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]
Malymis — one successful example (among many) is the one you yourself pointed against: Battery Park City. Not sure how you couldn’t count this as successful. I mean, come on.
Also, just so I understand — what exactly is a “nice natural grown city?” What are examples of such cities? Actually, just give one example.
nice natural grown city means that there are small lots develop by different developers within zoning restriction.
For example most of the Manhattan will qualify. Think union square vicinity for example – human scale mix of business and apartments.
Battery Park is just too big mega structure of set back towers it does not create neighborhood. (most resident use tribeca for that)
Rocefeler center is just too big of cluster of office space (specially the new part) so dead at night It is close to American downtown syndrome.
In order to do it right following condition should be preserve:
1 plurality of architecture (only can be achieved by multiple developers and small lots) Ratner is single developer of mega structure
2 street preservation (means buildings are facing and interact with a street and there are NOT set back tower I like to call them city killers) Ratner mega structure will swallows pacific street.
3 Preservation of human scale. self explanatory
No one said they want a “fantasy urban villiage” or even a neighborhood w/o any new development. Surely there is a middle ground between the technicolor nightmare vision of Ratner and the current barren wasteland of the Atlantic Yards.
Rockefeller Center is bad development? Battery Pk City? C’mon folks – I’m beginning to see your visions as sterile because everything would be same size style and age and the ‘quaintness’ of your fantasy urban village would be stifling.
A vibrant city can handle a big mix all in proximity.
Malymis — one successful example (among many) is the one you yourself pointed against: Battery Park City. Not sure how you couldn’t count this as successful. I mean, come on.
Also, just so I understand — what exactly is a “nice natural grown city?” What are examples of such cities? Actually, just give one example.
The proposed “affordable housing” is in the form of below-market rents for a limited period of time. As the buildings go condo, this “affordable housing’ will disappear. Poof! Just another example of “Ratner Magic.”
Don’t be fooled – this project is not about sports, or a stadium, or dubious Ghery architecture or, least of all, affordable housing. It’s a land grab by a wealthy and powerful developer paid for by taxpayer money.
It’s a huge F*ck You to all of us – and it is an awful shame that anyone would suggest that we should take it lying down. There are other options, but the people suggesting them don’t have the political clout or marketing muscle of an oligarch like Bruce Ratner.
This is bullshit.
Cities have grown for ages without mega developments.
This land has not been developed before because it belongs to MTA.
City must divided it to small lots create appropriate zoning/ master plan and start selling them.
Sooner then you think we would have nice natural grown city.
As I understand UNITY plan is going this direction.
Ratner plan will give us results like Rockefeller center/ battery park city/ trump ghetto.
Whole idea of building mega project by city or one developer does not work.
Please show me one successful example.
“Furthermore, if an organized coalition exists that is willing to bid in concert for the land, why don’t they come out and bid already? Obviously, there is no such coalition. If the UNITY plan is feasible, it should have been implemented years, if not decades, ago. Anyone who has been in the neighborhood for the thirty years that I have surely knows that the alternative to Ratner’s plan is thirty more years of desolation.”
I totally agree. While I have misgivings about the project, the opposition does not have a viable alternative and no one from UNITY or DDDB has anyone bidding for the rail yards. The result would be decades more of no development. Covering the yards is a monumental task that cannot be done in a hodge-podge patchwork. This development, while not my ideal, will help solidify the already gentrified, or gentrifying, adjacent neighborhoods.
Please don’t let that hack Gehry build in Brooklyn. He is a cartoonist, not an architect. The man cares nothing for architectural context or history and his whatever-is-swept-up-in-the-woodshop buildings show little concern for public space and the environment in which they are built. His work is egotistical and self-centered more than anything else. As somebody said above, Gehry may want the finished project to look “organic” but it will in the end look more like a malignant tumor than a work of architectual beauty. This will be a blight on Brooklyn and, if it must be built, I would call for somebody more respectful and humane than Gehry to design it.
To PkSlopeRenter – I get more uneasy thinking about what Metrotech and Atlantic Center looked like before Ratner.
Or what blocks of parking lots on Schermerhorn, Livingston and State have looked like for last 30 or so years or what Atlantic Ave looks like right now in area of proposed development.
Its not all about the community affected – its 1st and foremost about NYC in general. About 4-6000 new housing units and the people that will live in them. And about 1/2 of them have very few
options right now about finding decent affordable housing. Its about Class A office space that will mean jobs for NYers – in competition to financial services jobs moving to JerseyCity.
The area is well served but public transportation infrastructure and needs to be fully utilized-meaning large scale- if NYC is to remain healthy economically.
Of course there will be an affect on areas nearby, some negative but people are overstating the negatives and sounding quite provincial.