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.
You all sound like the blind men fighting over whet the elephant looks like.
Sad! Sad!
I’m thrilled with this news. I’m not anti AY overall, but I am anti-skyscrapers and anti-traffic congestion. An arena would be so much fun to take my future children to, but a bunch of skyscrapers and traffic? No thank you.
My point, Brooklynlove (and I am not the one who made the nasty comment about your parents/grandparents doing sh*t) is bit that manhattan people are coming here but what you seem to perceive as the so-called big benefits. New development is not always GOOD development. and the amount of city money ratner ws getting hardly qualifies as SOME, but as quite a bit. Not to mention the sweetheart deal he got on the Atlantic yards rights. Money that should have been used to better public transportation- except Ratner didn’t have to pay very much because he has buddies. He was’t bringing money here so much as taking it and spending it. I have no idea where you get your ideas from, but prating the same old look at what this project will do for Brooklyn has nothing to so with the reality. AY is a lot of smoke and mirrors- you haven’t been reading the papers if you still believe the promised affordable housing would happen in AY. If he was really going to build that, why leave himself a huge loophole.
Look at the numbers- by the time we finish paying through the nose for whatever part of AY actually gets built, the money we are supposed to be seeing will have long been spent. You can’t use public money and tax breaks and then say AY is bringing money back in. When, where, how much?
I also wouldn’t make all those assumptions bout who is AY and who isn’t.I live in Crown Heights- and my community will be very impacted. And again you miss the point of AY- it was not about Brooklyn- it was about being little Manhattan. One of the big pluses that they push is that Brooklyn is cheaper. Not all the wonderful things about it- that it’s cheaper (er…more reasonable). think I’m wrong? A poster on B’stoner mentioned a friend who quite his job with the Mayor’s office after hearing the Mayor boast that in a few years there would be no one living in Manhattan who earned less than 100,000 a year. frankly I can think of a lot things to be proud of in life, that’s not one of them. FYI- I used to live in Manhattan, years ago and moved to Brooklyn because I fell in love with it.I lived through the tough times here too and I still think AY was a crap idea for that area, but not because I didn’t want anything built. Because it was a rotten plan.
wake the F up. first of all, don’t give me this anti-manhattan people coming to brooklyn b/c half of the anti-AY save the world blow-hards on this blog came here from manhattan at some point b/c they had enough $$ to buy something nice in bk. what a bunch of s**t.
and somehow you think ratner not building this is going to result in more money going to schools or affordable housing. you’re a dunce if you believe that will happen. money is not going into this now b/c there is no money to go into anything.
regardless if ratner is getting some city money or no city money, he’s bringing new developemnt and new money into brooklyn. this is the way the schools get better. how the hell do you think 321 got to where it is now? and for those who bitch about atlantic center and metrotech, you represent the vast minority of opinion and i’d like to know if you prefered what was there before. do you even know what was there before? did you live in either areas before the developments? i’d say maybe 1% of the anti-AY crowd did, probably less.
and f**k you if you say my parents and grandparents didn’t do s**t for the borough. where the F were you when they were putting their kids through the schools here, spending their money here, participating in efforts to fight crime here, and putting time and money into building the very commuinty facilities that you take for granted now. go to hell.
11:24 – good post – I think one of the most important things is getting the ESDC out of the picture – AY not being a state project so that normal zoning and land use processes can take place. That was one of the worst things about the project – the over the top density, lack of any attention to the infrastructure – it would have overwhelmed the surrounding area – and it was possible because it was and ESDC project.
Ourrosoff (or however you spell it) is a bit off his rocker in that Times piece, by turns suggesting we should scrap the whole project (yay!) and praising Ratner’s history as a developer… um, have ANY of Ratner’s projects EVER turned out as anything other than ugly, cheaply-built, watered-down versioned of what he promised he would deliver? This is what happens when the city hands out a boondoggle of a deal in which the developer’s risk is cut to basically zero.
Atlantic Yards was, from the begining, a different beast than the rest of the development going on in Brooklyn. Maybe you buy a building like 110 Livingston and rehab it into fancy condos, or maybe you build one like the Forte… but either way you take on a certain amount of risk, and you have to create a quality product or it won’t sell. The development is measured on its merits in the open marketplace. But with Atlantic Yards the state has sold the land to Ratner cut-rate, and now he can do what he likes and he’ll walk away even richer than he already is, no matter what happens with the property and no matter where the economy goes. He’s got no strong incentives to really make something great, so he’ll make something off the cuff, ugly and without regard for the community, and it will take three times as long to do as he claimed it would. Note that the Atlantic Terminal Mall is STILL unfinished even as Ratner starts on the next project across the street; and note that the Atlantic Center STILL cannot find and keep a third-floor retail tenant (favorite line from back when Macy’s was there, from a salesperson: “oh no honey, we don’t have that – you should think of this not like Macy’s, but more like ‘Stacy’s'”).
And what’s this about Ratner being able to sell off parcels of land to other developers?? The only reason that the use of eminent domain here was kind of okay (even if really not) was the argument that the AY devlopment as a whole was a public good which made the taking worthwhile. If the whole shebang gets sold to private developers, I would think that would allow de novo review of those lawsuits… seems to me the original taking should simply be voided if Ratner can’t bring the project together like he promised.
And still agreeing with Johnny- NYPD is facing cutbacks as well, as is the Dept of Sanitation, Fire, etc. Your grandparents and parents won’t appreciate the cutbacks in services as a reward for all the years they stayed.
“…why we can’t support our schools but have $2 billion to underwrite the Nets and Ratnerville.”
God bless you, Johnny. Screw you, BK Love. Your parents/grandparents didn’t do shit.
GREAT DAY FOR BROOKLYN
Ay is the fruits of their resilience?? A dose of reality here, Brooklyn love- your parents and grandparents will see little to no benefit from Ratner’s overscaled, misbegotten project except to see their tax dollars lining his pocket. Or did you honestly think he would hand out affordable housing to those who have lived here for decades and “held things down during the tough times?” If so, you’re much more naive than you think. AY is all about ratner- any possible revenue benefits will accrue to him for so many years AY will sink into the ocean before NYC gets anything for all the money we gave him. Wake up- AY is not about bringing anything to Brooklyn other than rich Manhattanites who can’t find housing there or want to pay less. If anything AY will cater to people who see Brooklyn as a compromise, not a first choice.
Oh wait- yes! A basketball team of our own. Yeah- and an arena- that’s all we need here in Brooklyn to make us world class. Note to self: Brooklyn has nothing to offer without the Nets. Yes- and without the Knicks where would Manhattan be?
You don’t disgust us, Brooklynlove- you embarrass us.
LovesBklynmore