Spillover Crowds, Strong Words Mark AY Hearing
By all accounts, yesterday’s public hearing on the Atlantic Yards project was crowded, raucous and long. There’s ample coverage of the blow-by-blows on the links below. While The Times notes that the two sides of the issue appeared to have hardened, Norman Oder notes that more public figures are heading the opposite direction: There was…
By all accounts, yesterday’s public hearing on the Atlantic Yards project was crowded, raucous and long. There’s ample coverage of the blow-by-blows on the links below. While The Times notes that the two sides of the issue appeared to have hardened, Norman Oder notes that more public figures are heading the opposite direction:
There was some evidence of a push for compromise. Borough President Marty Markowitz, though vague, offered his most forceful words for a project scaledown. Assemblymembers Roger Green and Jim Brennan reminded the crowd of their effort to subsidize a 34 percent reduction in the project’s size. And Kenn Lowy, of Community Board 2’s Traffic and Transportation Committee, drew cheers from opponents when he declared that the project must be reduced by 60 percent.
Is compromise the inevitable course of action?
Raucous Meeting on Atlantic Yards [NY Times]
Hoop Dreams Draw a Foul [NY Post]
Sides Clash Over Atlantic Yards [NY Sun]
Supporters Out in Force, Opponents Go the Distance [AY Report]
AY: Brooklyn Deserves a Better Plan [Municipal Arts Society]
BROOKLYN RULES!! LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT!!
ratner wants boring manhattan people (who love new construction and granite countertops to rest their pizza boxes and chinese containers on and think being near an arena would be cool) to move in, driving rents and condo prices even higher.
The pro-AY team is sounding a little glib and patronizing in these posts, as well as ignorant as to why property values have skyrocketed in the neighborhoods surrounding AY. It is because Brooklyn is definitely not the suburbs, but in the parts that we’re discussing, there are good schools, there are trees and parks, and you can open your windows (alright, but the subways are crowded). There are parts of Brooklyn that could use new development to revitalize the area, but we aren’t talking about those. The railyards should be developed, but Ratner is about to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.
People have spent decades improving their neighborhoods and are now being decried as NIMBY late-comers – enough with arrogant characterizations, please explain where people are going to send their kids to school.
I have always wondered who Ratner thinks is going to buy those apartments – live at a traffic choked intersection – mixed in with all the affordable housing people – does that sound attractive if you are looking for high end luxury?? Seeing how bad he is with malls and office buildings in Brooklyn we don’t have much hope for apartments do we.
“These buyers have choices, lots of them. Without schools, without transit options that don’t include squeezing on a train from a dangerously crowded platform, without the ability to open your windows because it’s too noisy and dusty, and most importantly without schools they just are not going to pay up.” — by Anonymous at August 24, 2006
Yeah pretty much sounds like what living in a ciy is about. don’t like it, move somewhere else. Cities will never be like the suburbs. Never.
Lots of real estate professional on here actually selling and renting in Brooklyn like me….I gotta tell you trolling folks on big-fat-cat-ratner’s payroll that this whole project is not going to fly. it’s all based on the misguided belief that you can actually sell a large number of your condos. not going to happen. These buyers have choices, lots of them. Without schools, without transit options that don’t include squeezing on a train from a dangerously crowded platform, without the ability to open your windows because it’s too noisy and dusty, and most importantly without schools they just are not going to pay up. It’s outrageous that this is not apparent. Market forces will eventually rule here. BS marketing may fly when you pay off pretend community leaders. They may fly when you pay off govt officials who have nowhere to go (hello Markowitz, hello Yassky, etc!) but people pulling in the mult-hundreds of thousands of dollars necessary to qualify for one of these condos aren’t blind and they aren’t deaf and they aren’t dumb. They want their kids to be in a park on a sunny day. There will be no such thing as a park and no such thing as a sunny day in Ratnerville.
I will live in those Gehry towers aswell just to have a view of all those beautiful brownstones below. Now that is worth it to have an apartment there. Just imagine the views.
Hello browstoners below!
“Brownstones are old and boring. Hopefully these new amazing Ghery towers will change the feel of Brooklyn.”
Hi there FCR/Developer there’s plenty of flashy big skysscrapers buildings in manhattan, we don’t need two manhattans. if you’re looking for excitement, why don’t you go there?. Do you know why brooklyn is so desirable now, ask any realtor it is BECAUSE of the brownstone neigborhoods- park slope, brooklyn heights, fort greene – areas that were ‘improved’ by massive central planning and using eminent domain (like robert moses’s projects) are some of the LEAST desirable areas in the city.
in a decade, your flashy new gehry building will look like those flashy new buildings of the seventies do now. then what build another one because you'[re ‘bored’?
^ I agree. I live close by in a brownstone. It sucks. I like them architecterly but I hate to live in them. I hear my neighbors all the time. They drive me crazy! Hopefully I can get a better apartment in one of these new buidings. I also like the renderings. I can live witht that.