Atlantic Yards Scaled Back, Gehry's Role in Question
All three major newspapers are reporting that Forest City Ratner is scrambling to reduce the project’s costs while continuing to claim that starchitect Frank Gehry is still on board. Frank Gehry has not been removed from the project, said Joe DePlasco, a spokesman for Forest City. We are continuing to speak with many arena experts…
All three major newspapers are reporting that Forest City Ratner is scrambling to reduce the project’s costs while continuing to claim that starchitect Frank Gehry is still on board. Frank Gehry has not been removed from the project, said Joe DePlasco, a spokesman for Forest City. We are continuing to speak with many arena experts and working hard to find ways to build a world class venue in an incredibly difficult economic environment. FCR has brought in “value engineering” firms, reports the Daily News, and Atlantic Yards report is saying that the arena could end up looking more like Newark’s Prudential Center than the fanciful renderings of Gehry’s circulated for the past couple of years. Sounds like another bait-and-switch. Or, as Gowanus Lounge put nicely, “it would seem Brooklyn was promised an SL-Class Mercedes, but now, it turns out that a Ford Focus may be delivered.”
Atlantic Yards Developer Denies Removing Architect [NY Times]
Cutbacks for Arena, Architect May Go [NY Daily News]
Nets Arena To Be a Little Less Frank [NY Post]
ESDC: Gehry to Control Aesthetics [AY Report]
Photo from the Atlantic Yards webcam
It would be a godsend if Gehry wasn’t involved in this project…That look is so tired.
werner – Well that’s, just, like, your opinion, man. I think MSG is in a pretty good location and is more accessible than, say, Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum. An arena at Atlantic Yards will be accessible to all sorts of busses, subways and commuter trains, and will be surrounded by other business and entertainment options. That is HIGHLY preferable to sticking it somewhere out of the way. Not to mention the myriad added benefits of making public transportation a much more attractive option than cars/parking.
Teams, ideally, move CLOSER to downtown areas, not away from them. See: Devils to Newark (from the Meadowlands), Orioles to downtown Baltimore (one of the most popular and most lauded sporting venues in the country), Astros to downtown Houston (from the Astrodome, which was further outside the city-center), and the success of teams such as the Cubs, Red Sox, Bears and others who play in urban centers as opposed to out-of-the-way locations.
Contrary to your opinion, there is every reason in the world for a team to build its arena or stadium in an urban area.
FtGreeneCorey,
Another problem with your thoughts on the arena have to do with location. There is no good reason to put a basketball arena in a congested downtown area that would benefit most from contextual development. Ratner can and should build this somewhere more suited for it, Coney Island comes to mind.
Of course the taxpayer issue is massive and is a huge problem. And now that he’s dumping his starchitect, considering his Atlantic Mall what do you think this arena is going to look like, I’m imagining utter garbage.
You’re right Casper. A $400-$500 million dollar arena should be pretty nice. One of the BENEFITS of the recession is that it has reduced costs as well (for labor, materials, etc.), so $500 million could buy you a much better arena in 2009 than it could in 2007.
“Or, as Gowanus Lounge put nicely, ‘it would seem Brooklyn was promised an SL-Class Mercedes, but now, it turns out that a Ford Focus may be delivered.'”
I just wanted to point out that the arena in Newark is actually a really nice sports-venue. It’s certainly not as impressive-looking from the outside as the Gehry renderings of the proposed AY arena were, but it’s not like Brooklyn would be getting a second-class facility if the arena is similar to the Prudential Center. The “Mercedes/Ford Focus” analogy isn’t accurate. I know it’s just hyperbole but if you’re going to play that game it would be more like we were promised a Maybach and we’re getting a Mercedes or something.
Hi Johnny, I agree with you on the tax payer bit. What Ratner should focus on is building a scaled down arena more in the $400 million – $500 million neighborhood…in which case it would primarily be paid for by the Barclays naming rights. The city SHOULD be on the hook for the surrounding infastructure (roads, electricity, sewage, etc), but FCR should be responsible for paying for (and/or raising) the rest.
I agree with a lot of what you say Corey. But the problem is that the taxpayers are picking up the tab. We’re giving Ratner $2 billion. The primary beneficiary of this largess is the owner of the Nets (Ratner) who will be playing in, literally, a stadium that the taxpayers (and Barclays) will be building him.
My suggestion to all pro-AY folks is this – lobby to end the taxpayer financing and invest your own money in FCR. If Ratner’s plan makes economic sense you’ll profit. However, since Ratner has a great deal of trouble attracting institutional investors, this says to me that the deal only makes economic sense if the New York taxpayers fund this with corporate welfare.
Who cares what it looks like…just build it. I know that I’m very much in the minority of the people on this blog who are actually excited about the prospect of the Nets moving to Brooklyn, but I really believe that having an NBA team can raise the profile Brooklyn, nationally and internationally. I travel quite a bit on business, and when asked “where are you from” I always make it a point of saying “Brooklyn” as opposed to “New York”. I was in Los Angeles at a Lakers game last month with a client and a friend of my client asked me where I was from and when I told him Brooklyn, his response was “Oh, the COOL part of New York…it will be even cooler when the Nets get there”. Similarly, I was in Madrid last summer at a client dinner and when the subject matter of Brooklyn came up, I an older Spanish lawyer colleague said “It will be amazing when King James (LeBron James) arrives in the borough of Kings”. Needless to say I was stunned (Nothwithstanding the fact that LeBron will most likely never come to the Nets), I don’t think people realize how significantly a professional sports franchise can lift the profile of an entire city. Cities like Indianpolis (Colts), Nashville (Titans) and Portland (Blazers) which are actually small cities (certainly much smaller than Brooklyn) parceived as “major league” because of their sports franchises. I know this is not a popular sentiment and I don’t mean to offensive or controversial…its just my opinion.
Are the New York tax payers still paying for the Mercedes?