Gehry & Ratner Show Their Cards
July 5, 2005, NY Times — The massive building plan surrounding a new Nets arena east of Downtown Brooklyn will include a ridge of a half-dozen skyscrapers as high as 60 stories sweeping down Atlantic Avenue, along with four towers circling the basketball arena, according to new designs completed by the developer Bruce C. Ratner…
July 5, 2005, NY Times — The massive building plan surrounding a new Nets arena east of Downtown Brooklyn will include a ridge of a half-dozen skyscrapers as high as 60 stories sweeping down Atlantic Avenue, along with four towers circling the basketball arena, according to new designs completed by the developer Bruce C. Ratner and the architect Frank Gehry. The project, the largest proposed outside Manhattan in decades, would include much more housing than originally announced in 2003, growing to about 6,000 units from 4,500, according to a plan made available to The New York Times. But the real impact would be in the size and density of the buildings, which are taller and bulkier than once envisioned. With 17 buildings, many of them soaring 40 to 50 stories, the project would forever transform the borough and its often-intimate landscape, creating a dense urban skyline reminiscent of Houston or Dallas. The project would be built in phases, starting with the blocks around the arena, then the apartment complexes along Dean Street at the Vanderbilt Avenue end, and finally the northern stretch of housing along Atlantic Avenue. The arena is planned to open for the 2008-9 basketball season, said James P. Stuckey, an executive vice president at Forest City Ratner Companies, with the entire project completed as soon as 2011. The project will come before the Metropolitan Transportation Authority tomorrow as Mr. Ratner makes a formal proposal to buy and develop the Atlantic Avenue railyards.
Comment: We have to admit that these renderings are pretty exciting. Over the past several months, as the debate over the project has intensified, we found our sympathies leaning towards the anti-Ratner camp. We’re extremely uncomfortable with the concept of eminent domain and if our brownstone happened to be directly affected by the plan we’re sure we wouldn’t be pleased. But it’s hard to look at Gehry’s renderings and not get swept up. We couldn’t give a rat’s ass about having a local basketball team, but being at the center of arguably the most significant urban development effort in a generation (or more) is starting to outweigh our earlier reservations. Let’s hope that it’s more than a giant P.R. stunt to close the deal. Enough people’s lives are being uprooted that this better end up being something special. From the looks of it, it just may be.
Instant Skyline Added to Brooklyn Arena Plan [NY Times]
An Appraisal [NY Times]
By the way, if healthy environmental policy was merely about keeping urban areas as dense as possible to keep down transporation pollution than certainly China would be an environmentalists paradise and the Lower East Side of Manhattan the healthiest neighborhood in NYC.
Sorry, it’s a bit more complicated than that.
Besides, considering the already scarce nature of greenspace in NYC urban “sprawl” as it contemporarily concerns most people will hardly ever be an issue in NYC.
To be honest, an alternative plan at this exact moment in time has no real effect on my feelings regarding the Ratner project. Whether or not the land the MTA owns and the land around the yards owned by Ratner and private landowners gets developed this year or five years from now is not as important to me as not having this specific development built for a variety of aesthetic, social and political reasons. The land is undervalued, for sure, but I can wait for a better plan whenever it may come.
As for NIMBY comments, yes David, quite astute to realize that it’s a truism that those who are most affected by development in any sense are going to be the most critical or questioning of the development itself. I’m sure the Atlantic Yards project is a real hotly contested topic in the Bronx right now.
It’s a perfectly defensible and respectable position to be from Fort Greene/Prospect Heights and against the Atlantic Yards project, especially if it’s your home that will be lost or your neighborhood that will be dramatically altered in terms of population density and character.
I thought Red Hook was suburbia? Don’t you have to drive there? Sorry, kidding.
Good points, David. Couldn’t agree more.
David
All respect, but can you finally understand that all I think is that this area should feel more like Union square less like Midtown
I am not trying to preserve uhal parking lot. It should be develop but not with this f**king megastructure and with comunity imput.
This is amazing… 53 comments so far, but when Brownstoner posted a story about Ikea last week there was barely a peep. yet here you all are talking about out of context development and how it will destroy the urban fabric of brooklyn. But turning Red Hook into a suburbia is okay? Giving up your waterfront to a 26 acre big box store is fine?
From Ikea’s Red Hook to Ratner’s Atlantic Fun House to Boymelgreen’ Gowanus Village, the next ten to twenty years will forever change Brooklyn and the chance to Unite and save it from becoming a developer’s playground is now. There is nothing wrong with wanting to develop Brooklyn but it must take into account what already exists.
well, there are detractors in higher places who have a lot to say and little to show. not easy to predict the future but who’s to say it’s a bad plan? you? and how do you know that in decades to come, having gained hindsight, this won’t be one of the greatest achievements ever brought to brooklyn? sure eric, the debate has been going on for a while now but at some point shouldn’t the detractors (or at least the “backbone” and figureheads representing the detractors) bring something with a little spine to the table other than their words and fears. shouldn’t someone be required to do some (just some) intellectual heavy-lifting if there are so many detractors? if all you’re going to do is oppose it, fine, that’s your opinion, i respect it. but that’s not going to stop the building. having said that, i have my fears about it too but the project signifies progress and growth.
Much better idea is to do anything that is not a mega structure swallowing clock tower and pacific street.
It is as simple as that.
Lets stop this†do you have better ideaâ€â€.
It will takes average second year arch. student to come up with better plan.
What I find humorous is the idea that those who disagree with Ratner’s plan are derided for not doing the intellectual heavy lifting of proposing a competitive alternate plan complete with funding, blueprints, etc…yet the apparent supporters of Ratner’s plan feel as though they are immune from the same request to prove that the development will not be destructive or bad for the surrounding neighborhoods or Brooklyn itself.
Why should detractors be required to come up with an alternative project, anyway? The idea that a bad development now is better than a good development years (or even a decade or so) from now reflects poor vision. If the idea is to develop something that will last for decades upon decades, it should probably be critiqued on a more sophisticated basis than, “Well, do you have a better idea?”
If so many people are so eager to explore the middle ground, what is the middle ground? where’s the alternate plan? what’s better about it over ratner’s plan? will it prevent people from being displaced and if so what % displacement is the community “comfortable” with? what does it do to affordable housing? what does it bring to the neighborhood? what does it take away? how does an alternate plan affect transportation? let’s stop talking in terms like “technicolor nightmare vision” and say something meaningful, something that’s beyond simply the personal. otherwise, there’s not much to say…