AY: A Hearing on Terrorism Threat Followed by a March
Will Atlantic Yards be a terrorist target? If so, what have the state and Forest City Ratner done to ensure public safety in and around the sprawling development? Such were the questions raised by speakers yesterday at a Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn press conference held in advance of the third annual Walk Don’t Destroy rally….
Will Atlantic Yards be a terrorist target? If so, what have the state and Forest City Ratner done to ensure public safety in and around the sprawling development? Such were the questions raised by speakers yesterday at a Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn press conference held in advance of the third annual Walk Don’t Destroy rally. Atlantic Yards opponents have been making noise about the development’s possible security concerns following news that Newark’s $375 million Prudential Center arena, which is set to open in a couple of weeks, has only recently been deemed vulnerable to a potential terrorist attack. Newark officials say the arena isn’t far enough from traffic to protect it from terrorist attacks and they’re now playing catch-up—securing surrounding streets with concrete barriers and planning to close a section of one street on event nights—to guard against attacks.
Speakers yesterday said that like Newark’s arena, Forest City Ratner’s Nets arena could pose very real security threats to the development’s thousands of residential units as well as people living in surrounding communities. We’re here to call for safety, said DDDB’s Daniel Goldstein, noting that the Environmental Impact Statement for Atlantic Yards claimed a terror attack is not a reasonable worst-case scenario. Councilwoman Letitia James and Jim Vogel of the Council for Brooklyn Neighborhoods joined Goldstein in demanding a state hearing on Atlantic Yards terrorism security issues. James said the Brooklyn arena was much more of a terrorist target than the Prudential Center, and that the state and Forest City Ratner had refused to disclose to elected officials how they were planning to safeguard against attacks. And Vogel said it was imperative to avoid reactive planning: Newark’s Prudential arena is a wake-up call…We need answers.
Small photo from No Land Grab‘s Flickr photo set
Polemecist —
AY is not a matter of one man using his private property. It’s a matter of state government SEIZING one man’s private property and bequething it to another. Do you support that???
Many funny comments here. But Bruce’s remark about kids from the neighborhoods around th emall being the type who cut school really took me back — to my own high scholl experience in the suburbs (LI). My friends and I regularly used to leave our private school during the day, take one of our nice cars given as 16th birthday present, and go hang out at the mall! I’d imagine it’s a lot harder for the kids in school today to get out during the day that way.
1:58, Thanks but I was able to determine that from the giant NY TIMES at the top of the webpage and I haven’t seen anywhere Ratner claiming he will create housing for a bunch of teenage miscreants.
Come on people get more shrill…its working…
No not really.
The fact busybody NIMBYs can tell me what I can and cannot do with my property in and of itself is an offense, but to then use their same tactics to limit new develop during the worst housing shortage this city has ever experienced, is offensive.
HOW ARE WE LIMIITING HOUSING???
THERE IS PLAN THAT HAS HOUSING…and meanwhile Ratner now owns three buildings that are empty, if he gave his own rat’s ass about the housing shortage, he would take the families now being turned away by the DOH and have them stay in his buildings since his “affordable” housing is part of his “maybe” Stage 2″ of development. Even if everyone in the entire city and state loved this project and rolled out the red carpet….his “affordable” housing would not be built unitl AFTER he builds the luxury housing, and with no guarentee….so save us the bs that people who hate this Ratner bs are against creating housing, that is just more unfounded propaganda.
I mean be somewhat realistic, FCR is a corporation made up of rich white guys, stop pretending that the bottom line is not all they care about. Not Bertha Lewis, not the housing shortage, and certainly not you. And maybe there is nothing intrinsically wrong with that, but get real he is nothing new, he is not a savior to the masses, he is a developer with maybe a few smart tactics.
“But to say someone has “failed” is just a circumvented way of actually saying they succeeded”
OR, it could be a DIRECT way of saying they’ve failed!
But failed what???
You dare never explain what the heck you even mean.
It seems a success if at the very least some one like you now has something to do with your afternoons apparently.
What is this bar of failure you have set and defined?
If Ratner’s way of succeeding is creating blight and bullying people into giving him what is theirs…then bring on failure man, cause that kind of success, is the kind that keeps a person awake late night as a very old person thinking, what have I done.
1:55PM The entire neighborhood of Harlem was built as luxury housing and look what happened to that. Bed-Stuy followed the same course too.
The history of this city is one of tearing down obsolete buildings and building high-density luxury housing. Sometimes they built too much, and it instead became the domain of the poor and indignant. No one except socialists ever build crap from the beginning (ie, public housing).
If it were not for speculation on the part of luxury developers, blacks would have no neighborhood in this city.
As for “democracy” and “rights”, property rights are a fundamental aspect of any notion of civility recognized all the way back to Hammurabi. Zoning laws are a slap in the face of any notion of the rule of law. The fact busybody NIMBYs can tell me what I can and cannot do with my property in and of itself is an offense, but to then use their same tactics to limit new develop during the worst housing shortage this city has ever experienced, is offensive.
The constitution guarantees equal protection under the law. All of this ranting about context, tall buildings, and every other NIMBYism ignores the reality the laws you claim are the will of the people in fact benefit the few (rich brownstone owners) at the expensive of the many (those who endure high prices because of a housing shortage). That is not justice. That is outright oppression.
The problem we have here is purely one of a solipsism. The anti-development crowd simply replaces true concepts of universal justice (the right of people to do what they wish with their property) with the narcissistic belief that their own personal views are shared by the masses and thus are just.
The law in this country is not a popularity contest, but even if it were – the anti-development crowd is wholly a tiny minority. I really want them to go to some family living in a 3-room apartment and tell them “Yeah, so sorry, we don’t want to build new housing so you can afford something better. Really, having a view of the horizon is far more important than having separate bedrooms for your sons and daughters. Trust me, you’ll figure it out in time.”
How does the common man benefit from stopping Atlantic Yards or any other high-density development? He doesn’t. His family suffers. His life is more difficult. All for what? Please tell me. And please, think of supply and demand economics before you respond.
I walked in the march. There were 200 people. I would estimate that it probably took about ten minutes for the parade to pass by. This is why the cops blocked off streets as we passed. Using cars with flashing lights. If it were indeed 90 seconds they would have just used a traffic cop. I’d say the march was about 2 blocks long, so feel free to extrapolate numbers and duration using that as a benchmark.
Nothing will stop the development of Atlantic Yards.This deal, along with the revamping of Myrtle Avenue and Downtown Brooklyn is a done deal secured under the Dinkins administration.All the protests, marches and demonstrations will not prevent it from happening.
“But to say someone has “failed” is just a circumvented way of actually saying they succeeded”
OR, it could be a DIRECT way of saying they’ve failed!