Endangered AY
This morning the Times has a couple articles about Atlantic Yards that more or less boil down to the following: Aspects of the mega-project aside from the Nets arena are likely to be delayed or go unrealized; Forest City Ratner has not been able to lure an anchor tenant to Miss Brooklyn, his planned office…
This morning the Times has a couple articles about Atlantic Yards that more or less boil down to the following: Aspects of the mega-project aside from the Nets arena are likely to be delayed or go unrealized; Forest City Ratner has not been able to lure an anchor tenant to Miss Brooklyn, his planned office tower; and Frank Gehry’s overarching vision for AY will be severely compromised if all that’s built is the arena. In one article, Charles Bagli includes snippets of an interview with Bruce Ratner in which the developer concedes that construction of Miss Brooklyn will not begin until a tenant has been secured for the office tower; Bagli also notes that the three residential towers surrounding the arena, which are slated to have 1,000 units of housing—including many affordable units—may not happen anytime soon, since developers are finding financing harder to come by. Ratner still sounds cautiously optimistic about the first phase of AY, though. It’s not going to happen in a nanosecond, he tells the Times. I hope it’s not going to be drawn out. I’d hope that the first residential building will be done within six months of the opening of the arena, and a second one a year after that. In the second article, architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff says the possibility that all we’ll be left with is a Nets arena “feels like a betrayal of the public trust.” Ouroussoff calls on Frank Gehry to walk away from the entire development: “by pulling out he would be expressing a simple truth: At this point the Atlantic Yards development has nothing to do with the project that New Yorkers were promised. Nor does it rise to the standards Mr. Gehry has set for himself during a remarkable career.”
Slow Economy Likely to Stall Atlantic Yards [NY Times]
What Will Be Left of Gehry’s Vision for Brooklyn? [NY Times]
Ratner Admits Major AY Delays, Rising Arena Cost [AY Report]
Miss Brooklyn & Housing to Die as Arena Lives? [GL]
Bullet Points of Bagli Article [No Land Grab]
Photo by threecee.
The arena all Ratner should have tried to build in the first place. It’s pure gluttony and greed he had to seize everything around it using eminent domain. If all he’d been given was just the land for the arena, the FREE MARKET and private property landowners surrounding it would have determined what followed the arena after its establishment. Based on what people wanted and what people needed. Whether that’s retail or housing or office space or what. Me, I think only retail can succeed there. Nobody who moves to Park Slope would live in a highrise with views of a sports arena and the LIRR/Atlantic Center. Try highrise next to Prospect Park. Or a highrise next to the East River. Why don’t they know this?
hey 10:38 that third rate team you say did go to the NBA championships 2 years in a row this decade. as a season Nets ticket holder the reason the Nets do not draw at the Meadowlands is because it is impossible to get there and has no public transportation. i did not say BAM wasn’t good for Brooklyn i said not everybody wants to go to see ballet and modern dance. as for most of the art galleries dying in Dumbo perhaps maybe there is no demand for them. So let me get this the Nets who sell tickets as low as 10 dollars, next to a huge african american population and jewish guys who love basketball will not draw and have thousand of empty seats. i guess no one from Long Island will come either because its one block from the train station either. you go to the Ballet, if i can get a ticket i will go so Radiohead in a brand new arena 1/2 mile from my house. Oh and if you havn’t noticed i think the NBA does a little better then the Ballet when it comes to attendance and people watching.
This is the best bit, from the Times’ architecture critic: ” Visitors arriving by subway would spill out into a multitiered glass atrium; directly above, the voluptuous curves of Miss Brooklyn would be a counterpoint to the nearby Williamsburgh Savings Bank tower — a classic stone phallus.”
Hot building-on-building action!
I’m sorry, but Develop Don’t Destroy didn’t evict anyone, or tear down anything. To blame anti-AY people for this debacle is to blame the passengers on the Titanic for the ship sinking.
As has been said, the vast majority of anti-AY people, including myself, welcome sensible, legal development in the area. This has been an overblown, underhanded operation from the start, beginning with the MTA ignoring a higher bid for the yards, through massive give backs, tax incentives and public funding of a private operation, the whole affordable housing and jobs bait and switch, and the total lack of consideration of infrastructure, services, transportation and public benefit.
That’s not middle aged NIMBYism, it’s just common sense. Let someone with a scaled down, sensible plan for much needed development do this, not some grandiose, meglomaniac developer and his ego driven starchitect. Brooklyn does deserve a world class arena and world class housing. We also deserve to be able to show the rest of the city and the world that we can build a major project in a legal, above board manner that addresses the concerns and needs of all of Brooklyn. This isn’t it.
Preservationista
My wife and I were just wondering last night if the credit crunch would affect the Atlantic Yards project. We live near there and have hated how rammed down our throat the project has been (Brooklyn had no say in the final decision whatsoever), and how corrupt the entire process has been (Ratner owns the adjoining shopping mall and will see a huge windfall property value surge, etc.). Nevermind that it is (to me and many, many others) an absolutely hideous design, totally out of scale with the area’s brownstones, and with Gehry arguably being the last architect on earth anyone should want to design a fiat-imposed neighborhood (some of his cultural institution buildings are arguably great, but “Miss Brooklyn” is an atrocity).
Furthermore, of what benefit will the stadium be to the neighborhood? Madison Square Garden is an absolute blight on Manhattan, and the analogy is the same: arena, train station, major traffic juncture. The area will be riddled with tawdry sports bars and junky stores, and the streets littered with trash, nevermind the drunken fans spilling out into the streets after the games. Ouroussoff has it right, the arena without the development will be an unmitigated cancer on the neighborhood.
This is the logical outcome of crony capitalism: utterly corruptible from the outset, the process is likely to leave the area even worse off than it is now as a scar across Brooklyn’s face. The entire project as conceived was from the very start nothing but an economic multiplier for Ratner’s holdings (he also owns the Nets as well as the adjoining mall), and there is nothing (and has never been anything) to prevent Ratner from subdividing the property should he feel that he will not earn sufficient lucre otherwise. This project is sour through and through; hopefully none of it happens and the entire thing is redone democratically.
So we still get the lovely arena, huh? What a coincidence that this is the part of the project for which Ratner can reap the greatest subsidies and tax relief. And while we tax payers are busy handing him our hard-earned cash, let’s not forget that he’ll be raking in $20 MILLION A YEAR in naming rights from Barclays Bank for the next 20 years. Hey, Bruce, I want a piece of that $400 million. Pay me back what your government lackeys stole from me!
Context: FCR’s Metrotech was meant to take 5 years to build and ended up taking 14 years. So, sadly, this may not be as dead as many of us would wish.
As someone who lives 2 blocks from the footprint, I’d LOVE to see development over the railyards and in the adjacent blocks. Just not the hideous scale of AY. And not using eminent domain. I’m also really pissed that they have already demolished part of the Ward Bakery and it seems unlikely the building can now be saved. Restored, it could have rivaled BAM and the Audubon Boat House in Prospect Park — both also terracotta buildings from the same era.
Look, this is an incredible opportunity for the city and state to step in and re-envision the entire plan. Involve several developers, not just one; create a transparent political process, instead of imposing the will of “3 men in a room” in Albany; include some much needed public amenities like a recreation center; etc, etc. Do I believe that will happen? Not for a New York minute. Real estate, money, and corrupt politicians will subvert proper urban planning every time. Hey, that’s just the American way.
the anti-AY crowd (I am proud to be one) had a much more commonsensical approach to what could be built in that area. ratner had no care for scale, or reality. Huge projets such as AY are long past their prime and usefulness. We need a much better approach to building housing than to subsidize mass warehousing of people into cold, psychologically numbing housing that is too large for the area, too expensive (Does anyone here think that the money ratner gets now will really be even close to enough over the long term schedule he has?) and too destructive. Outscale housing projects do not work. Mixed income housing in these projects do not sustain themselves- one group or the other leaves and it becomes much more monolithic.
I have never known anyone who can afford luxury housing choose to live in a project with those who will be subsidized. Anyone who says different really doesn’t know much about human nature- all yoou have to do is read this blog to hear the air of entitlement and snobbery of those who think money makes them so much better and smarter and more deserving than anyone else. these people are not going to buy a luxury apartment in a project with section 8.
And since ratner left himself an out on the affordable housing, more than likely it will never get built or be built somewhere far off site. But none of the pro AY people understood any of that. most of them just want a Brooklyn arena- how Roman Circus of you
And as the articles show- this was all about the Arena anyway. All that money and disruption and dangerous conditions put on all the rest of us just for the Nets- a third rate team- I can’t decide who is more foolish. ratner for biting off more than he could chew, the state for even giving him all that money and tax breaks – which would have effectively canceled out any “benefit” to Brooklyn, or the pro AYers who fell for the false promises and took the very short view. Certainly the community groups who got greedy must be feeling more than a little silly. Not such a done deal now is it?
bklynkitty
If Ratner were building on his own land, with his own money, he could do twice the density with whatever schlock architect he wants, and I wouldn’t mind. It’s the corporate welfare and abuse of emminent domain that offend me.