Today's The Big Day at Atlantic Yards

After the years of lawsuits (the last of which was concluded yesterday), public acrimony and lack of transparency, Bruce Ratner is scheduled to break ground on his divisive Atlantic Yards project this morning. At this point, all we can really do is hope that the whole project ends up being not nearly as ugly, congestive and delayed as many people fear. Just because Bruce is breaking out the back-hoes, however, don’t expect that the most die-hard opponents will be hiding in the shadows. Though there was no sign of any drama outside the groundbreaking tent when we cycled past earlier this morning, the day promises to be full of surprises, Freddy’s style. The official groundbreaking ceremony starts at 1:30 and the anti-Yards contingent will gather outside Freddy’s bar at 12:30. We’ll update this post with photos as they start to hit the interwebs. Update: Curbed is live-blogging the event, along with photos from pre-game show at Freddy’s, here.