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]
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I’m very optimistic. The southside of Atlantic Avenue going east from Flatbush looks like urban wasteland. As does Flatbush Avenue south of Atlantic.
Opportunity for filling in this area with commercial and residential will be great for area and city.
New York didn’t become world-class city by thinking small. For the size/number of new housing units that will be built amount of displacement is small. Even ACORN is going along with it.
How rediculous calling a scar in Brooklyn or comparing to Robert Moses projects – they are not ripping down blocks of brownstones or going through heart of some neighborhood for a highway – they are building a new community where
little exists. How many people think its a pleasant walk from Prospect Hts to Ft Greene now at 11Pm at night.
And before the Atlantic Center was built – do you remember what area looked like? I think memories are pretty short or haven’t been in area very long.
I agree that this design seems pretty ugly and garish, but I also don’t think you can judge by a few sketches. Also, the opposition seems to be forgetting what’s there right now–namely abandoned warehouses and a railyard!! Hardly worth saving. (Yes, I know, poor Dan Goldstein and a few other holdouts are a shining example of the vitality of the neighborhood, etc….)
If anyone out there (UNITY or otherwise) has any better ideas, they should come forward by tomorrow and bid for the land. Otherwise, opposition to the plan is nothing more than obstructionism. In the name of holding out for the perfect development plan, the dddb crowd will just give us 30 more years of blighted wasteland.
We have a big problem with forcing people to sell as we said up front. Architecturally, however, we have lost all faith in the current day developers to do anything right in Brooklyn. Show us one compelling apartment building that’s gone up in Brooklyn in the last generation! Organic development of the area over the next decade would surely end up with an uglier result than this.h Unfortunately, most of the people who own the developable plots of land couldn’t give a damn about aesthetics. This may ned up looking a little Disney-World-Meets-Dallas, but it will sure beat what Bedford Avenue and Fulton will look like when the Scaranos and Developers Groups are finished!
Like Brownstoner, I have mixed and conflicting feelings about this plan. I think the Nets coming to Brooklyn is a great thing for the borough, but I am worried about the use of eminent domain for private development. Objectively, I like Frank Gehry’s work, but his buildings look best when viewed alone, free of the confines of neighborhood context and scale. So what to make of this latest plan? Experience tells us that grand plans get whittled away by the process, especially when the prime driver for Ratner is economic rather than architectural. I’m afraid that by the time all is said and done we will have hulking towers without the artistic flair that Gehry envisions now.
So I say build the arena and build it boldly, but perhaps leave it at that. If I want big bland 60 story towers I’ll move to Manhattan (or Houston or Dallas…shudder).
TO ANONYMOUS WHO STATED — “New development makes me so sad… These plans don’t look like an exciting skyline to me, they look like a bunch of boxes (I especially dislike the skewed boxes). The Manhattan skyline is so beautiful, I love the grand old buildings with all their detail.” … Just curious, how do you think the NY skyline got that way? I wonder if anything preceded the Chrysler Building? You know, I’m sure some lovely small structures were torn down to make way for these present awesome views. My optimism is cautious as well but this plan is well worth a shot. And in terms of a basketball team, well, Brooklyn is a first-rate city and deserves a professional team. No disrespect to the Cyclones but we deserve more.
This seems to me to be in complete conflict with your response to the ratner project:
An unhealthy obsession with historic Brooklyn brownstones and the neighborhoods and lifestyles they define.
his whole think is just a publicity stunt to overcome local opposition.
Ratner uses F Geary, Nets, Minorities etc. to build outrageous, giant Atlantic Mall/ time square in the middle of Brooklyn
It will change Brooklyn as we know for ever.
F Gehry architecture is quite bad right now, and it will only get only worst. (Bigger duller and boxier)
Just look what happened to WTC master plan by Libeskind.
I am surprise that Brownstoner is falling for this.
F Gehry said:
“It’s big and so we’re trying to design it as a good neighbor, which is hard to do when the buildings you’re building are bigger than the ones around you,” he said. “No one’s had an opportunity in a long while to build a new urban complex of this density in the city,” he added. “By breaking it down and making it look like a city it has a sense of belonging and a sense of choice. You’re not saying everybody’s got to live in the same thing. And that’s something that’s quite Brooklyn.”
I totally can see Bruce coming to Frank saying:
“Hi Frank can we do something to make it fit better; I know it is so big but can we make people to believe it will fit?
You could do your crazy shit it will sell nicely on TV, later we will have time to fix it â€
So here we have new version of the plan, more twisted with some soft fabrics on the model just to make people to believe it is ok.
SIZE IS A REAL ISSUE AND IT DID NOT CHANGE.
This Gehry “designed” project, if built, will be a scar on Brooklyn. What a pathetic project! In the article, Gehry says that he wanted the project to look like it wasn’t all built at the same time — to look like it grew “organically.” Give me a break! This looks like a massive and destructive project that Robert Moses himself may have come up with if he were alive today.
B’stoner, you disappoint me. You’re getting all caught up in the marketing of project that is basically a land grab by a politically connected developer. How about all those people who do not want to sell, but will be forced to do so? And for what? For a development that looks like some bad sci-fi vision of the future when the barbarians have taken over and can’t even manage to build a building that doesn’t sag?? Pathetic.