Ratner Cans Gehry For Good
Yesterday Forest City Ratner made official what everybody already knew: Architect Frank Gehry, his name having been prostituted to sell a sham project to the public, will have nothing to do with the design of any of the buildings in the Atlantic Yards footprint. We do not anticipate that Mr. Gehry will be designing any…
Yesterday Forest City Ratner made official what everybody already knew: Architect Frank Gehry, his name having been prostituted to sell a sham project to the public, will have nothing to do with the design of any of the buildings in the Atlantic Yards footprint. We do not anticipate that Mr. Gehry will be designing any of the individual buildings, said Joe DePlasco, a spokesman for Mr. Ratner. Jettisoning Mr. Gehry is expected to generate $200 million in savings for the developer. But don’t cry any tears for Gehry: The Times reports that he’s already been paid “tens of millions of dollars” for his work up to this point.
Gehry Is Out as Designer of Project in Brooklyn [NY Times]
Photo by Tracy Collins
sweet heart this, back room that, who gives a sh*t! it’s politics and biz as usual .. yawn…
to claim that the end result isn’t in context or necessary, is a JOKE! that current AY area sucks sucks sucks sucks!!
adding a stadium and housing to an area that currently harbors garbage and a ghetto, is AWESOME and exciting.
i am pissed off that the delays cost Brooklyn a Gehry stadium. this can be 100% blamed on the anti-AY crowd. there is no proof that this was ratner’s original plan.
Further DDDB, after looking at the occupations of your Advisory Board, it would help your cause to have a more-round group of people beyond those with Arts Degrees (i.e. to have some developers, business-owners, corporate-workers, etc).
I understand and support questioning/fighting abuses of public monies, abuses by elected officials, abuses of eminent domain.
Where DDDB loses me fighting out-of-context development specifically at the Atlantic Yards and the Gehry fiasco. DDDB’s site takes issue to Ratner’s plans’ proximity to Park Slope/Prospect Heights, when less than 50% borders these neighborhoods. Atlantic and Flatbush Avenues are the best roads in Brooklyn to accommodate this kind of development, not to mention the transport at the Atlantic Terminal.
If DDDB’s focus is truly on the corruption involved in this project, they had better ramp up their PR ASAP. Because they look like a bunch of rich whiny brats that aren’t satisfied with any proposal for the AY, and have now just ruined a potentially good thing.
Guys it’s over go home…
The What (FFFFFFFFFFTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT Boom!)
Someday the delusion is gonna end…
Ah, Montrose,(as always)you put it so well. Let me add that the Atlantic Yards fiasco highlights the need to put some real teeth into the concept of “community benefit” agreements. We are long past the point where they should be unenforceable carrots used to buy off community organizations (real or imagined) and create the illusion of community support. Instead, when the government (city, state or federal) subsidizes the projects of private developers, there should be real community benefits (housing, public space, etc) as part of the negotiated agreement – not payoffs for support. It would help keep the time frame for the completion of “community benefits†from being pushed to the end of the development line – if not ignored completely.
For the life of me, I can’t understand the anger at DDDB – they haven’t gotten a dime of the huge amount of subsidies that have already gone into the pockets of the developer. If one is going to be angry, why not be angry at the people who lied – not the people who have been saying all along that the emperor has no clothes, and trying to stop the funneling of tax dollars into corporate pockets.
Fucking disaster. Totally agree with DDDB. This project was as cynical as they come and was only possible with a complicit and spineless local government.
I hope FCR gets its comeuppance.
Whose money was it
If Gehry got paid millions?
Did we foot the bill?
JDP,
A mini Stuytown would be wonderful.
Just keep in mind; Stuytown/PC village is 80 acres with aprox. 25,000 residents.
Ratner’s AY is only 22 acres with an expected 15,000 residents, 10,000 office workers, a hotel and an arena. The density is absurd.
JDP, when the taxpayer’s hard earned bucks are being used to finance this project, when the developer is spending megabucks of other people’s money to market it as the greatest project in the history of building, for the people of Brooklyn, when the promise of jobs and “affordable” housing is touted and emphasized to minority organizations and minority groups in order to get their support, and when the threat of eminent domain – the appropriation of someone’s property, for a private developer’s use, is deemed reasonable and doable, then I think that that developer bears responsibility for a whole lot more than setting levels for low to moderate income housing. If he is getting public money and tons of public concessions and tax breaks, then he should be accountable to that public. If he was using his own money, with no sweetheart deals, paid full market price to the MTA, and anyone else, then I couldn’t say much, but he’s not.
I am also well aware that a lot of commissions never get built. It happens every day. However, this one happened with my dime, as well as the dime of every taxpayer in the city, and well beyond. That gives me bitching rights.