produce that. I can’t speak to D.C., but I’m a sports fan and have been to a lot of other cities. I can’t think of a single time that I was at a stadium, looked at the surrounding neighborhood and thought “this is a place I’d like to live” What I usually see is a lot of cars, a lot of parking garages and a lot of Mcdonalds + Burger Kings.
for the love of god. enough with the whining. report or don’t report, but it’s time to let go of your agenda. ratner won.
Surface parking lots for now…development later. I went to college down in DC and before I graduated, they built the MCI Center (later the Verizon Center) where the Washington Wizards (NBA) and Washington Capitals (NHL) play. At the time the arena was built, the area was pretty ugly…this is early 90’s so there were lots of crackheads and abandoned buildings on the outskirts of the arena and blocks of surface parking in the immediate vicinity. After college I came back to New York, and had not been to DC in about 10 years when I went to visit friends down there in 2007. We went to dinner downtown in a bustling commercial district with office buildings, bars, a multiplex and various museums. The area did not look familiar to me at all, so I asked my friends, “where exactly ARE we right now”. I was shocked to find out that we were right across the street from the basketball arena. To me, the area was totally unrecognizable.
Everything in due course…it may take 10 years, or 20 years, but the promised development at Atlantic Yards will happen eventually.
I don’t have a problem with the Target mall but the one across the street with Pathmark and Marshall’s oy vey. That was designed the worse as far as the layout. In the summer walking thru those halls to get from where Circuit City was to Marshall’s is like walking thru a steambath .It’s an eyesore to boot.
There’s nothing wrong with having a Target at Atlantic Terminal. In fact, there’s a lot right with it. This area of Brooklyn needed a store like that. My complaint about Atlantic Terminal is that it’s designed as a suburban mall. You enter the mall and then you enter all the stores in the Mall from inside. Your not supposed to walk around the outside of the Mall. This contrasts with the design for most of NY. In this way, Atlantic Terminal literally turned its back on the surrounding neighborhood. The developer is going to do the same thing at Atlantic Yards. The arena built will be just fine looking and totally appropriate for suburban Sacramento or Phoenix. It will be surrounded by surface parking lots that will be just about as attractive as the “blighted” rail yards they’ll replace.