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.
Since Ratner is so rich, he and his trust fund kids should just pay for the project!!! How about that?
You know what, I finally figured it our (sorry, I’m slow)….The What is actually Daniel Goldstein…Hi Daniel! Someday this ends gonna war, right?
BrooklynLove I don”t think you have the connection to Brooklyn, I believe you are fronting! I think you brought here because of the stadium and potential of the neighborhood. Now you and others are seeing you dreams getting crushed! Atlantic Yards is fucking DEAD! Goldman Sachs was going to underwrite 2 billion dollars of bonds for this project but now have cold feet. Plus the city was going to give Ratner 2 Billion more. There is a big squeeze going on in the Muni credit markets. Investors don’t want anything to do funny debt. When they make the announcement the NETS are going to Newark NJ, the price of your “Brownstones” will plummet!!!! Unfinished construction will stop and leave urban blight for some time. Oh you guys are so fucked. RIP Atlantic Yards!!!
The What (Tick… Tick…. Tick…)
Someday this war is gonna end….
Let me say this, as a Manhattan transplant that is actually Pro-AY. I have lived in Brooklyn for the past 10 years, not because I can’t afford Manhattan, but because I CHOOSE to live in Brooklyn. For me, the appeal of Brooklyn is obvious, much less of a concrete jungle, parks, trees and a real sense of community. At the same time, my view towards AY and much of the downtown brooklyn development is that increase services and amenities is a net positive. The fact that Ft. Greene (where I live) does not have one decent grocery store (not at all a luxury amenity, but a basic necessity) is absolutely ridiculous. We all know (or should know) that Brooklyn has been severely neglected from a public infastructure investement perspective and a private development perspective for 100 years. The fact that the government and private investors are seriously focused on investing in Downtown Brooklyn can only be viewed as a net positive for the entire borough.
Somebody should clip Goldstein…end of story
So after reading through 115 posts, I’m still trying to figure out…what exactly to people propose “they” build in that location. I’m not taking sides either way, but seriously its easy to be a critic, a pundit, a nimby, but let’s here something constructive. What should be built? More Brownstoners? Who would be able to afford that…hmmm, my guess more former Manhattanites like Goldstein and his crew of gentrifiers
DDDB & Daniel G. are selfish ass smelling fags! They fart in wine glasses and then sit and smell and commentate how good it is. The Arena will be built, they accomplished nothing but a worse project, basically spitting in their own face 🙂 to poster 4:08pm, your friend shouldn’t fuck dirty guys maybe then she wont need all those expensive tests and a paps mere.
Peace out!
We understand the funding problem, believe me. So let developers use other people’s money- private investors. Not public funds for private projects. If an investor chooses to put his money into a project, he also accepts responsibility for any loss. giving public funding takes away choice, responsibility and benefits away form the taxpayers while we still lose. The benefits ratner and you talk about are primarily for Ratner- and that’s fine so long as he is not using my money. And oodly enough there are plenty of developers doing great things without relying on big public funding or eminent domain.
I don’t want to invest in an arena when schools, cops and firefighters are losing out. When we can’t get health insurance and reasonable medical care. My friend went to the emergency room. No insurance. they charged her 478$ for a pap smear alone. So why should my money be used to fund people who don’t need it when my friend gets charged over a $1000 for an emergency room visit where she saw a doctor for a total of 15 minutes, got charge exorbitant amounts of money for tests she didn’t agree to and the doctor tried to hit on her. Brooklyn Hospital- don’t go there.
Have any of you put together a development project of this scale? or any scale?
Run the numbers, find investors, buy the land and build something. Make it happen.
Developers are just people like you, and they are mostly using other people’s money to get stuff done.
If you can find a way to buy and build and create and profit, you will get investors. What you are witnessing now is a funding problem. (why is too long to go into hare, Look it up)
Maybe Ratner is not as good as you.
Give it a try!