City Used Eminent Domain for BAM Cultural District
While researching Friday’s post about the Danspace tower getting killed, we stumbled across something interesting: In January, the city acquired six properties in the BAM Cultural District via eminent domain. All six properties were within the block bounded by Fulton Street, Ashland Place, Lafayette Avenue and Rockwell Place. We should have noticed this earlier, as…
While researching Friday’s post about the Danspace tower getting killed, we stumbled across something interesting: In January, the city acquired six properties in the BAM Cultural District via eminent domain. All six properties were within the block bounded by Fulton Street, Ashland Place, Lafayette Avenue and Rockwell Place. We should have noticed this earlier, as the BAM properties were actually acquired as part of a larger eminent domain grab that included several lots within the footprint of Willoughby Square Park. We reported that news back in January when it happened. How do people feel about the use of eminent domain in this case?
Another BAM Building Gets Tabled [Brownstoner]
City Secures Rest of Willoughby Square Park Properties [Brownstoner]
Well after all that, we should now have another drink…and take a cab home.
g_man:
its not the institutions, its the pork attached to it.
what you are responding to is my general distaste when a cultural development plan will be mostly a residential development deal. it stinks.
wrt theater for a new audience…
$50,000,000 for a 299 seat theater. get a grip. that is way out of line of any realistic costs. 10000 square feet comes outto $5,000/square foot. or $166k PER seat.
that is flat out offensive. we dont need more high end status driven theater. we need more theaters. this is just a way for the wealthy to milk the middle class who dont pay enough attention.
brooklyn isnt a new mini manhattan to be abused. it needs to be nurtured and respected. neither is present.
a reasonably rigorous look at the numbers highlights its flaws. and there are many.
Ah…the arguing at those dinner parties and cocktail parties…Hhhh…nostalgia. It just doesn’t happen any more like that…or maybe I don’t get out…or maybe it’s the generation…?
No. I think it’s the times…they have a’changed. Things are so uptight in some ways now.
As my grandfather used to say: “Ehch!”
Actually, it’s probably better now in some ways…it’s just that fewer people seem to clue in now…or ask questions…
Ahh, the 60s and the 70s. What little I remember of those decades, I remember well.
Interesting…it sounds like some people here know a little bit about what’s going on! Let’s have a lively dinner party!!! It’ll be like New York in the 60s and 70s when we thought we had important things to discuss!
bkn4life, the article you reference states that the city has $74M allocated for the cultural district in FY06-09. This number is more consistent with the budget numbers I posted at 11:06. The (2006) $650M figure you cite is total expenditures by all parties, not the city. That includes, solely for example, the roughly $50M for the new Theater for a New Audience.
By now I suppose I should, but I don’t understand the point you are trying to make. This is a redevelopment project anchored by a broadening variety of cultural institutions in proximity to the Brooklyn Academy of Music. The city is able to use eminent domain (to get back to the original post) because this has been part of an urban renewal area for decades. Is your criticism that the New York Times didn’t make this sufficiently clear?
I am really confused about your second “salient point.” Jeanne Lutfy and Harvey Lichtenstein were part of the BAM Local Development Corporation, which was subsumed by the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership around the time of this article. Lichtenstein was at BAM for years and the cultural district was conceived, as I said before, to revitalize the entire area around BAM. To paraphrase, BAM drove the agenda but the LDC and now DBP are independent, quasi-public entities implementing the “cultural district” redevelopment plan. “Lincoln Center” only goes so far as an analogy.
I am really trying to be responsive, and don’t have an agenda when it comes to this project, but I feel like I am responding to a ill-defined and moving target.
g_man:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/15/arts/design/15bam.html?scp=1&sq=bam%20cultural%20district&st=cse
salient point #1:
“””
The BAM Cultural District was conceived as a $650 million effort to revitalize the area by converting vacant and underused properties into spaces for arts organizations.
“””
arts, not housing. the usual flat out scam.
with$650,000,000 for arts they could renovate every derelict theater in the boro. can you say loews flatbush? or that one out in coney island.
salient point #2:
“””
Ms. Lutfy said she and Harvey Lichtenstein, chairman of the corporation, would still take part in the planning. (Mr. Lichtenstein, citing a family illness, referred calls to Ms. Lutfy.)
“””
Nope Lufty has nothing to do with the BAM. Harvey either.
Nope, the Bam wont have anything to do with planning the Bam cultural district. The BAM just “happens” to sit in the middle of a district named after it.
doreen, you are incorrect. The numbers above are from the FY10 capital budget and have nothing to do with operating expenses. I am familiar with the Cultural Institutions Group. The “Sal” in “PV264-Sal” is short for “Salvation Army,” the site of the planned BAM expansion.
Yes, all the organizations are independent. The BAM Cultural District is a planning scheme, not a cabal.
g man, those numbers are what BAM receives on an annual basis to operate. They are a CIG — the City owns their building and provides significant annual funding.
BAM is also getting City capital dollars for their new theatre.
These numbers have nothing to do with the BAM Cultural District. BAM has nothing to do with the BAM Cultural district other than geography. All of the organizations building and moving in are completely independent.