Author and lifelong Brooklynite Jonathan Lethem has drafted a personal letter to Frank Gehry that appeared in Slate yesterday. Here’s an excerpt:

[Your design is] a nightmare for Brooklyn, one that, if built, would cause irreparable damage to the quality of our lives and, I’d think, to your legacy. Your reputation, in this case, is the Trojan horse in a war to bring a commercially ambitious, but aesthetically—and socially—disastrous new development to Brooklyn. Your presence is intended to appease cultural tastemakers who might otherwise, correctly, recognize this atrocious plan for what it is, just as the notion of a basketball arena itself is a Trojan horse for the real plan: building a skyline suitable to some Sunbelt boomtown. I’ve been struggling to understand how someone of your sensibilities can have drifted into such an unfortunate alliance, with such potentially disastrous results.

The other zinger: “Your prestigious presence in this mercenary partnership reminds me of Colin Powell giving cover to the Cheney-Rumsfeld doctrine: If he’s on board, we’re meant to think, it can’t be as bad as it looks.” Ouch. Read on.
Brooklyn’s Trojan Horse [Slate]


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  1. I think Lethem’s letter is spot-on, well-articulated and fantastic! Wish I could write like that. I guess that’s why Lethem is on the board of DDDB.

    This is the best description of the project’s scope, impact and problems that I’ve seen. Should be linked-to from every anti-AY website!

    Incidentally, the thinking behind the comment ‘…tough kids’ informed the design of the mall in a strongly negative fashion-ever wondered why it has no wide, pleasant corridors (to linger in) as other malls do, no street-side window displays and gate-like entrances?

  2. I’m with Brenda. Jonathan is a terrific guy and his letter hits most of the key points of this hopelessly ill-conceived project. Now we just need a few more public figures to weigh in so that our elected officials can come to their senses and start — FINALLY — to fight back through the political process. There is no room in this city for a backroom deal that circumvents democratic process and threatens to create an enormous enviromental/traffic nightmare in the center of Brooklyn. Jeez, even Robert Moses — who created the entire highway infrastructure of NYC — opposed locating a new Dodgers stadium at this site because he said it would create a “China wall of traffic.” Let the railyards be developed BY the city FOR the city. Not for the enrichment of a private developer who is willing to inveigle the state into using eminent domain to take private property from those who don’t wish to sell to him. The site offers too many engineering challenges to be successfully developed by a private concern. The costs are so high that FCR has been “forced” to make their proposal massively over-scaled. Since our tax dollars will be paying for this development either way, let the public have full control and take FCR out of the equation. That would also enable the affordable housing to be real and permanent, instead of disappearing in a few short years as apts are re-let and quickly approach market rate.

  3. I originally tried to be the first to comment on the post and am sorry the server wouldn’t let me. Whoever wrote the first comment just sounds really angry. Anyway, I thought Lethem’s letter was great, although totally overdue. Where was he two years ago?

    The problem, however, is that Gehry will never leave this job, because to leave would mean he’d kiss goodbye future large projects. No one likes a quitter–and we like architects that walk off jobs even less. The problem also isn’t with Gehry, it’s with the program for the space. What we need is a smaller program — or basically no stadium. Ratner was clever in making his housing mixed-income because to have him take that away would make him seem elitist — the mixed-income housing to me is the real Trojan horse here. By presenting a scheme that seems like it’s benefitting the middle-lower classes, it makes the program defensible, when really it’s not.

    To be honest though, while I hate the project as is now, what bothers me more than anything else—more than the Gehry stuff and the size of the projects — is the idea of the way it will affect traffic. Living on Lafayette Ave right now is no joy, I can’t imagine what it will be like when the stadium goes up. One reason I moved to Brooklyn was it’s about 5 degrees cooler here every day because of the lack of car emissions and other heat trapping environmental problems — increased traffic is really my largest qualm because currently the intersection of Flatbush and Atlantic is a total nightmare.

  4. Great, great letter that thougtfully articulates many good points, and backs them up. Thank you.

    Ironic that anyone who speaks out against this project is automatically issuing “a long-winded screed” that no one will read. So, Ratner et al. have no problem dumping 16 looming towers on this spot but they can’t read a 2,000 word essay?

  5. three cheer for j. lethem for calling like he sees it. personally, i agree with him. part of the problem here is that the public, us, the taxpayers, the folks who will have to LIVE WITH THIS PROJECT have not had any opportunity to influence the design. fait acompli, indeed.

    personally, i’d start with the politicos, those folks who agreed to this project before any of us even knew about it. state project? how about pataki!! brooklyn project? how about marty the clown? the list goes on and on.

    what good will this all do? i don’t know, but it certainly can’t hurt. if somebody in a position of power comes to realize that there is genuine and substantial oppostion to the SCALE of these BEHEMOTHS, then maybe, just maybe, it can be fixed.

    the more voices the better. famous voices are even better, cause everybody knows that famous people have louder voices…:)

  6. “Essentially a deal has been struck among the cultural and moneyed elite….”

    I am not sure I would refer to Pataki, Gargano, Ratner, Bloomberg, Markowitz, Yassky, Vann, Sharpton, BUILD, and ACORN, among others, as being either the curtural or moneyed elite.
    However, if there is such a thing as the “patronage elite”, then the shoe fits.

  7. These building are “architecturally significant” only if significant = huge.

    There is zero reason to put up undulating glass towers in that section of Brooklyn.

    You know, they used to think that huge projects with brick towers off axis to streets and eliminating streets was a “good idea”. And what happened to those misguided building?

    Why at a time when we are at war, and experiencing high energy prices, are they even considering such huge building that have to use MAJOR power to heat, light and cool the buildings, and to power the elevators to move people through the buildings.

    Why are they building glass temples to excess and consumption? Why not planning to build smaller scaled energy efficient buildings?

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