Beep's Flip-Flop May Lead to AY Changes
After being one of the Atlantic Yards’ biggest cheerleaders, Marty Markowitz attracted lots of attention for the moderation of his tone and his call for scaling back the project. Trying to retain some old-school Brooklyn cred, he’s now saying that none of Ratner’s new buildings should trump the size of the Williamsburgh Savings Bank. Cynics,…
After being one of the Atlantic Yards’ biggest cheerleaders, Marty Markowitz attracted lots of attention for the moderation of his tone and his call for scaling back the project. Trying to retain some old-school Brooklyn cred, he’s now saying that none of Ratner’s new buildings should trump the size of the Williamsburgh Savings Bank. Cynics, including The Times and some commenters on yesterday’s thread point out that this is too-little-too-late political opportunism and that he should have been pounding the table on issues like traffic and infrastructure months ago. We’d tend to agree. Regardless, though, Markowitz change in tune may have a measurable impact: The Post reports that Ratner indicated yesterday that he would consider reducing the height of Miss Brooklyn.
A Little Change of Tune from AY’s Biggest Fan [NY Times]
Ratner Yields a Bit to Building Anger [NY Post]
brownstoner is a mega-herb.
Eryximachus writes a post in support of the project and gets deleted but Dreadnaught is permitted to shout from the top of his soapbox (same points over and over again) with impunity?!?! I don’t get it? If that’s the case, simply state at the top of the thread that you’re firmly in DDDB’s pocket and that the issue of AY is not up for open debate. This way no one has to waste their time posting on this site. If you want a club atmosphere then simply go back to Registration which IMHO was a horrific failure…..
brownstoner is a herb.
This post was deleted. Why?
“Transportation options to Atlantic Yards/Downtown Brooklyn (all within 5 minute walk to proposed Nets arena site): Subway Lines A, B, C, D, F, G, M, N, Q, R, 2, 3, 4, 5; LIRR; Bus Lines 25, 26, 37, 38, 41, 45, 52, 63, 65, 67, 103 (and numerous bus and train transfers thereto); and Car Routes – Belt Pkwy to Atlantic Ave, BQE to Atlantic, Flatbush or Kent Aves; Jackie Robinson Pkwy to Atlantic Ave; 495 to BQE; Midtown Tunnel to BQE; Brooklyn Bridge to Atlantic Ave; Manhattan Bridge to Flatbush Ave; Brooklyn Battery Tunnel to Hamilton Ave to Atlantic; Prospect Expwy to BQE to Atlantic; Eastern Pkwy to Flatbush; and Ocean Pkwy to Prospect PK SW. Also major thruways: 3rd and 4th Avenues and Empire Blvd. The options are innumerable! Please stop with the excuses. AY is convenient to almost everyone in Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan!!”
Brownstoner, can you kindly explain why you are censoring debate and filtering posts? Why were Eryximachus and SuperAnon posts deleted?
what’s with all the yappin about infrastructure? its up to the city to provide the needed infrastructure improvements for this and any other development, and there is an existing system in place to fund it -its called taxes. the residents of those towers will pay taxes (property, sales, employment, etc.) and those taxes can fund any increased sewers and schools and electrical grid improvements and whatever else is needed.
Give me a break people. We are talking about 7,000 apartments (probably significantly less) in a borough the size of 3 million people! AY will sit on 24 acres in an area of Downtown Brooklyn that has the best infrastructure anywhere. If you can’t build this project here then where? Is the city going to spend $10 billion building a new transportation hub in a more desolate area of the borough simply to build an arena and 16 towers? Of course not! AY will be the biggest development in Brooklyn for decades to come and the city has an unique opportunity to do something truly extraordinary and special with this humongous development site. Nonetheless, you transplanted underachievers expects us to settle for the mundane?!?! Do you think that in 50 years historians will look back and say that Brooklyn building a bunch of 5-6 story plain/non-descript brick buildings on this enormous site was the turning point for the borough? It’s crowning achievement? Are you that naive? How small minded and short sighted can you be? The reason why DDDB has no widespread support in the borough is because AY opponents are as pedestrian as they come. They are utterly unremarkable with their visions for this truly unique site, so much that the vast majority of people in Brooklyn have simply dismissed them as a bunch of crackpots. Would historian say that adoption of the Extell or Unity Plan 50 years ago made Brooklyn great?!? Hell no!! For or against this project, I at least give Ratner, FCR, Pataki, Marty and Bloomberg the courage to dream and potentially do something extraordinary for the borough!!! In Brooklyn we strive for greatness!!
Well- it won’t be the end, but it will do a lot of damage. Then all the proponents who are so pleased to have AY will move out to the suburbs because they can’t deal with the day to day problems of traffic and loss of infrastructure.
Yeah, sorry guys, but my b.f. was at the Brooklyn DOB yesterday talking to a deputy commish on a different matter, and two other deputies were having a good laugh over Marty’s comments, saying “He’s already signed.” Now, this is just hearsay — they could have been talking about his cable contract, but my b.f. doubted it. The Deputy Commish told these guys to shut up and looked nervously at b.f. My take is that MM’s already signed something to the contrary. He’s such a whore.