Proposed: Atlantic Yards Development - Commercial, Residential, Retail, NBA Arena

[pianoman11686]

I feel like this building, designed by another great architect (Philip Johnson), would fit perfectly into this development:

http://www.theslatinreport.com/content/pictures/0203pj.jpg

[212]

Wow, intriguing plan, maybe the most important in urban America today. Though I mostly agree with Ouroussoff's appraisal, what's up with the sniping at Jane Jacobs? This is the second time in two weeks for him. Is she an ex-girlfriend or something?

[Fabrizio]

For a preview of Gehry´s Brooklyn :


http://www.kunstler.com/eyesore_200405.html

[ZippyTheChimp]

Another "appraisal" from the NY Times architectural critic:
Why the quotes?

[Fabrizio]

It´s as if they said "make it as ugly as you possibly can...."

http://www.kunstler.com/eyesore_200408.html

[NoyokA]

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2005/07/04/nyregion/booklyn.slide2.jpg

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2005/07/04/nyregion/brooklyn.slide.3.jpg

This promises to be one of Gehry's best designs along the lines of Dusseldorf, and this will be the greatest super development in New York City history, bar none.

[BPC]

Well, Ourousoff is right about one thing. This will be nothing like Battery Park City! While I find the whole plan hideous, ultimately success or failure of residential architecture is judged not by high-brow critics but by the people, who will vote with their feet. If Ratner can find people who wish to live in an environment this hostile to the street and the surrounding neighborhood, then more power to him. I note that developers never had any trouble filling up similarly-aloof towers on Miami Beach. Of course, there is the beach.

[BrooklynRider]

It's interesting how Gehry's "conceptual" designs never materialize from concept to actual design. This isn't even close to earlier concepts. It does look like they are trying to be somewhat sensitive to the scale of the neighborhood. However, I agree with BPC. There are Gehry designs I love and Gehry designs I hate. My initial reaction is: "yikes!". I don't love it.

[Citytect]

I can't get a good feel of what exactly is going on in this design from those pics. What I can see, though, is a little disappointing. I don't hate it, but I was expecting a lot better. Gehry's approach doesn't suit this dense, urban streetscape well.

[bkmonkey]

ehh, I thought it was hidous at first, but once I looked at it a while longer (20 mins) i became crazy about it. I like the way the slanted towers give a Times Square Effect at the Atlantic/Flatbush intersection. If this area is floodlight at night in the way that it is pictured in the drawings, then it will be amazing, but lets keep in mind tht this design is subject to change.

[NoyokA]

ehh, I thought it was hidous at first, but once I looked at it a while longer (20 mins) i became crazy about it. I like the way the slanted towers give a Times Square Effect at the Atlantic/Flatbush intersection. If this area is floodlight at night in the way that it is pictured in the drawings, then it will be amazing, but lets keep in mind tht this design is subject to change.

That’s Gehry for you. The design is chaotic which is appropriate as an abstract representation of the chaotic city itself.

[pianoman11686]

Why the quotes?

Two reasons:

"Appraisal" is not my word. The article is described, most likely by Ouroussoff himself, as an appraisal.

Also, I put it in quotes because I don't really agree with the article being denoted as an appriasal. I certainly wouldn't call it that. Appraisal, to me at least, is a word that pertains to official valuations of property, or, in a slightly broader sense, "the classification of someone or something with respect to its worth." I don't think that architecture, especially when it's still only present in rendering form, should fall under this definition. It seems especially less appropriate when it's being reviewed by a critic who offers his own opinions, as opposed to the architect himself who simply outlines what his work consists of. I'm not trying to criticize Ouroussoff here, per se, because he certainly does have some good points. I am, however, still a little sore over his "appraisal" of the new Freedom Tower.

Well, that's enough of that. Sorry for getting off topic.

[ryan]

Gehry is love it or "...meh" This is definitely a meh. Loved the new NYC Guggenheim (great b/c it sat on the river without obstruction), loved the NYT tower, but I think greenie is right that Gehry doensn't do much within the constraints of a grid and existing city. It'll be interesting to see how the design develops, but as the Experience Music building in Seattle demonstrates, Gehry is capable of flops.

(hate it when architects collage different facades to fake multiple buildings - so disney)

[Fabrizio]

Ster: "That’s Gehry for you. The design is chaotic which is appropriate as an abstract representation of the chaotic city itself".

We already know life´s a bitch.... do we need Gehry to remind us?


Favorite quote from the Times article:

"With 17 buildings, many of them soaring 40 to 50 stories, the project would forever transform the borough and its often-intimate landscape, creating a dense urban skyline reminiscent of Houston or Dallas".


WOW.... Houston or Dallas..... yipeeeee!!!

[pianoman11686]

Clearly, the comparison to the dreadfully boring downtowns of Houston or Dallas was meant only as a quantitative approximation of the plan, as in: From several miles away, people will be able to identify Brooklyn's skyline as that of a typical city with ~2.5 million residents. From up close, the last place people will be reminded of is Houston or Dallas. This development is a one-of-its-kind. No matter how pleasing or disappointing the end result will turn out, there will be no comparison to anything else.

[Fabrizio]

Untrue. Because Gehry constantly repeats himself... this project will surely be compared to much of his other work, especially his project in Dusseldorf. You´ve seen one of his "designed-in-a-vacuum" signature, slanted, twisty buildings... you seen ´em all. Zzzzzz....zzzz....zzzz....

[pianoman11686]

I know he's designed a lot of buildings...I meant nothing on this scale, as in creating an entire downtown core for a city of 2.5 million.

[NYatKNIGHT]

I don't like when his buildings look as though they went through a major earthquake, like this tissue box disaster scene:

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2005/07/04/nyregion/brooklyn.slide.5.jpg

[Citytect]

(hate it when architects collage different facades to fake multiple buildings - so disney)
I couldn't put my finger on what it is about these towers I don't like. But I think ryan sums it up well. It's very disney - looks like a phony city.

Untrue. Because Gehry constantly repeats himself... this project will surely be compared to much of his other work, especially his project in Dusseldorf. You´ve seen one of his "designed-in-a-vacuum" signature, slanted, twisty buildings... you seen ´em all. Zzzzzz....zzzz....zzzz....
That's so true.

It seems Gehry is becoming a watered down version of himself.

[Clarknt67]

I love the perspective my non-architectural buff friends provide sometimes.

One such friend saw this in the NYTimes and said, "It looks like the set of the Wiz." LOL! I'm not sure that's what I was hoping for...

Ease on down, ease on down...

[bkmonkey]

I agree, the tissue box designs do look kind of silly, however the actual design of the areana, and the preliminary designs for the complex (the one below) are very interesting, and adds a a very urban feel to this intersection.. it would be an amazing transformation
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2005/07/04/nyregion/brooklyn.slide.3.jpg

[Fabrizio]

In my post above #506 I also say it looks like "old sets from the Wiz".

Wouldn´t it be nice to see a development like this spread out among different architects instead of getting "Frank Ghery Place" .

It does look like a place you´d pay admission too.

[czsz]

I sincerely hope the glowing Nets paraphenalia covering the bottom half of the development is strictly theoretical.

[sfenn1117]

At 6 on newschannel 4 it was the lead story. Yet on cbs2 it was briefly mentioned right before the sports segment. Just found it interesting.

Of course newschannel4 interviewed a guy in one of the buildings that would be demolished, he's lived there since 1960 in a rent stabilized building and his rent is $500.

I would be pissed if my house was going to be taken, but on a broader sense, I think it's good, there's housing for lower income people and Ratner offered apartments in the new buildings for their current rents. Not a bad deal.

[212]

"Times Square", Red Grooms, 1995
http://photos18.flickr.com/23929304_c87fdf2c0f.jpg

[NoyokA]

NYTIMES:

July 6, 2005
Brooklynites Take In a Big Development Plan, and Speak Up
By ROBERT F. WORTH

Sipping her morning coffee, Karen Bornarth stared with amazement yesterday at the new building plan that would create a towering row of skyscrapers around a proposed Nets arena east of Downtown Brooklyn, and forever change the borough's cozy skyline.

"The idea of having a sports team in Brooklyn is nice," said Ms. Bornarth, a 34-year-old baker, over her newspaper in Ozzie's Cafe on Seventh Avenue in Park Slope. "But how on earth did we go to having all of this?"

That reaction, in varying forms, was echoed throughout Brooklyn yesterday as the expanded building designs were made public, showing a project of much more sweep and ambition than was hinted at in 2003 when the arena proposal was first announced. The new designs set off a range of emotions, from fury and disbelief to skepticism to a few notes of cautious support.

Many Brooklynites said they were shocked simply by the scale of the $3.5 billion development, the largest proposed outside Manhattan in decades. It would include 17 buildings, many of them soaring 40 to 50 stories high, and add 15,000 residents and 1.9 million square feet of office space to an area that many view as already choked with traffic.

Several of them called the project an aesthetic disaster that would mar the borough's distinctive low-roofed charm, further clog the streets and make the subways even more difficult to navigate. Some took issue with the jazzy, unconventional designs, by the architect Frank Gehry and the developer Bruce C. Ratner, while others worried that the project could harm the area's small businesses and drive steep housing prices still higher.

But some residents and business owners said they welcomed a proposal that could bring in new money and jobs.

Demetrius Pettway, 37, an aspiring writer and music producer, noted that the area to be developed - a 21-acre stretch between Atlantic Avenue and Dean Street - is surrounded not just by million-dollar brownstones, but also by housing projects where many residents are unemployed. "The people in there will probably depend on something like this to get some work," he said, gesturing toward a project, the Fort Greene Houses. "It's good for the prosperity of the area."

Henry Rosa, 55, the co-owner of a sporting goods store at Flatbush Avenue and Dean Street, said: "I suspect it will be great for us. Once the project is complete, with new residents here, it will bring us more traffic." But he said that if he lived in the area, he would probably be angry.

In fact, most residents of the neighborhoods around the proposed development - Fort Greene, Boerum Hill, Park Slope and Prospect Heights - seemed eager to challenge almost every aspect of the project. That is no great surprise: huge new developments are not an easy sell in an area that takes great pride in its quiet, historic charm. Many residents had already opposed the arena plan.

Officials of the local community boards - 2, 6 and 8 - have said they will not comment on the plan until they see Mr. Ratner's formal proposal to buy and develop the railyards at the center of the site. That proposal, along with any other possible bids, was to be submitted today to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which owns the yards.

Some of the community groups that have long opposed the project said that they, too, were waiting to see Mr. Ratner's proposal. But they were not shy about criticizing Mr. Gehry's newly unveiled architectural models. "We feel these models are an insult to the community," said Daniel Goldstein, a spokesman for Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn and a leader in opposing the Ratner development plan. "These models have no relationship to the community."

Many residents said they felt the same way.

"It's just awful," said Mona McNamara, 30, sitting at an outdoor table at a cafe in Fort Greene with her 6-month-old daughter, Gwendolyn. She rattled off a list of concerns: that the project would aggravate street and subway congestion, create more pollution, harm local small businesses, require heavy city and state subsidies that would hurt taxpayers, and fragment the area by cutting off Fort Greene from neighborhoods to the south, like Park Slope.

Worst of all, many residents said, the project would make Brooklyn look and feel more like Manhattan - or any other city.

"Manhattan more and more feels like a mall," said Ms. Bornarth, in Park Slope. "The nice thing about this part of Brooklyn is that it still feels small, and it has small businesses. It's what makes the borough great."

Some of the project's critics said they were intrigued by Mr. Gehry's architectural sketches; others said the designs seemed profoundly out of touch with Brooklyn's gritty charm.

"On a visual level, is it really wise to let an architect like Frank Gehry, whose designs are bold and unconventional, do the whole thing?" said Heather Barrow, 38, an architectural curator and former city planner. "It doesn't seem like an organic project."

But even the project's fiercest opponents tend to concede that Brooklyn could use more housing and development - a need that some city planners and development experts have raised in defense of Mr. Ratner's plans.

"It's creating a downtown central business district, which in contemporary terms means mixed use on a scale significantly higher than what Brooklyn has had before," said Kathryn S. Wylde, president of the Partnership for New York City, whose housing subsidiary has developed homes near the Atlantic railyards. "But cities across America have seen that creating density at the urban center, with a combination of commercial, retail and residential, is really the key to both a success downtown and to preservation of the surrounding residential neighborhoods."

Robert D. Yaro, president of the Regional Plan Association, expressed caution over the scale of the development and its effect on transit services, but said that such projects would be necessary to serve the city's growing population.

"We've got to think about areas in the city where we can accommodate that growth," he said. "Some of it's going to be on the waterfront and in old warehouse districts, but some of it will have to happen around transit hubs like this one."

[BrooklynRider]

I agree with a couple of points made in the NYTimes article (above):

It doesn't look "organic" and would have greatly benefitted from a variety of architects. I think Gehry has become very good at the "Holy Cow! What's that?" kind of building. I think, considering the surrounding neighborhoods, this project has show a complete disregard for "context". It is a paisley tie on a plaid shirt. A big ugly clash. Even the "great" architects and designers produce a series of crap before finding the winning combo. I think Gehry is still knee deep in crap on this one.

Thie current site is ugly and empty. Yet, this design kind of makes me recoil with equal distaste. I think Gehry might have been an intersting choice for a centerpiece item on the project. This is a ridiculous project design to sit bordered by brownstone neighborhoods.

Ratner will cheap it down to a point where it looks nothing like the released design. Regardless of what we see here, I predict it looks more like Metrotech than the "Disney" someone else mentioned.

Also, the "signature" tower (a.k.a. Miss Brooklyn - ugh) is hardly iconic. The Williamsburgh Bank was an icon for 70 years. Anything that is going to surpass it in height ought to be required to match it in iconic design.

[NoyokA]

NY1:

Bids On Atlantic Rail Yards In Brooklyn Due Wednesday
July 06, 2005

Developer Bruce Ratner is expected to formally make his bid to develop rail yards owned by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority in Downtown Brooklyn on Wednesday.

Ratner is expected to win the rights and build a new basketball arena for the New Jersey Nets on the 21-acre site of the Atlantic Rail Yards. His plans also include office space and more than 6,000 units of new housing, an increase from the 4,500 units allotted in the original plan.

A report in Tuesday’s New York Times calls the project an "instant skyline," with plans for 17 new buildings, many of them more than 40 stories tall, and a new 62-story tower that would be Brooklyn's tallest.

The development would stretch between Fourth and Vanderbilt avenues between Atlantic Avenue and Dean Street.

Officials with Ratner’s company say once the project is completed, it will almost create a whole new neighborhood in the middle of Brooklyn.

“[We] try to put the density where the density should be, where the public transportation is around Atlantic Terminal, with 10 subway lines and the Long Island Railroad,” said Jim Stuckey of Forest City Ratner Companies. “And then as the project steps down towards Carlton Avenue and Vanderbilt, the buildings begin to step down to be responsive to the residential areas around them.”

While Forest City Ratner says the additional housing in the design is in response to the demand for affordable housing in Brooklyn, the Pratt Institute Center for Community and Environmental Development says the scope of the plan raises serious concerns.

“It is a very large scale project which will have tremendous impacts, whether you're looking in terms of traffic, whether you're looking in terms of the number of new residents that it'll bring into the neighborhood, and consequently the infrastructure – the public elementary schools, police, fire, day care,” said Mafruza Khan of the Pratt Institute Center.

Forest City Ratner says this is just the beginning of the process. Once a bid is approved, there's still an environmental impact statement and a public review.

While some fear it will erect a massive wall between neighborhoods, Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz says it will do just the opposite.

“It’s a tapestry weaving in and out of Prospect Heights and Fort Greene,” said Markowitz. “Right now what you have is a moat separating these two beautiful neighborhoods.”

It's unclear how many bids will be submitted, but the MTA says it's accepting them until 5 p.m. Wednesday. There is no word yet on when the agency will select the winning bid.

[kz1000ps]

I'm a 15 minute walk from the Stata Center at MIT and well, I went once, I saw, I felt awkward, and I most likely will never visit it again. Timeless it is not.

Blowing up its proportions and plopping in the heart of Brooklyn? Oh my. I can only hope the cartoon bends and bulges create an enjoyable space to walk through (in the middle corridor). I do see potential there for creating nice framed vistas, but then again if everything is zig-zag this diagonal that then it might just be alarming enough that you lose your sense of depth when just viewing. The idea of Gehry done on the cheap is all the more reviling.

[ryan]

I think Gehry might have been an intersting choice for a centerpiece item on the project.

Yes - I loved the original stadium design, but all these buildings seem like such an afterthought. Gehry is best when his buildings are a strong juxtaposition to their environment, but a whole mess of them is just that... a mess.

[elfgam]

Of course newschannel4 interviewed a guy in one of the buildings that would be demolished, he's lived there since 1960 in a rent stabilized building and his rent is $500.

I would be pissed if my house was going to be taken, but on a broader sense, I think it's good, there's housing for lower income people and Ratner offered apartments in the new buildings for their current rents. Not a bad deal.

It's interesting how even after blasting the state for nixing the west-side stadium, and even after asking if it is possible to build any more in the city, all the news outlets always give twice the column inches to nay-sayers rather than the people for a project. It'll be like six interviews of people who hate it and then the concession that "some people say" it's a good thing...

What a load a crap -- most people are for this project... across a broad coalition of groups... and yet it still gets a sorry shake in the media.

[Fabrizio]

"....most people are for this project".

It´ll be interesting to see if most people will still be for this project after examining other "fun house" Gehry designs like MIT and Dusseldorf.

[Jasonik]

Gehry is best when his buildings are a strong juxtaposition to their environment, but a whole mess of them is just that... a mess.
YES! A piece of lingerie lying in the middle of a clean apartment is provocative; dirty laundry lying all around is.... messy.

[tlavo]

How do you know “most people are for the project”? Just the people on this board? I would say that from people I have talked to it is at best divided and I don’t see how anyone who read the Times bit on it yesterday could say that it was given a “sorry shake”. As for the people interviewed in the Times - most, but not all of the people I know in the Slope are either wary or against it outright and the article did a fair job of capturing that.

[NoyokA]

New York Daily News:
A vision soars in B'klyn
BY DEBORAH KOLBEN and PAUL H.B. SHIN

Wednesday, July 6th, 2005

Brooklyn's new face could be shaped by curvy walls and leaning towers that soar above a borough better known for its brownstones and brick rowhouses.

Designs are still evolving for a densely packed skyscraper mini-metropolis surrounding a 19,000-seat arena for the Nets in Prospect Heights, officials said yesterday.

But the vision of developer Bruce Ratner and architect Frank Gehry could take another step closer to becoming reality today, when the MTA wraps up bidding on its 8.4-acre railyard along Atlantic Ave. - the largest single chunk of land needed for the planned 21-acre complex.

So far, Ratner's company, Forest City Ratner, is the only known bidder.

"Bruce believes very strongly that when we hired Frank, we had to let him be himself," said James Stuckey, executive vice president for Forest City Ratner.

"Clearly, he's been able to think about the bigger picture," Stuckey said of Gehry's vision of how the skyline of the $3.5 billion project would mesh with its low-rise neighbors.

But not everyone in Brooklyn shares the tastes of one of America's most celebrated architects.

"Why are the buildings crooked?" asked Manfred Pastrano, 36, a real estate investor in Prospect Heights, when he saw the latest renderings of the project.

"That looks like downtown Manhattan," said Frederick Nixon, 46, a Transit Authority employee who lives on nearby Vanderbilt Ave. "I don't want to be anywhere near that."

"It looks great, but not in Brooklyn," agreed Joe Pastore, 61, who lives at 473 Dean St., which would be razed to become center court at the Nets arena, if Ratner has his way.

"Brooklyn should be Brooklyn, and people should live there with no skyscrapers and office towers. This is a place where people live," Pastore said.

Gehry's tallest planned skyscraper - to soar 620 feet at the corner of Atlantic and Flatbush Aves. - would dwarf the borough's current record holder, the nearby 512-foot Williamsburg Savings Bank.

Signs have popped up around Prospect Heights reading: "Supersize Brooklyn? Fuhgeddaboudit."

Critics say the project would overwhelm the area with too many people and cars, and overtax sewage and other services.

But some Brooklynites were impressed by the grand plans for reflecting pools, walkways and sleek high-rise towers that may include up to 7,300 apartments along Atlantic Ave.

"Wow, that's nice," said Alex Debranche, 30, who owns an ice cream company in Flatbush.

Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, one of the plan's earliest and loudest cheerleaders, called the latest designs "exciting" and "awe-inspiring."

Forest City Ratner now controls 92% of the houses and condos, 63% of rental buildings and 54% of commercial property on the development site.

The U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled that the government could force land owners to sell their property to make way for other private projects that create jobs and taxes.

But many hurdles remain before the plan is realized.

The proposal must go through a public vetting process that includes two reviews of the project's environmental impact, plus a vote by the Public Authorities Control Board. That's the state board that recently sank Mayor Bloomberg's West Side stadium project.

Ratner hopes to open the arena for the 2008-09 NBA season, Stuckey said, with the entire project to be completed by 2011.

[BrooklynRider]

It's interesting how even after blasting the state for nixing the west-side stadium, and even after asking if it is possible to build any more in the city, all the news outlets always give twice the column inches to nay-sayers rather than the people for a project. It'll be like six interviews of people who hate it and then the concession that "some people say" it's a good thing...

What a load a crap -- most people are for this project... across a broad coalition of groups... and yet it still gets a sorry shake in the media.

Spare me the exaggeration.

Review this thread and see how much press a "few nay-sayers" have gotten versus the cheerleading for this project. Where there are articles that are predominantly critical, you'll find the arguments are centered around a lack of engagement by the developer with the community-at-large and a lack a concrete information on the proposal.

It is hardly a few nay-sayers being given an abundance of coverage. And, the FEW groups that have signed onto this project do not represent A BROAD coalition of the neighborhood groups who existed prior to this project, but rather a FEW newly created groups, plus ACORN an incredibly unscrupulous group doing questionable work in their own self-interest. A review back to the RNC in New York and ACORNs behavior toward social justice groups visiting New York paints a more accurate picture of how they operate.

Anyway, we have the pictures. Now let's see the cash. The Fulton Street subway station and Calavatra train station projects are being scaled back. Renovations are being suspended on other subway projects. We have no JFK rail link. No 2nd Ave subway. No LIRR access to downtown. No no. 7 line extension. All attributed to NO money. Let's see if Ratner pays market price to play or screws Brooklyn, the City and the MTA, as many anticipate he will. The reality is he is a developer looking to make a buck, if he helps Brooklyn in the process - it's a side thought. Metrotech is crap. Atlantic Center is crap. The Atlantic Terminal is more poorly designed crap. Quite a portfolio he has built to support this bid.

A bunch of union thugs trying to intimidate people who will have to live around this "crap" and second rate preachers looking for a new roof on their church and a community center to take credit for is hardly the broad coalition of support that they's have you believe.

[tlavo]

I agree re: the (long-term) money.



There are some nice moments in the plan and I'm not against development but I do find the scale embarrassingly overblown. It is as if Brooklyn is straining to make up for 100 years of being 2nd banana to Manhattan overnight -a teenage boy going spasmodic as he stumbles through an awkward growth spurt.



On a practical level there isn't enough road infrastructure to support that area now -given that it is both a crossroads in Brooklyn itself and a conduit to the Manhattan bridge – from what I can see this will make terrible traffic into an unmanageable mash.



But aside from all that I can't believe that people are actually taking this, as presented architecturally at face value. Ratner's other Brooklyn projects are soulless, dead and illogical without any charm or beauty whatsoever. The Atlantic Terminal mall is just about as bland a pure utility contraption as there is and hey, great-it -is-occupied but Metrotech is one of the worst urban spaces in ny and emblamatic of the turn your back on the neighborhood projects infesting the city. People flee it as though it is a sinking ship the minute their business there is done. (Or perhaps the panic one detects to get away is just confusion as to how to thread your way out of the collection of awkward gates and lifelss plazas.)



Given Ratner’s Brooklyn history I find it hard to believe that he is capable of bringing anything humanist or beautiful to a project this big. Ghery is brilliant cover but I bet he isn’t really even involved with most of the buildings in 2 or so years as Ratner will cheapen and cut corners and bring in the hacks because that’s what he is. Already the arena, which originally seemed to have some grace, has gotten more garish with every incarnation.

[ryan]

The Atlantic Terminal is more poorly designed crap. Quite a portfolio he has built to support this bid.

I shudder at the thought of a development of this size but the quality of the Atlantic Terminal...

[NoyokA]

I agree re: the (long-term) money.



There are some nice moments in the plan and I'm not against development but I do find the scale embarrassingly overblown. It is as if Brooklyn is straining to make up for 100 years of being 2nd banana to Manhattan overnight -a teenage boy going spasmodic as he stumbles through an awkward growth spurt.



On a practical level there isn't enough road infrastructure to support that area now -given that it is both a crossroads in Brooklyn itself and a conduit to the Manhattan bridge – from what I can see this will make terrible traffic into an unmanageable mash.



But aside from all that I can't believe that people are actually taking this, as presented architecturally at face value. Ratner's other Brooklyn projects are soulless, dead and illogical without any charm or beauty whatsoever. The Atlantic Terminal mall is just about as bland a pure utility contraption as there is and hey, great-it -is-occupied but Metrotech is one of the worst urban spaces in ny and emblamatic of the turn your back on the neighborhood projects infesting the city. People flee it as though it is a sinking ship the minute their business there is done. (Or perhaps the panic one detects to get away is just confusion as to how to thread your way out of the collection of awkward gates and lifelss plazas.)



Given Ratner’s Brooklyn history I find it hard to believe that he is capable of bringing anything humanist or beautiful to a project this big. Ghery is brilliant cover but I bet he isn’t really even involved with most of the buildings in 2 or so years as Ratner will cheapen and cut corners and bring in the hacks because that’s what he is. Already the arena, which originally seemed to have some grace, has gotten more garish with every incarnation.


Ratner has a bad track record, but in light of his mistakes he has become enlightened and will redeem himself with A-List commissions starting with the NYTIMES building and continuing with Gehry’s Beekman Place and Atlantic Yards.

[debris]

Oy vey. The "cultural of interia" strikes again. The stadium, the JFK link, SAS, East Side Acess, Ground Zero. Before that, Westway. And now this. A world famous architect agrees to refashion a very mediocre stretch of downtown Brooklyn and all people can think about are shadows and traffic jams.

Hey, you know what? Before Robert Moses, when New York real estate was booming and we had no highways, we had massive traffic jams. Know what we did about it? We built some more! We solved a problem! Perhaps the highway overbuilding created more problems...so we should probably toll the East River bridges and use congestion pricing to solve downtown Brooklyn's traffic woes...my point is...there is almost always a rational solution to these issues...

Someone needs to step up and TAKE COMMAND. Democracy is wonderful, but democracy without leaders is just a bunch of whiny bureaucrats who produce nothing.

Look, I'm not an ideologue. I'm glad we have oversight from the community, environmental impact statements, and all the rest. But seriously folks. All New York politicans do these days is sue each other and stop things. Who is going to stand up and say that the affordable housing in this project is desperately needed? And that the added foot traffic in DT Brooklyn will spur the retail economy? That momentum for subway station upgrades will be created? How about construction jobs? And even those "popcorn selling" jobs at the arena, aren't they better than 25% unemployment in the Ingersoll Houses? Action begets more action. That hows the economy works. The only people employed on this project right now are lawyers.

Let's face it, we need Robert Moses again. Yes he made mistakes (PJs, Cross Bronx, Lower Manhattan expressway, etc.), but he also built things. Without him, New York will never build anything on a large scale again. EVER. Can you examine New York's history since the 1970s and tell me I'm off base?

[sfenn1117]

Those projects are the worst, literally the WORST thing the city ever did. And they are never going to go away. The LES is forever ruined with the hideous brick buildings. Robert Moses was too extreme. He bulldozed an entire avenue of Bay Ridge for the Verrazano, which, 40 years later, is good, but let's face it, in todays world/atmosphere 7,000 people will never be displaced again in NYC. Too much opposition and media coverage.

This being said I'm tired of projects being scaled back and nimbyized. But you can't give developers too much power. Know what I mean?

[Fabrizio]

Well by the mid 70´s New York had become a hell-hole, a bankrupt, crime ridden world-wide joke. It´s decline was well on the way by late 1960´s.


Right now there is the biggest building boom going on in NYC in 60 years with some of the best, most sensitive architecture seen in decades. Whole neighboorhoods have been reclaimed and new ones created. Crime is at it´s lowest since....what are the latest statistics.... 1964? All without a Robert Moses type figure and antiquated ideas of urban-renewal.

[debris]

I don't mean to start a debate on Robert Moses. Just about everyone loves Riverside Park and hates the Cross Bronx. If ever the term "mixed record" applies to anyone, its Moses. My only point is, we needs someone with guts, someone to get things done. Its as simple as that. It is not unreasonable to displace 7,000 if the project will benefit 8 million, if the benefits are large enough. After all, would it be unreasonable to displace 7 people in a city of 8 thousand? Thank god five justices saw this.

Anyway, to steer us back on topic, I would just like the benefits of this project to be fairly acknowledged; not by politicans, but by the public at large. New Yorkers have been bemoaning suburban sprawl for 50 years. And yet here we are, arguing for the re-densifying of the New York metro area, by arguing for a world-class project in a long neglected borough, and we're getting "traffic jam" opposition, which is much more befitting of Short Hills or Rye Brook that Brooklyn. I mean, c'mon. Brooklyn proudly considered itself the third largest city in the country before it consolidated. It is still the second densest county (or third, behind the Bronx?) in the country. The population density of central Brooklyn, which has relatively poor subway access, is far higher than downtown Brooklyn. Brooklyn is not a suburb! A borough of 2.4 million can handle another 15,000!

[debris]

Of course we are having an explosion of good projects today. I am all for building sensitive designs with community support. The crime drop was unexpected, wonderful, and probably will never be fully understood.

But I don't see how these things are related to building or not building large scale projects. You can build small scale projects, large scale ones, both, or neither. Its apples and oranges. In my mind, you put small scale projects in neighborhoods without good infrastructure (no subways, narrow streets, etc.). Well, this neighborhood has some of the best infrastructure in New York. Everyone can get there, and DT Brooklyn is underpopulated relative to the adjoining neighborhoods. Plus, a DT needs foot traffic to thrive. It seems like a no-brainer to me.

[theoutsider]

Well by the mid 70´s New York had become a hell-hole, a bankrupt, crime ridden world-wide joke. It´s decline was well on the way by late 1960´s...Right now there is the biggest building boom going on in NYC in 60 years with some of the best, most sensitive architecture seen in decades. Whole neighboorhoods have been reclaimed and new ones created...Why do you contradict yourself all the time and now all within the same quote? The reason why there is a biggest building boom now is because of exactly what you said, NY was in a decline all those years where close to nothing was getting built. Compared to that period, anything would be considered a boom. I also need to point out that this "boom" is not a NY phenomenon. Across the country, particularly here in the West, growth and construction is mindboggling. It makes the dozen or so buildings going up in NY look pale in comparison.

[sfenn1117]

It makes the dozen or so buildings going up in NY look pale in comparison.

Dozen? lol. NY has almost 100 new hi-rises going up, not to mention the new condo craze in most Brooklyn neighborhoods, and townhouses filling the empty land in Staten Island. Seems like there's new construction on almost every block in my neighborhood.

[debris]

As an example, there are nearly as many building permits this year for Miami as for Brooklyn, even though Brooklyn is six times the population of Miami.

[Fabrizio]

Outsider: "a dozen or so buildings? " uh....really?

More gems from Outsider (joined today) :

About NY traffic: "From my observations when I was in NY, 85% of the streets were practically empty after 6pm."

Let´s see 12 buildings... 85% of the streets practically empty after 6pm...

How observant.

Furthermore bud:

"Why do you contradict yourself all the time..."

Rather than make accusations point to examples.

[Clarknt67]

I've said it before, but it bears repeating. There is an easy solution for people concerned about traffic in this area. DON'T DRIVE. Almost every train in the MTA system is under or just a few steps away from the foot print of this development.

Six thousand housing units (maybe as many as 3000 under market value) VS. someone's right to contribute to global warming.

[theoutsider]

Sure, my pleasure. You said:some of the best, most sensitive architecture seen in decades
But yet on 6/23/2005 #178 on the 2CC thread, here you are being critical of the TWC:In comparison, the TWC looks garish...TWC just pushes the concept farther. From what I´ve seen from the photos, the interior is not a great NY space... about on the level of every other swanky suburban shopping mall out on a highway. and on 6/3/2005 #124 on the Williamsburg Residential Dev. thread you said:
Just dreadful. A beautiful old building with a trailor park on top. The corner building shown at the top of the page is just as bad. No matter how much the PR people want to give these eye-sores a hip spin... they both look like unsophisticated suburban home-improvement "let´s-add-a-rec-room" additions..
On 6/4/2005 #90 on the 9-12 Barclay St. you said: Instead we get a stack of floors with wide hoizontal windows and an art-deco after-thought at the top. Corny. So which is it? Is the architecture in your words, the "best, most sensitive" or "bad, garish, dreadful, eyesores, unsophisticated and corny"? Need I go on? These are just some I came across.

[Derek2k3]

Exciting stuff. Can't wait to see how the designs progress.

http://www.pbase.com/archit_kderek2k3/image/45826560/medium.jpg

http://www.pbase.com/archit_kderek2k3/image/45826482.jpg
Ratner's newsletter
http://www.dddb.net/FCR_brooklynstandard.pdf

Good discourse on how most feel about the project. Opposition always seems to get more coverage in the media.
http://brownstoner.com/brownstoner/archives/2005/07/gehry_ratner_sh_1.html#comments

[theoutsider]

Outsider: "a dozen or so buildings? " uh....really?
More gems from Outsider (joined today) :
About NY traffic: "From my observations when I was in NY, 85% of the streets were practically empty after 6pm."
Let´s see 12 buildings... 85% of the streets practically empty after 6pm...
How observant.
Furthermore bud:
"Why do you contradict yourself all the time..."
Rather than make accusations point to examples.

OK, so there are more than 12, WHOOPEE! That's still a drop in the bucket compared to other cities, but I'm not going to argue about that.
Yes, I did just joined today. Does that make my point of view any less worthy than yours?
As far as the empty streets, that's my observations and I'm sticking to it!

[ZippyTheChimp]

Theoutsider:

If you want to participate in the discussions here, be my guest. But if your purpose is to "troll' around and target individuals to induce an argument, your posts will disappear, and soon after, you will indeed become...

the outsider.

[peb]

Someone needs to step up and TAKE COMMAND. Democracy is wonderful, but democracy without leaders is just a bunch of whiny bureaucrats who produce nothing.

I agree with you on this to some extent. However, as a native of Brooklyn I am very concerned about both the scale and process of this development. I don't dispute Frank Gehry's accomplishments in the field of architecture. Nor do dispute that both Gehry and Ratner have an opportunity to do something great for Brooklyn. However, this is a massive project which will directly affect at least 3 different neighborhoods. Gehry has never taken on an urban planning project of this scale. On the surface, this project looks like the work of an idealist who is in over his head. Gehry may well be able to design beautiful buildings, but he seems under qualified to design an entire neighborhood.

New York and Brooklyn need leaders with vision. I don't want to see this development scuttled or bogged down in a beurocratic committee. But Bruce Ratner is a developer and Gehry is an idealistic architect. They need more than a little help if this preliminary plan is going to be deserving of Brooklyn.

As far as the actual design goes, the buildings in this design are not tall skyscrapers because that is what Brooklyn needs. They are tall because the square footage inside them translates into $ for Bruce Ratner. These buildings may provide an economic boon, but bad planning inevitably leads to short term success, if any at all.

[ryan]

Theoutsider:

If you want to participate in the discussions here, be my guest. But if your purpose is to "troll' around and target individuals to induce an argument, your posts will disappear, and soon after, you will indeed become...

the outsider.

If I had been drinking milk, I would have spit it out my nose... I just laughed embarrassingly loudly in my very, very quiet office.

[tlavo]

Has anyone else noticed that those who are for the project think that almost all coverage is in opposition and those against can't believe what an easy pass it is getting?

> Ratner has a bad track record, but in light of his mistakes he has become

I would say again that hiring Frank was the perfect move because people read this as "Ratner is enlightened" but respectfully, I just don't buy it yet. (As for the nytimes building I don't think I heard his name once when it came to actually deciding on the design - he's just the money guy there not the visionary.) He knows that he would lose out critically if he didn't have Gehry to paste over his past blunders because no one in their right mind could gaze at the atlantic mall and then ask Ratner to work his blandifying magic on the rest of the area. By the time the girders go up I think he’ll end up hands on with a building or two if we are lucky.

Saying to people "Don't drive" if they are concerned about traffic is missing the point entirely. I don't drive but that doesn't mean I'm not concerned about traffic. Regardless of what I do there are going to be more people on the road given this plan (the lux side of these buildings will certainly cater to drivers) and that means more (already bad) street level pollution - note that it is a major commercial truck throughway given the bridge – and in general isn't pedestrian or neighborhood friendly. It is fine to wowed by glittery skyscrapers but from a practical, and realistic standpoint these infrastructure questions need to be answered and they have barely been addressed. That tells me more about the project than the models.

[Clarknt67]

because people read this as "Ratner is enlightened" but respectfully, I just don't buy it yet. (As for the nytimes building I don't think I heard his name once when it came to actually deciding on the design - he's just the money guy there not the visionary.) He knows that he would lose out critically if he didn't have Gehry to paste over his past blunders because no one in their right mind could gaze at the atlantic mall and then ask Ratner to work his blandifying magic on the rest of the area. By the time the girders go up I think he’ll end up hands on with a building or two if we are lucky. .

Well, the charitable assesment is that "he's been enlightend" and if he was "just the money guy" in the NYTimes tower, maybe it's because he learned to step aside and let people who know aesthetics make those decisions. Maybe that's why he chose a world class architect (although maybe not the RIGHT one...)

Saying to people "Don't drive" if they are concerned about traffic is missing the point entirely. I don't drive but that doesn't mean I'm not concerned about traffic. Regardless of what I do there are going to be more people on the road given this plan (the lux side of these buildings will certainly cater to drivers) and that means more (already bad) street level pollution - note that it is a major commercial truck throughway given the bridge – and in general isn't pedestrian or neighborhood friendly. It is fine to wowed by glittery skyscrapers but from a practical, and realistic standpoint these infrastructure questions need to be answered and they have barely been addressed. That tells me more about the project than the models.

I said "don't drive" but having missed "the entire point" your "explaination" isn't really clarifying it. No matter what goes on those lots the area is not "pedestrian friendly." From what I'm reading in the papers the discussion of infrastructure IS on the table, people ARE discussing schools, subways and other concerns.

[BPC]

maybe we can just get the stadium and lose the rest

[pianoman11686]

I just heard on the news that Extell has submitted another bid to the MTA for the railyards - one that plans to develop buildings only on the railyards and 4 to 28 stories in height. I'll post news articles as they become available.

[bkmonkey]

Patience.. Im sure it will turn out beautiful. While I believe that the forum has been excessivly harsh on Metrotech, and the Atlantic Terminal (which has gotten rave reviews from many, including all the people that I know, and once the ballpark entrance to Atlantic Station is done...oh boy!!). Both developments have revitalized Brooklyn. Yes, Metrotech is deserted after 7pm, but so is most of Downtown Manhattan. As for the Atlantic Terminal (the one completed in 2004), there is little more you could ask for in a office tower of it's size. The inside is beautiful, and the outside is handsome. When it was completed, it was widely seen as a step up from the Atlantic Center, and the the asthetics of Metrotech.

Now, with that said, Bruce Ratner has waaay to much on the line to for this development to be a flop. Metrotech was designed to be primarily a office center, and a university center, there it succeeds. Atlantic Terminal was designed to be a shopping mall, and office complex intergrated with terminal, and it more than succeeds. It is always crowded, and the target there, is the busiest in the chain. Atlantic Yards, is a cultural complex, designed to attract people through asthetics and entertainment, he wants it to be the center of the borough. Despite what he says, Bruce Ratner will not let Frank Gery ruin this, especially because he wants to make money on this. Atlantic Yards will be a great complex, and will make Times Plaza into a citywide destination. We must be patient, this is a long, evolving process. I think that we all have high expectations, and we react harshly when we feel we might be let down, but we've got to remember it takes time.

[pianoman11686]

Brooklyn Plan Draws a Rival, and It's Smaller

By DIANE CARDWELL

Published: July 7, 2005

A rival of the developer Bruce C. Ratner submitted a competing bid yesterday to buy and develop the site of a proposed Nets basketball arena in Brooklyn, throwing up the first significant obstacle to Mr. Ratner's ambitious plan to create a dense urban hub at the eastern edge of Downtown Brooklyn.

The plan, which would not include a sports arena, was drafted in close consultation with community advocates who oppose Mr. Ratner's project. It portends a potential replay of the heated and costly battle between Cablevision and the Jets football team over a proposal, now scuttled, for a stadium on the Far West Side of Manhattan.

The new bid was submitted by Gary Barnett of the Extell Development Company to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which owns the railyards that would be the site of the development. It proposes the creation of a corridor of apartment buildings undulating over the yards, with shops, landscaped walkways, recreation areas and housing for roughly 4,800 people, according to plans made available to The New York Times.

With 11 buildings ranging from 4 to 28 stories, the project would be substantially smaller than the proposal by Mr. Ratner and the architect Frank Gehry, which seeks to build a ridge of skyscrapers as high as 60 stories around the Nets arena, with office space, housing for up to 18,000 people and possibly a hotel.

The new plan is tailored to address some of the major criticisms of the Ratner proposal.

"This is a historic opportunity for the development and further revitalization of the property and the surrounding neighborhoods of Brooklyn," Mr. Barnett said in a statement. "The scale of our proposed project and the amount of open space is contextual with the surrounding neighborhoods, and we look forward to working with the community."

Extell, a citywide real estate company, recently agreed to purchase a huge swath of riverfront land and three apartment buildings on the Upper West Side from a group of investors and Donald J. Trump.

Neither of the competing developers yesterday would release the details of their bids, including how much each is willing to pay for the land. But the Extell proposal, unlike the Ratner plan, limits the project to a three-block area of Atlantic Avenue between Fifth and Vanderbilt Avenues. It would not require the use of eminent domain to seize properties in the area, nor would it permanently close city streets.

It would also not require public subsidies beyond $200 million from the city and state to build a platform over the rail beds and would be subject to the city's rigorous land-use review process. Mr. Ratner's plan would undergo review by the state.

"These are the core principles we have been fighting for from the beginning, and we believe that it is their intention to work with the community," said Daniel Goldstein, a spokesman for Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn, a coalition of groups opposed to Mr. Ratner's proposal.

The bids by Mr. Ratner and Extell were the only ones submitted to the transportation authority by yesterday's deadline. The authority typically selects a winning bid on the basis of a variety of factors, not only how much money is initially put up, but also how much future revenue a project might generate.

As a developer, Mr. Barnett has clashed with Mr. Ratner before. He sued to block a deal with the city and state for the development company Forest City Ratner to build an office tower for The New York Times Company in Midtown. That suit was unsuccessful, and Mr. Ratner is now the development partner for the new Times headquarters being built on Eighth Avenue.

When Mr. Ratner first unveiled his Nets arena project in 2003, it was hailed by many in Brooklyn who saw the return of a professional sports team as evidence that the borough's resurgence was in full flower. Mr. Ratner was also able to build a base of support for the project among key government officials and community advocates who saw it as an economic engine for the borough and a source of jobs and low-cost housing.

But at the same time, opposition quickly took hold among residents, community leaders and civic advocates who criticized planning discussions between the developer and government officials as exclusionary and secretive.

Critics have also charged that the scale of the development would choke already congested streets, displace residents and small businesses, tax city services, blot out sunlight and generally erode the quality of life in a borough known for its low-scale charms.

When the transportation authority solicited bids in May, Mr. Goldstein said, his group sent out a solicitation of its own: about 100 letters to developers across the country inviting them to submit proposals. Extell responded, he said, met with the group and drafted a bid using, but not completely meeting, the group's own guidelines.

As envisioned in Mr. Barnett's plan, designed by John Cetra and Nancy Ruddy, a husband-wife architectural team who live in Brooklyn, 10 apartment buildings, most of them either 17 or 28 stories tall, would wind in an S-curve from Fifth to Vanderbilt Avenues, between Atlantic Avenue and Pacific Street. One building, a four-story structure at Sixth and Atlantic Avenues, has been designated for community use, possibly as a school.

The plan calls for street-level shops and restaurants in some of the apartment buildings, which would include 573 subsidized rental apartments and 1,373 market-rate condominiums. It would also provide 1,000 parking spaces.

In addition, the project would allow for 167,137 square feet of open space, including landscaped walkways and terraces, sitting areas and recreation zones.

The project, if approved, could be completed as soon as 2009, according to the plan. The Ratner development would be finished as early as 2011.

Charles V. Bagli contributed reporting for this article.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

[peb]

I hope that neither downtown Manhattan nor Metrotech are used as models for this project. The urban model of the superblock with monumental buildings has proven to be a repeated failure. Skysrcapers create isolation from people and insulation from the surrounding area, more than they establish neighborhoods. Brooklyn is all about neighborhoods (like what NY used to be). Metrotech certainly does serve its purpose, but it ads nothing else. Of course the location of Metrotech limits its potential as anything other than commercial space. Unlike the Atlantic rail yards, it is not bordered by any residential neighborhoods.

In the case of the Atlantic yards, there is an opportunity to bridge the gap (or "moat") between two vibrant neighborhoods. Erecting commercial and residential towers between the 2 neighborhoods is more like creating a wall. Adding cosmetic "open space" at the base of these towers will do little to establish a neighborhood. In my experience it is rare that people living on the 30th floor will take the elevator to sit on a bench in the shadow of their own home. This sort of public space frequently becomes a windswept netherland (drama added for effect). Towers serve their purpose, but they should be balanced within a neighborhood by buildings on a more human scale.

There is still hope for this development. At least David Childs isn't the architect. As the plans inch closer to final and more details are released to the public, we will all be able to have a more educated opinion.

[MonCapitan2002]

I happen to prefer the Ratner plan as it is larger and more ambitious in scope. Skyscrapers of large scale will eventually come to Brooklyn sooner or later. I would prefer for them to come sooner. The one thing I do not like about Gehry's design are the slanted buildings. I would prefer if he redesigned them so that they would be conventionally vertical.

[Clarknt67]

Of course the location of Metrotech limits its potential as anything other than commercial space. Unlike the Atlantic rail yards, it is not bordered by any residential neighborhoods.

The residents of Brooklyn Heights (which I am one), Concorde Village, Farraguat Houses and Dumbo might disagree with you on that one.

[tlavo]

I agree that the area it isn't ped friendly as it is – actually it is terrible – but I don’t see this plan helping. As for how it will make it worse - Ratner’s people admitted that in regards to the Terminal Mall they expect people to drive and it doesn’t seem to me that the larger development is all that much different in (car) focus.

They talk a lot about the mass transit but curiously, despite being on top of what must be one of the world’s most connected mass transit hubs, the plan calls for 3,000 parking spaces to support a 19,000 seat arena when somehow the San Francisco Giants built their ballpark with 5,000 spaces for 41,000 seats in a area of the city that was far less mass transit centric than the Brooklyn site. There will certainly be more parking for the res and office buildings and parking currently exists for the mall so on an arena night you are adding a minimum of a few thousand extra cars into an already choked area that pretty quickly dissolves into mostly quiet residential – to me that makes a bad situation worse - but so far all I have seen in regards to road infrastructure is some ill-defined “street widening”.

[lofter1]

I just heard on the news that Extell has submitted another bid to the MTA for the railyards - one that plans to develop buildings only on the railyards and 4 to 28 stories in height. I'll post news articles as they become available.

This should make for some fun ...

[sfenn1117]

The traffic around Yankee Stadium is always horrendous on a game day, yet, no one questions it. Out of 55,000 people, at least 19,000 must go by car, the maximum that will to a Nets game. Of course there will be some traffic build-ups, but nothing too bad. I think many people will opt for mass transit. A Brooklyn team means NJ fans might turn to the Philly 76ers as their new team, meanwhile, people on LI might claim the Bklyn Nets as their team, and many will take the LIRR. And many fans will be from Bklyn, against that evil Manhattan team. I dunno, I just don't think it's a big deal.

[tlavo]

I wouldn't say that no one questions the traffic around Yankee stadium - I sometimes listen to the games and Sterling often comments on how terrible it is - sometimes blaming late arrivals on the congestion. (I like taking the boat.) Also, the area around there is known for being kind of an unattractive dead zone though it has improved. One thing about the new yankee stadium is that includes some long-wished for beefing up of mass transit which is good but I think people have just learned to live with it.

I would think that most people would train to the Nets game as well but if they guy behind the arena is taking up a chunk of his development for 3,000 parking spaces then he must not think so. It would be interesting to know how much parking is in the mix for the residents. Park Slope has around 40,000 people now - I would be surprised if adding another 18,000 people within a couple blocks doesn't have some pretty major impact.

[peb]

The residents of Brooklyn Heights (which I am one), Concorde Village, Farraguat Houses and Dumbo might disagree with you on that one.

I always considered Cadman Plaza and Court St. the border of Brooklyn Heights. Once you cross Court Street, there is still the park, the courts/post office blocks, and the Brooklyn Bridge approach. All of these act as distinct barriers that create a very definite distance from Brooklyn Heights. As far as Dumbo is concerned the BQE separates the neighborhood. Tillary and Flatbush also act as clear boundaries for Metrotech. Once crossing Flatbush you still have to walk a few blocks to get to the Farragut Houses. I admit, I had forgotten about Concord Village. Partly because I've never really thought of that sort of residential development as a neighborhood (my own bias).

Although the Atlantic yards share some similarities with Metrotech (bordering on 2 major commercial avenues), the rail yards are not as segragated from at least 2 bordering neighborhoods. Once you cross Pacific Street you are basically in Prospect Heights. On the other side, across Atlantic Avenue you have Clinton Hill and Fort Green. Because of the proximity of these neighborhoods, bad (or good) urban planning has the potential to have more of a direct impact on them. In contrast, Brooklyn Heights is somewhat insulated from Metrotech.

[NoyokA]

New York Daily News:
Ratner foes hunted bids for Nets site
BY DEBORAH KOLBEN

Friday, July 8th, 2005

Historic brownstones! Prospect Park! Brooklyn Museum!

That's how a band of Prospect Heights activists tried to attract rival developers to bid for the downtown Brooklyn site where Bruce Ratner wants to build a $3.5 billion arena and housing complex - and it worked.

"It's poetic justice, or at least real estate justice," said Patti Hagan of the Prospect Heights Action Coalition.

The group along with Develop - Don't Destroy Brooklyn stuffed more than 100 envelopes with photos and fancy cover letters trying to court developers from Illinois to Singapore.

The Manhattan-based Extell Development Co. took the bait and put in a last-minute surprise bid yesterday for the 8.4 acre stretch of railyard along Atlantic Ave.

The MTA put out a request for proposals for the site in May and bids were due by Wednesday.

Ratner wants to build an arena and 17 soaring skyscrapers - the tallest reaching 620 feet high - along the yards and extending into Prospect Heights.

The Extell plan is a much smaller and does not involve taking private land.

"We went through all the developers and read about the kind of things they worked on," Hagan said about choosing who to target.

The promotional package included aerial maps of Brooklyn and color photos of quaint restaurants, brownstones and luxury lofts.

Photos of the dilapidated stretch of railyards also were included along with a copy of the request for proposals from the MTA.

"We encourage interested developers to make competing bids," read the cover letter. "The yards are an incredibly valuable opportunity in an exceptional location."

But it wasn't the meadows and museums that attracted Extell.

"They didn't do this based on a photo image," said Extell spokesman Bob Liff.

"This is a serious company that does serious work. What attracted the developer to this is that it's one of the great developable sites in Brooklyn. We're surprised there weren't more people," Liff said.

Ratner and Extell are the only two developers bidding for the land.

The MTA advertised in newspapers and sent the offer to a list of developers, said MTA spokesman Tom Kelly.

[bkmonkey]

I don't think Extell will win.. they is waay to much political support for this project. There is also alot of local support.

[Alonzo-ny]

Its great that for once someone is putting forward a grand design for ny and i really hope it is built. I think one day we will see great skylines of brooklyn and jersey city with lower manhattan in the middle.

[Clarknt67]

I don't think Extell will win.. they is waay to much political support for this project. There is also alot of local support.

it's got as much a chance as Cablevision did over the Jets.

[bkmonkey]

This project has almost unilatteral political support, and much much more local support that the west side project did. Plus the MTA, has some experience in dealing with Ratner... Atlantic Terminal (not completed yet.. MTA) was desinged in conjunction with Ratner, Ratner saved the MTA the expense of having to build a terminal with stores. That not withstanding, the MTA considers the benifits of what will be built ontop of it's airspace. That combined with the intense political pressure, will make it very difficult for the MTA not to take Ratner's bid.

[NoyokA]

With all Ratner has invested into the development so far it would be too costly to lose the bid, that said, Ratner will do whatever it takes to win it.

[billyblancoNYC]

There is little to no way Ratner will not get this. Mayor Mike even has it listed on his campaign site.

"Also in Downtown Brooklyn, the redevelopment of the Atlantic Yards will not only bring major professional sports back to Brooklyn, but will also provide 4,000 units of mixed-income housing and create an estimated 12,000 construction jobs and 8,500 permanent jobs for Brooklyn."

http://www.mikebloomberg.com/neighborhood/detail.cfm?content_id=2&content_level=2

[NYguy]

NewYorkBusiness.com

New Brooklyn proposal faces uphill battle
But surprise bid may force Forest City Ratner to downsize original concept for Nets arena

By Anne Michaud & Julie Satow
July 11, 2005


A last-minute alternative for developing downtown Brooklyn faces an uphill battle against the original concept, a massive project centered on a basketball arena at the prime development site.

The surprise proposal by Gary Barnett, put together in just 10 days and solicited by arena complex opponents, may be used primarily as a cudgel to force would-be developer Forest City Ratner Cos. to downsize its 17-tower skyline.

"The new plan really frames the choice in a compelling and challenging way," says Brad Lander, director of the Pratt Institute Center of Community and Environmental Development in Brooklyn. "There's something compelling about saying, `Let's not blow the neighborhood out of scale.' "

Mr. Barnett's Extell Development Co. plan, submitted to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority just in time for last week's deadline, includes 1,373 market-rate condominiums and 573 affordable rental units in 11 towers that range from four to 28 stories. With retail space, a community facility and parking, Mr. Barnett estimates, his plan would cost about $1 billion.

The development was designed by Cetra/Reddy, a Park Slope husband-and-wife architectural team, and would be built entirely on a platform over the MTA's Atlantic Yards rails. The competing Forest City plan spills over to adjoining parcels and would require seizing property from residents and businesses.

In contrast to Mr. Barnett, Forest City President Bruce Ratner has been working on the project for nearly three years. He began with an effort to buy the New Jersey Nets basketball team and move them to the borough. World-famous architect Frank Gehry is designing the $3.5 billion project, complete with an arena, offices and 6,000 residences.

Arena is local attraction

While many Brooklynites favor the smaller scale of the Barnett design, they are bemoaning the potential loss of an NBA sports team.

"The arena is a good idea for Brooklyn, so a plan that lacks an arena is not as attractive," says Don Weston, a committee chairman at the Brooklyn chapter of the American Institute of Architects.

The MTA would not release details of the two bids for development rights over its Atlantic Yards rail lines. It is expected to choose by July 27.

Mr. Barnett says he is not merely a spoiler. "It is not for us to say if the Nets arena is good or not," he says. "We are not trying to spoil anybody's plans; we are simply doing our job by responding to a (request for proposals) for a wonderful development site."

The businessman-turned-developer's profile soared earlier this year after he paid $1.8 billion for property at Riverside South, the Upper West Side neighborhood owned by Donald Trump and a consortium of Hong Kong investors. The deal, which was the largest in history at the time, was completed with the help of investment firm the Carlyle Group.

However, Mr. Barnett has yet to complete a building, though he has recently broken ground on several, including a 60-unit condominium complex west of midtown.

Mr. Barnett's efforts would have to overcome the widespread support garnered by the politically savvy Forest City Ratner. The company has won initial city and state approval for its development, including a memorandum of understanding with the Empire State Development Corp. and the city Economic Development Corp.--agents of Gov. George Pataki and Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Affordable housing in Ratner deal

Forest City Ratner has also agreed to 3,000 units of affordable housing, all-union construction jobs and incentives for women- and minority-owned businesses as part of a legally binding pact with community members. The company has worked out a detailed rail relocation plan with the MTA so the trains can continue to operate while a huge concrete platform is built above the yards. "Ratner has cleared a lot of brush," says one government insider.

Craig Hammerman, the district manager of Community Board 6, which represents the neighborhood, says he doesn't expect New York officialdom to throw all of that work out the window. "I have nothing but skepticism," he says of the Barnett bid.

[bkmonkey]

why would Forest City Ratner downsize, especially with the support that they are getting from the city. This new bid only applies pressure from the local community, immidiatly surrounding the arena. It is unlikely that this bid will have much of an effect on Ratner's bid, especially since he has been planning this for years.

[billyblancoNYC]

why would Forest City Ratner downsize, especially with the support that they are getting from the city. This new bid only applies pressure from the local community, immidiatly surrounding the arena. It is unlikely that this bid will have much of an effect on Ratner's bid, especially since he has been planning this for years.

Seems more like free advertising for Excell more than anything. I'm fairly certain they, along with the NIMBYs, know the truth.

[Gulcrapek]

Ya maybe it's to get people to know them so they can do something at Trump's site.

[JCMAN320]

I hope this takes Ratner and his pathetic plan down. Nothing would put more of a smile on my face than that nerd being taken down and leaving my team right where it belongs here in Jersey. They are still the NEW JERSEY NETS remember that. From what I can see is that all it takes is the MTA who owns that yards to give the nod to Extell and Ratner can go crying home and take is plan with him. lol oh I hope Extell gets picked!!!!!!!!!

[bkmonkey]

I hope this takes Ratner and his pathetic plan down. Nothing would put more of a smile on my face than that nerd being taken down and leaving my team right where it belongs here in Jersey. They are still the NEW JERSEY NETS remember that. From what I can see is that all it takes is the MTA who owns that yards to give the nod to Extell and Ratner can go crying home and take is plan with him. lol oh I hope Extell gets picked!!!!!!!!!

I would hardly describe Ratner's plan as "pathetic". Hiwever we both know, that the open bidding process was likely to draw more than one bid. There is a reason that the media isnt giving the Extell bid much attention. There is too much momentum for the MTA to reject Ratner's bid. Especially since the MTA is in Pataki's back pocket. If anything the extell bid, will be use as a negotiating point to determine the financial value of the property. The MTA, understandably wants Ratner to pay as much as possible. Yes, I understand that the Nets are still the New Jersy Nets, howerver Ratner owns them, and could rename them right now if he wanted to. Based on the ticket sales to Nets games in the past, I doubt New Jersy will even notice that they are gone

[pianoman11686]

I hope this takes Ratner and his pathetic plan down. Nothing would put more of a smile on my face than that nerd being taken down and leaving my team right where it belongs here in Jersey. They are still the NEW JERSEY NETS remember that. From what I can see is that all it takes is the MTA who owns that yards to give the nod to Extell and Ratner can go crying home and take is plan with him. lol oh I hope Extell gets picked!!!!!!!!!

It's time to stop putting hometown biases aside and look at this as nothing further than a businessman looking to make money. This is not about Ratner trying to steal the Nets from New Jersey because he hates Jersey. This is about him trying to develop a huge piece of real estate, with a stadium as the centerpiece. Besides, they were the New York Nets before they moved to New Jersey. You can still root for them based on the fact that you like the team, not because they play twenty minutes from your house. Lord knows there are a lot more Yankees, Cowboys, and Lakers fans (to name a few) than their home cities can hold. There is no rational justification for saying that the team "belongs" in Jersey more so than it does in Brooklyn.

[lofter1]

Yes, I understand that the Nets are still the New Jersy Nets, howerver Ratner owns them, and could rename them right now if he wanted to.

Hmmmm ... the Brooklyn Rats?

[JCMAN320]

Yea but they were only an ABA team and played one year in Long Island and in NJ for 30 years so yea it is our team!!!!!! I hope Extell wins just to see Ratner cry and whine and keep my team in Jersey screw them moving to Brooklyn.

[Citytect]

Yea but they were only an ABA team and played one year in Long Island and in NJ for 30 years so yea it is our team!!!!!! I hope Extell wins just to see Ratner cry and whine and keep my team in Jersey screw them moving to Brooklyn.
I have a feeling it's going to be you who is crying and whining and not Ratner.

[NoyokA]

How about the Brooklyn Knishes?

--------------

"Are you a Knick's fan?"

"Oy Vey. Im a Knish fan!"

[Gulcrapek]

Meh... knishes. Gabila's is sold :( . I know the manager of the factory.. dunno if he's gonna have a job after that.

[Jasonik]

Brooklyn Nyets

[lofter1]

Wow, intriguing plan, maybe the most important in urban America today. Though I mostly agree with Ouroussoff's appraisal, what's up with the sniping at Jane Jacobs? This is the second time in two weeks for him. Is she an ex-girlfriend or something?

From NY Times "Letters to the Editor" 7.11.05:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/11/opinion/l11cities.html?n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and% 20Op%2dEd%2fLetters

Revitalizing Cities

To the Editor:

In "Making the Brutal F.D.R. Unsentimentally Humane" (Critic's Notebook, June 28), and "Seeking First to Reinvent the Arena, and Then the Borough" (An Appraisal, July 5), Nicolai Ouroussoff is engaged in a misguided war with Jane Jacobs: there is no "quaintness" in the "Jane Jacobs-inspired vision of New York." She examines what makes cities attractive, livable, desirable, humane and productive.

Mr. Ouroussoff is revealing a taste for the huge and grotesque, and for projects that will certainly add to the unlivability quotient, even in New York City. A crowd of 37- to-47-story residential towers is proposed to replace an area of 3- to-6-story buildings built up over the years.

The towers are not improved by the architect Frank Gehry's outlandish notion of slanting them so they look as if they are ready to tip over, which I assume is what attracts Mr. Ouroussoff. Ms. Jacobs was attacking "catastrophic" development, the erasing of history and complexity by master conceptions, the obliteration of the multifarious city at one blow by a massive single use.

The situation is only made worse by the necessity to take private property by eminent domain, while getting state and city subsidies, too.

Nathan Glazer
Cambridge, Mass., July 5, 2005
The writer is professor emeritus of sociology at Harvard University.

[billyblancoNYC]

This guy's a real winner. Name me one city with tall buildings where at some point the tall ones give way or press up to the small ones? It's hard to have only one of the other.

[BrooklynRider]

All of the renderings are viewed looking into the development, not out of it. There is an existing context into which this project is being placed and that must be taken into consideration. I feel the project is too much of a stand-alone development. It doesn't integrate at all with the surroundings. It is very typical of a Ratner development. There is enough of a consistent pattern on his part to raise reasonable objections to it being done on such a large scale.

[bkmonkey]

All of the renderings are viewed looking into the development, not out of it. There is an existing context into which this project is being placed and that must be taken into consideration. I feel the project is too much of a stand-alone development. It doesn't integrate at all with the surroundings. It is very typical of a Ratner development. There is enough of a consistent pattern on his part to raise reasonable objections to it being done on such a large scale.

Times plaza isnt exactly an area full of brownstones and such...there are quite a few high rises there, and by the time this development is completed, there will be more (all the planned construction besides the yards) Atlantic Yards will create a urban core for Downtown Brooklyn as well as a transition between Downtown and surrounding neigborhoods. When the Willamsburg Savings Bank was first completed.. it stood alone, and it still does. When the Empire state building was built, it stood alone as well (in the area of midtown south), I think Ratner sees this as a plus rather than a negative, if Ratner wants to turn times plaza into the Brooklyn equivilent of Times Square, and spark a wave of development, it would be good to control a large portion of the area (then the value of the development shoots up, not to mention legacy) He is taking a risk on a area could be a major crossroad in this city. Decades ago, the builders of the Williamsburg Savings bank built there manhattan style skyscraper, sure that this area would be the center of a huge new buisness district. seventy years later it is happening.

[JCMAN320]

Yea right Greenie well I'm a fan I don't care about creating an urban core for Brooklyn they can do it with out my team. I'am a fan and care about my team stayinh where they have been for decades and rightfully belong, in New Jersey.

[NoyokA]

For supporters of the Extell bid, he essentially proposes the first housing project to be built in decades. If Extell wins I will be crushed.

--------------

Slatin Report:
NYC 07 08 05
YARD FIGHT
Peter Slatin

Leveraging community displeasure over the unruly scope of Forest City Ratner's $3.5 billion, 21-acre plan for the Atlantic Rail Yards in Brooklyn, Gary Barnett's Extell Development Co. submitted a rival, 11th-hour bid for the site to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Although Barnett's is proposing to build one-third of the housing that Forest City Ratner envisions, sources close to Extell claim that their bid price may exceed that of the more firmly entrenched opposing bid. No confirmation of that was available from the MTA, which, unlike its actions on the Hudson Rail Yards, declined to reveal the bids for this public land.

The competing proposals reflect starkly contrasting development philosophies and divergent approaches to the Brooklyn neighborhoods in question. Extell, which developed its plan over a few weeks in response to an inquiry from a community group, Develop Don‘t Destroy Brooklyn, proposes a complex of 11 buildings ranging from 4 to 28 stories – a height on par with the borough's signature Williamsburg Bank Building. Unlike the Forest City plan, Extell's development scope is restricted entirely to the Atlantic Yards site, and so does not impinge on existing property or require seizure of private land under eminent domain. "This is an opportunity to develop a gaping hole and solidify the Fort Greene and Prospect Heights neighborhoods," Barnett told The Slatin Report in an exclusive interview. The plan was designed by Cetra/Ruddy, a firm known as a residential production shop. Cetra/Ruddy is the architect of Barnett's Orion, a 60-story residential tower now under construction at 42nd Street. They have also designed one of two 30-story towers that Extell is planning to develop at Broadway and 100th Street, which have met resentment by some on the prickly Upper West Side

Barnett calls the Vanderbilt Rail Yards "an attractive piece of real estate, in a good and geting better location." Extell is proposing between 2.5 and 3 million square feet of development, about 4 percent of which will be comprised of ground floor retail, with roughly 8 acres of park space, says Barnet.

"Our perspective is about doing a responsible real estate transaction," declares Barnett.

Explaining the more modest scope of Extell's nonetheless large-scale Brooklyn proposal, Barnett says, "We can only do what makes sense to us." He adds confidently that, because of longstanding partnerships with investors and banks, he expects to have no trouble getting financing should Extell emerge as the winning bidder. "The MTA put out an RFP, and we made a substantial proposal." He hopes that the decision will be reached on "an open, level playing field, with respect for community desires. If that's the case, we'll have a shot. Our proposal is good and viable and worlthwhile. It stands on its own,"

Ratner‘s plan, by contrast, offers plenty of sizzle – enough to have made it a flash point for those concerned about both its scale and its appetite for pieces of the surrounding neighborhoods. It is anchored by a proposed arena for the New Jersey Nets, and is being designed by international architecture darling Frank Gehry. Its 21-acre scope includes some 6,000 apartment units spread over 17 buildings ranging up to 60 stories in height, thrusting a dense urban mountain range into the low-scale Brooklyn cityscape. An additional 1.9 million square feet of commercial space may be reduced by nearly three-quarters in favor of a small hotel and another 1,300 residential units. The prospect of the arena tugs at many a Brooklyn heartstring still sagging from the departure nearly a half-century ago of the Dodgers, the borough's last major league sports franchise. It's the arena that has brought politicians such as Borough President Marty Markowitz into the Ratner fold.

Both developers say they the only public financing they are seeking are the as-of-right $200 million in state and city funding for the construction of the platform on which the project will rise. However, available subsidies and tax credits for affordable housing would likely push that total much higher.

Perhaps looking to prove their commitment to community-friendly design, the Extell project‘s proponents say they will undergo the city‘s rigorous, seven-month ULURP process, even though it's not required because the land in question is state-owned. For their part, Forest City is apparently eschewing ULURP. Either group will face environmental review, require zoning changes and approval from the state‘s Public Authorities Control Board, which recently quashed the Jets stadium bid.

Sources have told The Slatin Report that the scale of Ratner's project is being driven not by the requirements of the district nor by a compelling urban vision, but rather by the high price being paid for the sports franchise and the need to create additional revenue streams. indeed, the sources say that the project ballooned in size under pressure from Ratner‘s co-investors on the Nets, who are increasingly concerned that their investment pay off. Whether or not this is the case, it goes to the heart of the development tug-of-war over the rail yards. The Nets' $300 million pricetag provides serious incentive for Ratner to make his investors happy, but it also adds to the development burden as he seeks to have his sports-team buy pencil out as part of the real estate package. As the project has grown, community members have responded more urgently to the perceived threat of a new superblock. Meanwhile, Ratner has been engaged in hand-to-hand, house-to-house real estate combat as he has moved to acquire the properties he will need to move forward should he succeed in securing the rail yards.

The community has an odd choice: Ratner, who brought Class A office buildings to downtown Brooklyn with his Metrotech project, has made a strong career out of partnering with public agencies to get seemingly favored treatment in the sourcing of important public development rights. Although he has not historically been known as a patron of major architecture, he has stepped up to the plate on this project to deliver Gehry, who has in turn delivered his own master-planning extravaganza, a home run in terms of sheer hubris. Fans of the urban density that the plan offers must also grapple with an intervention that appears to have gallons of insensitivity to the existing fabric layered into it. Fans of great architecture must also be extremely wary of the changes that developers seeking great scale and building under investor pressure can wreak upon their own proposed progeny.

With Barnett and Extell, what you see is what you get: well-executed, entirely self-referential buildings that typically make no attempt to succor their neighborhood. In this case, however, Extell has gone out of its way to be a good – if unexciting – neighbor. Asked about design, Barnett defends his choice of architects, noting that the husband-wife team Cetra/Ruddy lives in Brooklyn. And while, perhaps alluding to the lush Gehry images presented by Forest City Ratner, he notes that "it's wonderful to have beautiful images," but adds that, "One has to take a realistic viewpoint of what we're going to build."

While there are parallels between this rail yard fight and the one that saw the proposed Jets stadium vanish in June, there are important differences. Unlike the Cablevision bid that responded to some community concerns on the West Side, Extell's bid is not motivated by a desire to stifle competition. On the other hand, it's not being driven by a white-knight syndrome to save endangered Brooklyn neighborhoods. But one parallel is worth highlighting: what has created the opportunity for Extell to acquire and develop a unique parcel of public land has been Ratner's apparent overreaching vision, an insistent belief in its absolute rightness and a connection to political power that feels like entitlement and brushes aside community. Extell relying on decent planning and sound financing rather than on good-buddy politics, is exploiting the knee-jerk community opposition to development plans that is a given in just about any New York neighborhood. Of his high-visibility high-rise projects on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, Barnett says, "It's certainly not pleasant to be a target." In Brooklyn, however, he is the one taking aim.

Extell:

http://www.theslatinreport.com/content/pictures/extell.gif

http://www.theslatinreport.com/content/pictures/extell2.gif

[NoyokA]

Large picture of the Ratner plan:

http://www.theslatinreport.com/content/pictures/ratner1.jpg

Ratner's presentation:

http://www.theslatinreport.com/content/features/Ratner_Rail_Yards_presentation.pdf

[Citytect]

Oh my god. That's the worst proposal I've ever seen. (Extell's)

[treebeard]

Yea right Greenie well I'm a fan I don't care about creating an urban core for Brooklyn they can do it with out my team. I'am a fan and care about my team stayinh where they have been for decades and rightfully belong, in New Jersey.

If NJ had managed to build the downtown Newark arena I'd be all for the Nets playing there, but that failed. Damn shame, that would have been a great locale walking distance from NJ Penn station. That being the case, I want Brooklyn to get them. You should be able to go to basketball games by public transportation, preferably a subway ( path ). The problem with the medowlands is that you really need a car. basketball is not a suburban game, imnho.

[JMGarcia]

The Extell plan looks like nothing more than the worst of the Mitchell Lama developments of the 60's and 70's and promises to be just a lifeless. It is ultimately some "commie condos" dressed up with a few curves.

I figure it has a pretty good chance because NYers seem to love those things.

[NoyokA]

As I said, I will be crushed if Extell wins the bid.

[ablarc]

Extell is ghastly: everything you would have hoped we moved away from as genuine urbanism revived. Trouble is, most folks are mired in the suburban paradigm; I bet this gets the "community's" nod.

[ZippyTheChimp]

That proposal is awful.

It doesn't have to be tall to be monolithic.

[Gulcrapek]

Yuck.

Ratner's plan, with significantly modified architecture (please), is much better.

[NYguy]

NY PRESS

GRUMBLES ABOUT GEHRY
Ratner’s Atlantic Yards plan finally gets the attention in deserves.


By Aaron Naparstek

Suddenly, momentum is shifting in the Atlantic Yards debate. For months now, Bruce Ratner’s plan to build 17 high-rise towers and a luxury sports arena in Brooklyn has steamed ahead, resistance seemingly futile. Three events, in quick succession, have changed the game and put the politically connected developer on the defensive.

First, on Tuesday, the New York Times splashed Frank Gehry’s latest designs for Atlantic Yards across the front page. Ratner has long been criticized for the cheap, fortress-like architecture of his other Brooklyn projects. Gehry, the celebrity architect renowned for designing buildings that look like crumpled balls of tinfoil, was brought aboard to neutralize that critique and provide aesthetic cover. Yet, Gehry’s designs did what months of petitioning, protesting and public meetings couldn’t. They got “sensible,” well-heeled, politically connected Brooklynites pissed off, paying attention and preparing to fight. For neighborhood advocates who have been working diligently to get an apathetic public to pay attention to the travesty underway at Atlantic Yards, Gehry’s architectural models were a gift.

Then, on Wednesday, London won the 2012 Olympics bid. Suddenly, it’s no longer unpatriotic to suggest that a 19,000-seat arena at the traffic-choked intersection of Flatbush and Atlantic might be a bad idea. With the Olympics bid and Manhattan stadium debate finally out of the way, New Yorkers are finally examining Ratner’s Atlantic Yards proposal on its own merits. They’re seeing that the project has little to do with the genuine needs of the communities and city around it. Real estate industry insider Peter Slatin reports that the Atlantic Yards project “is being driven not by the requirements of the district nor by a compelling urban vision, but rather by the high price,” the $300 million, Ratner paid for the New Jersey Nets basketball franchise. According to Slatin, “The project ballooned in size under pressure from Ratner’s co-investors on the Nets, who are increasingly concerned that their investment pay off.”

The Ratner plan suffered a third blow on Wednesday when a rival real estate developer submitted a surprise bid for the railyards, just under the MTA’s deadline. The Extell Corporation’s bid adheres to most of the urban design recommendations put forward in the Unity Plan, a development proposal generated through community-based design workshops. Unlike the Ratner plan, Extell’s has no arena, it makes a genuine effort to knit together and fit in to the low-rise neighborhoods around it, and, most important, it requires no eminent domain. Extell isn’t asking the government to seize people’s homes and workplaces. Granted, the odds of the MTA accepting the Extell bid are slim. You’d think the cash-strapped agency would have put real effort into marketing its valuable property. Yet, from the beginning, the MTA treated the bidding process as a mere formality. The Extell offer materialized only because neighborhood advocates took it upon themselves to send out the MTA’s requests for proposal to scores of developers. Regardless of how the MTA treats it, Extell’s bid is a huge win for the community. Extell legitimizes the Unity Plan by putting real money behind it, the competition keeps the Atlantic Yards story in the news, and that ensures light will shine on the sweetheart dealings, lack of democratic process and disregard for community input that have defined the project up to now.

But let’s get back to Gehry’s gift to the Atlantic Yards opposition, the architectural model and sketches he showed Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff. The designs are so bad they’re almost funny.

Gehry calls the 70-story skyscraper at the corner of Atlantic and Flatbush “Miss Brooklyn,” as in, “We’ll sure miss Brooklyn if this crap gets built.” The arena itself is barely visible beneath Gehry’s “delirious pileup of forms.” For Ratner and his political supporters, this is a problem. They’d much rather you focus on the return of professional sports to Brooklyn than pay attention to the 21-acre land grab and mountainous landscape of new skyscrapers. To help you do that, Gehry has wrapped an entire city block with a 10-story tall, glowing Nets billboard, complete with, what I believe is a massive Jason Kidd head looming over Flatbush Avenue. Easter Island’s got nothing on the New Brooklyn.

With skyscrapers jutting up at odd angles, Gehry’s design gives an overall impression of towers simply bursting out of the earth like giant crystal formations. Ouroussoff explains to us little people that the design reflects the energy and vitality of today’s Brooklyn. As usual, the master planners and architectural theorists forget that a city’s energy and vitality is generated on its streets and in its neighborhoods, not by “a skyline fraught with visual tension.” Gehry’s attempt to create an energetic urban metropolis from scratch ends up looking like the New York New York Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, a cartoon version of a real city. Our city.

_______________________________________

Obviously written by someone who doesn't understand the design process, or the fact that this development and its housing is what the city needs.

[NYguy]

I hope Extell wins just to see Ratner cry and whine and keep my team in Jersey screw them moving to Brooklyn.


Don't hold your breath waiting for that one...

[NYguy]

Extell is ghastly: everything you would have hoped we moved away from as genuine urbanism revived. Trouble is, most folks are mired in the suburban paradigm; I bet this gets the "community's" nod.


Cablevision's plan for the westside puts that Extell plan to shame. But I guess we should expect thaf from these last minute "sham" bids.

[Clarknt67]

Having sat with Ratner's proposal for awhile, I'm feeling better about it.

But is anyone else bothered by the fact that the beautiful arena is now buried? It can't even be seen anymore. I thought the arena was beautiful.

[bkmonkey]

The article written above is quite silly. I would hardly discribe Ratner as on the "defensive", he has all the reason in the world to be quite confident. The author described three Ratner as taking three. Here is my opinion

I never understood why everyone was suprised that there would be skyscrapers at the sight, that was Ratner's plan for day one, he has to pay for the Nets somehow, and his investors are demanding returns, therefore there will be no downsizing. The designs are subject to change, and look decent. However, Extell's bid dosen't fit in much with the community either. The designs are always a focal point for contraversey, however alot of people were satisfied. The public still seems to support the idea for this development.

2) The olympics were never a major factor in the Atlantic Yards bid. Granted, the Atlantic Yards would have been an olympic venue, however Ratner was smart to make it about Brooklyn, and Brooklyn's sports team. The loss of the olympics was not a major loss, if at all. This idicates a lack of understanding on the part of the author

3) Extell's bid is a provides temporary comfort to the people who fought the arena. Both developers are asking for the same amount of state funding, and the media isn't treating this like a significant event. This is not a major blow either

[NoyokA]

A couple of thoughts.

First.) Its been noted that the Atlantic Avenue Station is underutilized, that is to say its capacity has not been met in decades. Since that’s the case, Extell’s smaller development is not as much a selling point as they make it out to be. A larger scale development will bring more riders and profits for the MTA from additional units and of course the Stadium.

Second.) I don’t want to sound like a bastard but the many controversies of the otherwise little known Extell corp. does not bode well for them, the fact that not only was there community protests on the upper Westside over their development, but the news making collapse of their building. Also there’s the controversy over them underpaying Donald Trump’s riverside property, the MTA does not want anymore controversies of whether or not they were underpaid.

[Clarknt67]

some thoughts...

it’s no longer unpatriotic to suggest that a 19,000-seat arena at the traffic-choked intersection of Flatbush and Atlantic might be a bad idea

I guess it's the author's reading of the public zeigist against mine. I was getting the impression that the failure of the Westside stadium gave Ratner's project a bump as it appeared that beaurocratic bickering ko'd it. The only thing people hate more than developers pushing them around are politicians doing it.

The Extell Corporation’s bid adheres to most of the urban design recommendations put forward in the Unity Plan, a development proposal generated through community-based design workshops.

More semi-truth, I believe the "workshops" were conducted by the "Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn" group, which formed in opposition of the Ratner plan. This could hardly be considered objective represenation of the community any more than a collection of Marty Markowitz and his cheerleaders.

[Alonzo-ny]

I think brooklyn needs this thing. Many people think brooklyn is its own place in its own right but I believe only brooklyn natives feel that. Im living at flatbush and dekalb for the summer and i definitly dont get the feel that brooklyn is its own place. To me its just a part of ny people live when they cant afford manhattan. but with the arena it'd still feel the same for me anyway but the arena would give the area a reason not to have to go to manhattan every night after work or whatever, because right now there aint nothing for me to do in brooklyn that would stop me going to manhattan instead.

[NYguy]

BROOKLYN PAPERS

MTA receives rival bid for Atlantic Yards
News Analysis

http://brooklynpapers.com/html/issues/_vol28/28_28/28_28arenaplan.jpg

The latest rendering of Bruce Ratner’s Atlantic Yards plan, designed by Frank Gehry. The high-rises dwarf the Williamsburgh Savings Bank tower, pictured at far left.


By Jess Wisloski
The Brooklyn Papers

At first glance, the May 24 issuance of a request for proposals by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority for the development rights over the state agency’s Vanderbilt Yards train tracks seemed a mere formality.

After all, officials of real estate development company Forest City Ratner, and that company’s principal owner Bruce Ratner, had spent the past year and a half in discussions with the MTA for the rights to build a professional basketball arena and 17 residential and commercial high-rises, including skyscrapers, over the Long Island Rail Road storage yards east of Flatbush Avenue in a development that would also include private property south of those train tracks.

So it was inevitable that the rival bid submitted by a Manhattan-based developer for the 8.5-acre rail yard site just before the July 6 deadline would turn some heads, to say the least.

Extell Development Company, which recently purchased 77 acres of Upper West Side property from Donald Trump and his partners for $1.8 billion, insisted in the face of scrutiny of their motivations last week that the bid was legitimate, earnest and sincere.

The Extell plan proposes 11 buildings, as opposed to Ratner’s 17. The tallest would be 28 stories, whereas the Ratner plan’s tallest peaks at 60 stories, dwarfing the iconic Williamsburgh Savings Bank tower.

With 1,940 residential units and 116,000 square feet of office space, Extell’s proposal pales in size to Ratner’s looming, Frank Gehry-designed towers, part of a plan that also includes 1.9 million square feet of office space, and a 19,000-seat arena for Ratner’s New Jersey Nets NBA team.

Extell’s proposal also boasts some of the same community-centric ethos that Ratner’s company touted at the signing on June 27 of a community benefits agreement, or CBA, witnessed by Mayor Bloomberg.

The Extell design, by Brooklyn architects Cetra-Ruddy, snakes in waves across the three MTA blocks “like a train,” as described by principal owner Gary Barnett. Extell would bring 1,940 residential units onto the MTA-owned site alone; Ratner’s plan, extending beyond the MTA site, includes approximately 13 acres of adjacent private property, some of it subject to state condemnation under eminent domain, and envisions as many as 7,300 housing units.


http://brooklynpapers.com/html/issues/_vol28/28_28/28_28extellplan.jpg

Extell Development Company’s plan for the railyards along Atlantic Avenue is considerably smaller than the plan proposed by Bruce Ratner.


Community support

Barnett said he learned of the MTA’s request for proposals through the solicitation of the anti-Ratner-plan-group Develop-Don’t Destroy Brooklyn (DDDB). He has, like Ratner, signed on to a community agreement of sorts.

Barnett has agreed to abide by the 60-point “Principles for Responsible Community Development” endorsed by at least 19 organizations including such community stalwarts as the Boerum Hill Association, Fifth Avenue Committee, Fort Greene Association and Pratt Area Community Council.

Ratner’s CBA promised certain amenities to the co-signers, such as active roles in oversight of job development, hiring and training, and made commitments regarding construction work for minorities (35 percent) and women (10 percent) and the placement of public housing residents.

Extell’s agreement is less specific in detailing its oversight structure and beneficiaries, but it commits Barnett’s company in ways not envisioned under the Ratner plan: it promises to disavow the taking of private property through eminent domain and to voluntarily put its proposal through the city’s Uniform Land Use Review Process (ULURP).

Ratner’s plan is excluded from ULURP, which is the most stringent review process in the state.

Extell has also promised to comply with contextual zoning regulations for the surrounding area, not exceed a 6.0 floor-area ratio in bulk, not close any public streets, partner with local housing advocates, guarantee 30 percent of the affordable housing units are owner-occupied, guarantee 20 percent of all construction work to minority and women-owned contractors and provide job training programs, ensure 100 percent of storm water run-off goes into a sewage treatment plant and assure more than 160,000 square feet of public park or open space..

“It’s something we thought we could live with,” said Barnett of the agreement.


Using the yards

Unlike the Ratner plan, Barnett’s plan does not require relocation of the rail yards.

But Barnett would expect to get the $200 million in city and state infrastructure that has been offered to Forest City Ratner by the mayor and governor since a platform would still need to be built over the rail yards.

“Certain parts of the site will need the platform,” Barnett told The Brooklyn Papers this week. “We’re not asking the MTA to fund any of those infrastructure improvements. Our understanding is the city and the state both have appropriated money for that; our understanding is that it is not exclusive to any one developer.

“Other than that we don’t anticipate any other subsidies than the incentives for the inclusion for affordable housing,” he said.

But while Barnett offered his bid at the same time as Forest City Ratner, Ratner has nearly two years of prep work behind him. For starters, he already owns a substantial swath of property in the area. And Ratner enjoys the wholehearted support of both Gov. George Pataki, who staffs most of the MTA board, and Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Even the MTA request for proposals seemed tailor-made to Ratner, stating that the “City of New York’s designated Atlantic Terminal Urban Renewal Area developer has proposed a high density mixed-use project for the site and surrounding parcels including an arena.”


Arena allies

Only a day after Extell’s bid was announced, it was assailed by Borough President Marty Markowitz, whose dream of bringing an NBA team to Brooklyn — to restore some of the local sports glory taken away by the Brooklyn Dodgers’ when the baseball team fled for Los Angeles after the 1957 season — has been acknowledged as a catalyst for the creation of Ratner’s plan.

He has been a cheerleader for Ratner’s plan since it was announced in late 2003.

“The Extell proposal may benefit the small number of people who are opposed to the Ratner plan, but it certainly doesn’t benefit most Brooklynites,” complained Markowitz in a prepared statement.

“Where’s the affordable housing? Where’s the job outreach for the community?” he said.

“I’ve always said that competing proposals are welcome for the rail yards site and it is certainly a healthy thing that another bid has been put forth,” the statement continued. “I expect the MTA to make the best possible comprehensive deal for the state, New York City, Brooklyn and public transit. That deal should produce significant tax revenue, jobs and housing. It should also include an arena.

“Extell’s proposal appears to provide minimal affordable housing,” he said.

“It does not include an arena and lacks the significant job training and job creation of [Forest City Ratner’s] bid.”
Barnett called Markowitz’s nay saying unfounded.

“I’m not sure why he thinks it’s not beneficial to greater Brooklyn,” he said. “What is the matter with a moderate and substantial project that repairs and modifies two neighbors?

“So his thinking is that if there was an arena, he would support our project?” Barnett wondered, and pointed out that a project should be based on what it brings into a community as a whole.

Barnett added that his project would include a school near where the arena is planned under Ratner’s plan, an idea that he said was well received.

“I think [our plan] does have community support. It seems to me our project has merit and it is a good development; the only thing it seems is missing is an arena for Brooklyn.

“We’re certainly not advocating whether there should be an arena or shouldn’t be an arena, and I’d love to have the support of the borough president,” Barnett said, adding that an arena was not out of the question under his plan.

“I think perhaps a solution could be found if everybody wants to have an arena,” he said.


All aboard

Asked for the dollar-value of his bid, Barnett said he would not disclose the amount of respect to the MTA, but said he would like to see the agency put the information out there.

“We would be very content if the MTA were to release all information about the various bids,” he said.
Ratner’s executives agreed.

“We will share information about the bid once it is presented to the board,” said Joe DePlasco, a spokesman for Forest City Ratner, who touted the community benefits agreement as representing “a broad coalition of community representatives.”

Still, anti-Ratner-plan community organizations turned out July 7 on the steps of City Hall, along with Councilwoman Letitia James, state Sen. Velmanette Montgomery and Congressman Major Owens to offer their support, unsolicited, to the Extell bid.

“We, the people, say these are our streets,” said James. “We, the people, say this is our community. A plan that respects us is a plan that doesn’t involve eminent domain.”

The MTA board could make a decision as soon as its July 27 monthly meeting, but does not have a deadline.

[TLOZ Link5]

Oh my god. That's the worst proposal I've ever seen. (Extell's)

Sheesh, talk about your destructive one-use developments.

And wasn't that Harvard professor emeritus in the NYT editorial behind Cablevision's last-minute plan for the West Side Yards, which Jane Jacobs later condemned just as much as she did the Jets stadium?

[bkmonkey]

I think brooklyn needs this thing. Many people think brooklyn is its own place in its own right but I believe only brooklyn natives feel that. Im living at flatbush and dekalb for the summer and i definitly dont get the feel that brooklyn is its own place. To me its just a part of ny people live when they cant afford manhattan. but with the arena it'd still feel the same for me anyway but the arena would give the area a reason not to have to go to manhattan every night after work or whatever, because right now there aint nothing for me to do in brooklyn that would stop me going to manhattan instead.

Your suggesting, that all of Brooklyn's 2.5 million residents are people, who simply cant afford to live in manhattan. There are many brooklyn neighborhoods, that well beat out manhattan neigborhoods (Park Slope, Dumbo, Cobble Hill, Brooklyn Hieghts). In addition, just like manhattan, you have to know where to look for things to do. There are numerous night clubs, and hot spots in brooklyn, so much so that the New York Times often touts brooklyn as the new Manhattan.

[BrooklynRider]

...There are many brooklyn neighborhoods, that well beat out manhattan neigborhoods (Park Slope, Dumbo, Cobble Hill, Brooklyn Hieghts)...

Then, you have crappy places - like at DeKalb and Flatbush.

[Alonzo-ny]

I do admit my opinions being slightly short sighted as i havent seen, explored, experienced, all of brooklyn yet but having spent a month looking for alternate accomodation for the rest of summer i visited a good few apartments in some of those areas you mentioned and i didnt feel anything good about them really, didnt feel safe or welcomed anywhere didnt, see anything that made me want to stay there and as a result ive given up my search and im stuck at crappy dekalb and flatbush in liu dorms if your wondering. In response to my people who cant afford manhattan remark you must excuse my british sarcasm you americans never get, what i basically meant is if someone who wants to be in the hottest parts of the city (i say this as i know of nice neighborhoods like bay ridge but thats the 'burbs man) and had a option of two similar apartments, one in brooklyn, one in manhattan i wouldnt understand anyone who picked brooklyn. What you have to understand is i dont know brooklyn, i know manhattan so tell me where the good neighborhoods are and why they are good, start a "why brooklyn is great thread" and i'd be happy because when i graduate and come to new york permanently id like to know of good safe nice affordable close to manhattan neighborhoods are at!!! In closing i have been disappointed by what ive seen of brooklyn so far, i was looking forward to living here over the summer after all the good press you brooklyn people give you borough on this website but i think the good neighborhoods have been passin me by so tell me where they are so i can visit them and change my opinion!!

[sfenn1117]

(i say this as i know of nice neighborhoods like bay ridge but thats the 'burbs man)

We're getting off topic but Bay Ridge is NOT the burbs. It's as urban as the rest of Brooklyn. Something like 110,000 people in this neighborhood which in some parts of the country would be a large city! Like someone said you need to know where to look, even here in Bay Ridge there's hip restaurants and clubs and there's always Shore Road Park to enjoy. There's a subway line in the heart of the neighborhood, is that suburban?

You need to get out of your dorm and explore!

[Clarknt67]

In response to my people who cant afford manhattan remark you must excuse my british sarcasm you americans never get,

Few people of any nationality can detect sarcasm filtered through a keyboard. Especially a statement that reflects many people's serious and heartfelt (if misinformed) opinions.

start a "why brooklyn is great thread" so tell me where they are so i can visit them and change my opinion!!

Why Brooklyn is great reasons are all over this board, click around. It's impossible for anyone here to have meaningful suggestions for you as we know almost nothing about what you like to do and what type of people you like to do it with.

Myself I've been having a blast in bk this summer biking to the Coney Island Mermaid parade, bocci bowling on Atlantic ave, seeing films, dance recitals and the New York Philharmonic in the Brooklyn Bridge and Prospect Parks.

[BPC]

Myself I've been having a blast in bk this summer biking to the Coney Island Mermaid parade, bocci bowling on Atlantic ave, seeing films, dance recitals and the New York Philharmonic in the Brooklyn Bridge and Prospect Parks.

If you have not done so yet, be sure to try a twilight stroll and Russian dinner on the boardwalk at Brighton Beach.

[Alonzo-ny]

I think the main reason i havent experienced it is because i dont know where the popular places are. or im too busy working all day (if any yall visit the statue of liberty soon and meet a scottish guy in the white tent or outside asking if you want a photo thats me!) another reason i havent explored is because all the neighborhoods i visited on my apartment search seemed unsafe so it has put me off exploring for fear of ending up somewhere unsafe. If anyone can tell me some safe cool places to see id appreciate it alot!!!! also i know im pretty opinionated but thats me!!

[pianoman11686]

Sharpton Backs Developer's Plan for Brooklyn Arena and Towers

By DIANE CARDWELL

Published: July 19, 2005

The Rev. Al Sharpton said yesterday that he was backing a plan by Bruce C. Ratner, the developer, to build a canyon of skyscrapers and an arena for the Nets over railyards near Downtown Brooklyn.

Mr. Sharpton, much as he did when he announced his support for the proposed Jets stadium on the West Side of Manhattan, argued that the building plan, designed by Frank Gehry, would provide needed jobs and lower-cost housing for largely poor and minority areas nearby.

"We have real problems in the neighborhoods surrounding this project," Mr. Sharpton said in a statement released by his office. "We need a plan that is inviting to newcomers while avoiding the type of gentrification that pushes out the old while in the same breath romanticizing the old.

"It's not about a new Brooklyn or an old Brooklyn; it's about a thriving Brooklyn where people of all colors have a chance for a better home, a better job and a better life."

Mr. Sharpton praised Mr. Ratner, whose company is the development partner for the new Midtown headquarters for The New York Times Company, for signing an agreement with community advocacy groups. That agreement promises to use minority and female contractors, to offer job training, to provide community use of the arena and to preserve half of the rental apartments for families earning less than $100,480 a year.

The plan faces several hurdles. Mr. Ratner's proposal to buy and develop the railyards is under review by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and is competing with a bid from the Extell Development Corporation. That plan was designed in consultation with a group of opponents, including area residents, advocates and elected officials who say the Ratner plan is far too big and dense for the scale and infrastructure of the existing low-rise neighborhood.

And although Mr. Sharpton has plenty of influence in some corners, his support did not in the end help the Jets, whose stadium plans were scuttled by Albany leaders. Tom Kelly, a transportation authority spokesman, said that a decision on the proposals could come next week at the earliest, but he cautioned that it could take months longer.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

[BrooklynRider]

I imagine the bank accounts at Sharpton's "National Action Network" must be bulging at the seems after this second major development endorsement.

[NoyokA]

Up until Sharpton ran for president I had zero respect for him, I thought he was a blow hard and nothing more. Behold, he ran for president and I started to actually agree with most everything he had to say and it continues to this day, I’m as surprised as everyone else…

[BrooklynRider]

Stern,

I totally agree - and he's funny to boot - my only problem is "Tawana Brawley". If he would just apologize for that, I wouldn't have the reservations I still hold.

[Clarknt67]

Up until Sharpton ran for president I had zero respect for him, I thought he was a blow hard and nothing more. Behold, he ran for president and I started to actually agree with most everything he had to say and it continues to this day, I’m as surprised as everyone else…


I couldn't stand Sharpton either, but even though I hated him, I had to concede he was about the only life the dems showed at their convention. So he went off message, it beat the dems "we're republicans LITE" message.

[JMGarcia]

Sharpton has obviously got a much better poller nowadays telling him what to say. Sorry, but I just can't trust the man for having any actual beliefs beyond what makes him the most money and what makes him the most popular.

[fioco]

"We have real problems in the neighborhoods surrounding this project," Mr. Sharpton said in a statement released by his office. "We need a plan that is inviting to newcomers while avoiding the type of gentrification that pushes out the old while in the same breath romanticizing the old.

"It's not about a new Brooklyn or an old Brooklyn; it's about a thriving Brooklyn where people of all colors have a chance for a better home, a better job and a better life."Sharpton not only has a better pollster to advise him, he's gotten a better speech writer too. The tasty little soundbite quoted above gives both sides something to chew on. This is rhetoric that skillfully avoids the shoals of a fully stated opinion, but lordy, it says something substantial nonetheless. From cotton candy to a peanut, at least this soundbite has a bite to it.

(BTW, I'm enjoying all the delicious cynicism but I need to play to form: I'm so appalled (by 0.17%)!)

[Alonzo-ny]

I apologise if this is a dumb question to you but i have no idea who sharpton is really so why does a rev have any say in this?

[lofter1]

I apologise if this is a dumb question to you but i have no idea who sharpton is really so why does a rev have any say in this?

Oh, that's along NYC story...

This is the Reverend Al:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/d/d5/Sharpton.jpg/180px-Sharpton.jpg (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Sharpton.jpg)

For info you could start here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Sharpton


And here's an article in the VIllage Voice (with a silly picture):
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0405,barrett,50745,1.html
Sleeping With the GOP
A Bush Covert Operative Takes Over Al Sharpton's Campaign


And an Interview @ SALON from 1999 (and another silly pic; Rev. Al makes for good caricatures):
http://www.salon.com/weekly/sharpton1.html
AL
Sharpton's
second
act
To many blacks, he's a
voice of salutary
outrage. To many
whites, he's a dangerous
buffoon. Will the real Al
Sharpton please stand up?

http://www.salon.com/weekly/sharpton.gif

[BPC]

Sharpton is this local scumbag pretend-reverend (he does not minister to an actual church) who knowingly perpetrated false rape charges against an innocent upstate prosecutor, basically ruining the poor guy's life. A jury found Sharpton guilty of defamation. He refused to pay the award, claiming he has no assets (his home, cars, fancy suits are all held in the name of his organization), and has yet to apologize. Later, he incited a riot against a white-owned Harlem store, leading to seven of its (minority) employees being burned to death. He is a media whore whom the guilty white liberal NYC media feels compelled to report on as some sort of respected figure. You can read some more of Sharpton's lowlights here:


http://slate.msn.com/id/2087557

http://slate.msn.com/id/76476/

[sfenn1117]

Well said!

[bkmonkey]

Sharpton is this local scumbag pretend-reverend (he does not minister to an actual church) who knowingly perpetrated false rape charges against an innocent upstate prosecutor, basically ruining the poor guy's life. A jury found Sharpton guilty of defamation. He refused to pay the award, claiming he has no assets (his home, cars, fancy suits are all held in the name of his organization), and has yet to apologize. Later, he incited a riot against a white-owned Harlem store, leading to seven of its (minority) employees being burned to death. He is a media whore whom the guilty white liberal NYC media feels compelled to report on as some sort of respected figure. You can read some more of Sharpton's lowlights here:


http://slate.msn.com/id/2087557

http://slate.msn.com/id/76476/

Being a black american, I use to hate Al Sharpton, however even while i dont always agree with him, he is gaining respect in my eyes. His media attention is well deserved, as he is a major force in the African-American community, whether we like it or not. His views, while many white consider them extreme, represent many of the sentiments in the black community. Especially in the case of the Atlantic Yards, where the support of minority groups is pivitol (acorn, god squad) etc.., Al Sharpton's endorsment it important

[NYguy]

Sharpton has obviously got a much better poller nowadays telling him what to say. Sorry, but I just can't trust the man for having any actual beliefs beyond what makes him the most money and what makes him the most popular.


Sharpton doesn't need a poller. He knows what people in the community have been telling him, and that's why you have been seeing him go against some of his primary backers in the democratic party to support projects such as the Westside stadium and now the Nets arena development. Its all about jobs and getting more people involved, and if he wants to continue to be a voice for people, he has to voice their concerns. He could have very easily have taken the democratic candidates side and said "Bloomberg is only catering to wealthy white men with these developments."

[NYguy]

NY OBSERVER

Architects Live In Class Houses: Piano Vs. Gehry

http://nyobserver.com/database/articleimages/photoimages/072005_article_horowitz.jpg

Renzo Gets Times Tower, Columbia, Morgan Library; Mr. Bilbao in Brooklyn

By Jason Horowitz

When Frank Gehry abruptly pulled out of a 2000 competition to design The New York Times’ new headquarters, the paper quickly looked elsewhere. Before long, the paper splashed a design by winning architect Renzo Piano across the front page. But as Mr. Piano kept accumulating prestigious projects, The Times’ developing partner Bruce Ratner never let Mr. Gehry out of his sight.

Now, years later, Mr. Gehry is having his moment in the headlines as chief architect of Mr. Ratner’s most ambitious project to date.

“I never sought after work in New York,” Mr. Gehry told The Observer. “I met Bruce Ratner when we were doing the Times thing. And then one day he called and brought me this.”

“This” is the colossal and controversial development project organized around a Brooklyn Nets arena at the Atlantic rail yards in downtown Brooklyn.

Mr. Gehry and his one-time competitor Mr. Piano are not the house architects of New York City. That distinction belongs to Skidmore Owings and Merrill, the lofty developer to Manhattan’s biggest guns in business and real estate.

But the new New York that is taking shape—with its ambitious towers, its cities within a city like the far West Side, Ground Zero and the Atlantic Yards—belongs to these two. So far, the two émigrés seem to be splitting the pie like a couple of New York old-timers.

A spate of the city’s oldest and most august institutions—cultural bedrocks like the Morgan Library, the Whitney, Columbia University and The New York Times—have all chosen the Pritzker Prize–winning Italian architect Renzo Piano to spruce up some of New York’s most revered real estate for the 21st century.

Directors and officials at those institutions gushingly describe Mr. Piano’s designs with adjectives like “understated,” “appropriate” and “elegant,” as if he were a well-bred and well-mannered suitor coming from overseas to claim their darling’s hand.

On the other, shinier side of the coin, relatively new multimillionaires like Bruce Ratner of Forest City Ratner developers, media mogul Barry Diller or parvenu patrons like the B.A.M. Local Development Corporation, have turned to the Canadian-born architect Frank Gehry, also a Pritzker winner, who is most famous for the epochal Guggenheim building in Bilbao, Spain.

His unorthodox and unapologetically iconic designs, such as the model for Mr. Ratner’s proposed Nets Stadium and the mini-metropolis that surrounds it, seem to be his clients’ way of signaling to the old social lions that they’ve arrived.

But the projects taken on by the two architects also reflect the changing cultural landscape of New York, where relatively new museums and theaters have benefited from the rezoning for cultural districts that have drawn renowned architects—and many New Yorkers—away from Manhattan and into the boroughs.

“The cultural hegemony perceived as being in Manhattan is now dispersed,” said Kate D. Levin, the city’s cultural-affairs commissioner. “It’s sort of ‘If you build it, they will come.’”

If Mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s abrasive approach to the infamous Sensation show at the Brooklyn Museum in 1999 chilled innovation among the city’s outlying cultural institutions, the same ones have felt encouraged by the new one, which not coincidentally is run by a man with a deep resume of personal contributions to arts organizations as well as a jones for massive development projects like Mr. Ratner’s basketball arena.

The code word “basketball” should be enough to tell you that Mr. Gehry isn’t designing a project directed at Manhattan’s cultural elites.

Some observers noted that when they sought to contrast Mr. Gehry with Mr. Piano.

“Renzo has a quiet spirit, while Frank’s kind of scrappy,” said Jan Rothschild, an official at the Whitney Museum of American Art, who holds both architects in high regard.

“In New York, it’s not easy to get things built,” Ms. Rothschild said. “And if you’re serious about getting things done in the gnarly political process, you need an architect who listens.”

The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission, apparently satisfied with Mr. Piano’s listening skills, approved his plan for the Whitney in May.

Mr. Gehry still has to face community boards and landmark committees for Mr. Ratner’s $3.5 billion Atlantic Yards project, with its Brooklyn Nets basketball stadium, 1.9 million square feet of office space, housing for roughly 15,000, and skyscrapers as high as 60 stories piercing the now-unperturbed Brooklyn skyline. Mr. Gehry said that, along with the tempting challenge of the undertaking, he was attracted to the idea of working for Mr. Ratner, who he called a like-minded “liberal do-gooder” intent on making a statement in Brooklyn.

“There are not many prototypes for doing something like this,” said Mr. Gehry, adding that his New York clients “come to me when they know that they are looking for something not the ordinary, and that’s kind of the common ground between them.”

Mr. Ratner’s story is ordinary enough in the real-estate world. The son of Polish immigrants, who himself immigrated to the big city from Cleveland, he pulled himself up by his penny loafers. Afer becoming New York City’s consumer advocate at age 25, he turned to development to help make ends meet producing large-scale—though admittedly lackluster—projects in Brooklyn like the MetroTech complex and the Atlantic Center.

Since then, he has acted as developing partner with the city’s most venerable institutions, including The Times for Mr. Piano’s design. But when it came time for Mr. Ratner to find an architect for his very own project—his basketball team—he apparently didn’t want just anyone.

“In many ways, it was time for Gehry,” said Jim Stuckey, the executive vice president for commercial development at Ratner Forest City, who said Mr. Ratner had met Gehry during interviews for the New York Times project. “The way he has helped transform cities worldwide … we wanted to work with him one day. And this was it. I hope and believe that it is going to send a signal that this is something special. “

Likewise, when Barry Diller’s InterActiveCorp decided in 2003 that Mr. Gehry was the right man for its Chelsea headquarters.

After all, only one architect has landed an architectural spaceship of curved titanium sheathing in a Spanish wasteland, turning the town into a celebrated cultural-tourist attraction, or trudged like a veritable Fitzcarraldo seeking to bring culture to backwoods Brazilian towns on a doomed scouting expedition for the Guggenheim.

It is tough, to say the least, to imagine Mr. Piano—who loves to talk about his work in terms of the Sacred and the Profane—slashing a machete through the brush, not to mention venturing across the East River. Indeed, Mr. Piano’s New York undertakings tend not to stray far from Central Park.

Perhaps the best illustration of the different interests, ambitions and temperaments of the two architects is their convergence in the 2000 competition to build the New York Times Building, which is expected to be completed by the end of 2007.

Mr. Gehry was reportedly the favorite going into the final weeks of the competition, but his friends and colleagues said he grew increasingly frustrated about the corporate approach of The Times, including requirements that he open an office in New York and fly in from his headquarters in Santa Monica at least once a week. The site was also part of the 42nd Street Development Project, so city and state officials held a certain sway over Mr. Gehry’s proposed skyscraper.

In the end, Mr. Gehry pulled out of the competition, though he maintains that it was a purely logistical decision. “It was a deadline issue,” he said. Some of his friends say otherwise.

“He was really offended by those people,” said David C. Levy, who worked closely with Mr. Gehry as the former president and director of the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, referring to the Times executives. Mr. Levy recalled a conversation that he’d had with Mr. Gehry soon after the Times negotiations fell apart, in which Mr. Gehry summed up The Times’ attitude as wanting to build offices on spec for maximum profit, and not caring if he built a box with a mouse hole in it. “Frank Gehry is not interested in a box with a mouse hole in it. You have to be interested in architecture with a capital A,” said Mr. Levy. “He said he walked into that room and then walked right out. The atmosphere was that this project wasn’t going to work out.”

Soon after, on Oct. 13, 2000, The Times published Mr. Piano’s shimmering model of the new Times building on the front page.

The Times building and the Morgan Library were Mr. Piano’s first efforts in New York, and they lent him a cachet that served as a secret password for entrance into the city’s upper-crust cultural institutions. Impressed with his flexibility and eagerness to please, the commissions kept rolling in, amounting to an Italianate influence on the city that hasn’t been seen since the introduction of pizza.

“I have seen the learning curve, and he has adapted to it quickly,” said Bruce Fowle of Fox and Fowle Architects, which is working with Mr. Piano on the Times building. “He has a good understanding of what makes New York tick—what sells and what doesn’t sell,” Mr. Fowle added. “His conceptual ideas come from a deep inner sense about appropriateness.”

Fans of Mr. Piano in those institutions said they were first attracted to the architect by his masterpieces like the Menil Collection in Houston and the Pompidou Center in Paris, but they also admired his talent for cutting through red tape.

“He has always been very deft and very intelligent and sensible about dealing with the political and psychological and historical realities of the place where he is building,” said Charles E. Pierce Jr., the director of the Morgan Library, which selected Mr. Piano to undertake its $102 million–plus renovation in 2001. “He obviously had to acquire these skills within the New York context.”

Land-use lawyers and consultants who have worked with Mr. Piano on several of his New York projects likewise testified to his very real reverence for the city’s landmarks and his unique ability to make both museum directors and board members happy.

“He [Piano] has a different style of dealing with clients than I do,” Mr. Gehry acknowledged, adding that he admires Mr. Piano’s work. “I did a decent museum in Bilbao and never got asked to do another one again. The marketplace is telling you what they want. The marketplace feels more comfortable with what he is doing. I don’t know why.”

Rick Bell, the executive director of the American Institute of Architects New York, suggested one possibility.

“What’s great about Gehry’s buildings is that they bloom like flowers, and maybe they will fade—maybe the celebratory nature won’t be the same after 50 years. I don’t think anyone thinks Renzo’s buildings are coming down so fast. The question is what is their longevity, and that is maybe what the people on the board are thinking.”

Mr. Gehry, who designed a building for his “friend” Issey Miyake and a cafeteria for Condé Nast, seems to have more of an affinity for clients with something to prove.

“Buildings like his say that there is something special and wonderful here,” said Jeanne Lutfy, president of the B.A.M. Local Development Corporation, a nonprofit group seeking to promote a cultural district in downtown Brooklyn around the Brooklyn Academy of Music. “The theater was interested in elevating, in making sure their place was going to be special,” she said, referring to the Theater for a New Audience. “You have an opportunity to stand out more in Brooklyn.”

Not everyone wants such conspicuous buildings in Brooklyn. Mr. Ratner’s plan for the Brooklyn rail yards met with heated protest from residents who thought the new skyline would threaten the borough’s earthy brownstone charm.

But many have argued that Mr. Ratner’s project better protects the borough’s traditional residents.

“There is an interesting thing about the Manhattanization of Brooklyn. The people who are forced out,” said Mr. Stuckey, “have been gentrified out by a lot of people who are opposing this. So I ask, who is really bringing Manhattan to Brooklyn?”

Indeed, Brooklyn has, over the last decade, attracted people who traditionally lived in or once wanted to live in Manhattan. City officials said that the influx has given a boost to start-ups in the city’s cultural scene and helped them compete with the old powerhouses, which they could one day join or replace at the top.

“In a way, New York City is so young,” said Ms. Levin, comparing the city to the great cultural cities of Western Europe, where old-money collections can be traced back to a lord or even a Pope in the family. “We think the Morgan library is old, but it isn’t. The generational cycle of New York culture is pretty new.”


You may reach Jason Horowitz via email at: jhorowitz@observer.com .
This column ran on page 1 in the 7/25/2005 edition of The New York Observer.

[NYguy]

NY OBSERVER

Ratner Is Gaining as the Nets Owner Nuzzles Advocates

http://nyobserver.com/database/articleimages/photoimages/072005_article_Schuer.jpg

“Mr. Mayor, I could just kiss you!” Developer Bruce Ratner's unlikely ally, ACORN's Bertha Lewis, heats up the halls of government.


By Matthew Schuerman


On a January day last year, about 30 activists walked into a windowless boardroom, high over downtown Brooklyn, belonging to Forest City Ratner Companies.

“Is Bertha going to start something?” one of the Forest City executives asked the group. The activists—members and employees of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now—were more used to knocking on tenement doors in East New York than being put such a question about their executive director across an oaken conference table.

Bertha—Bertha Lewis, ACORN’s colorfully dressed leader—did start something that January day: a mutually beneficial relationship with one of the city’s largest real-estate developers which has become so close that she recently kissed Forest City chief Bruce Ratner on the lips. In public. And Mayor Michael Bloomberg for good measure.

Bertha and Bruce represent the new synergy powering some of New York’s grandest development schemes: the picketer and the developer, happy together. And if the scene seems less incongruous than Jane Jacobs taking out a parks contract to plant the median of Robert Moses’ proposed Westway, that’s simply because the economics—and politics—of development in New York City have changed irrevocably since then.

Bertha Lewis is politely described—when she is described politely—as “a forceful advocate for her causes.” A former Off Broadway producer, the 54-year-old Ms. Lewis retains a flair for the dramatic, and the kisses are just the latest performance.

Her last run-in with Forest City was in 2000, a few years after the developer opened up a mall just a mile away. Ms. Lewis picketed the mall for several days, until the developer agreed to pressure the retail tenants to hire through a hiring hall that ACORN had set up for its members.

Ms. Lewis brings such moral authority to Mr. Ratner’s plan to build 7.5 million square feet of apartments and offices, along with an arena for the Nets basketball team, that it will be hard for city and state officials to do anything to block it.

The M.T.A., which owns the land on which much of the project will be built, may vote on selling the land as early as next week.

In return, Ms. Lewis gets a chance to enact the type of mixed-income housing scheme she has been trying to turn the city on to for several years, and she will probably get a substantial marketing contract for her organization as well. Along the way, however, she has attacked her adversaries with such disdain—accusing them of being (gasp!) gentrifiers and white liberals—that some of her old comrades in the community-organizing world wonder whether she has gone too far.

Forest City wanted to include affordable housing in its Atlantic Yards project, but its proposal—setting aside one-fifth of the units for low-income families—struck ACORN as doing nothing for the wide swath of working people who were getting priced out of Brooklyn. When Ms. Lewis entered MetroTech that January day, she was fresh off a mildly successful campaign to convince the city to change the way it subsidizes mixed-income housing.

In 2002, the city’s Housing Development Corporation began offering extra-special financing—1 percent loans—for developers who were willing to set aside 20 percent of their units for low-income tenants and another 30 percent for a rather generous version of the middle class: those with incomes of up to $109,000 for a family of four.

But ACORN believed that those guidelines resulted in “bunching”: The entire middle-income quota tended to come in just under the maximum, so that in one building one could find the very poor, the affluent and the well-off who were renting at market rates, but no one much in between.

Ms. Lewis wanted to change all that. Her plan—hatched with her housing expert, Ismene Speliotis—was to divide up the non-market portion of these complexes into five sections, each with a different income slice, from about $18,400 to $94,200. Rent would initially be set at 30 percent of the household’s income, and would then increase along with other rent-stabilized apartments in the city.

ACORN was only able to persuade the city to set aside $25 million for a tiered-income housing pilot project, so Atlantic Yards represented a chance to convince a private developer to do what the city wouldn’t. (Forest City will ask for city Housing Development Corporation bonds, however.) By the time Ms. Lewis had finished her presentation in the 11th-floor boardroom, Mr. Ratner was sitting in the back, grinning, but with his fingers crossed. “He was saying, ‘I hope you know what you’re talking about. I don’t want you pulling my chain here,’” said Debbie Tiamfook, an ACORN member who attended the meeting.

But ACORN succeeded, then and in subsequent meetings, in convincing Forest City—which is one of ACORN’s top donors, giving about $20,000 a year for its fund-raiser, according to Ms. Lewis—that it could both make a profit and set a model for public policy.

The development company had done enough work in Brooklyn to know the value of an important local ally, and so it gave ACORN pretty much everything it asked for. “Usually we don’t give up our final position when we start negotiating, but this time we threw all of that out the window,” Ms. Lewis recalled. “There was never this sense of an opening gambit, and they never played around with us either.”

This May, as part of the housing agreement that occasioned the kisses, ACORN formally agreed to appear at events promoting the project—although, in reality, Ms. Lewis has already been doing that for a year. The fight she encountered was unlike any other she had fought in her life: Her enemies turned out to be not crass developers or greedy bankers or stubborn city officials, but the most grassy of the grassroots: neighbors and churches and a local City Councilwoman who objected to Forest City’s proposed swath of towers, so large and shiny that it would rise up out of the plain of Brooklyn three-flats like the City of Oz.

Ms. Lewis likes to characterize these opponents, as she did last month on WNYC radio’s Brian Lehrer Show, as “brownstone folk,” as opposed to the “black and brown people” in the public-housing developments about half a mile away whose cause she champions. She dismisses the black ministers who are opposing the project, or reserving judgment on it, as a mere handful of individuals out to get a piece of the action. (She also neglects to mention the congregations they represent.) The Brooklyn Eagle quoted her as saying: “Whenever you have a small group of white liberals running and screaming about something, people think it’s important.” When asked whether it’s a conflict of interest if her organization gets paid to market the units, Ms. Lewis told The Observer, “Then again, I guess you could ask the same thing of the folks who oppose it. Isn’t it a conflict of interest for people who have been part of the wave of gentrification to oppose something, wanting to protect that asset?”

Forest City, by the way, does want to hire ACORN as its marketing agent, according to James P. Stuckey, a Forest City executive vice president and the Atlantic Yards project manager. “I think ACORN has proved to be a very, very strong advocate for affordable housing in Brooklyn,” Mr. Stuckey said.


Ms. Lewis seems to reserve her strongest feelings for the local City Council member, Letitia James, characterizing her to Brian Lehrer as an elected official who “doesn’t choose to represent all of the people in her district.” Ms. James, like Ms. Lewis, is black; she is also a member of the Working Families Party, which was founded by Ms. Lewis and a number of labor unions in 1998 to bring the Democratic Party more to the left. Usually, the Working Families Party is content to endorse the Democratic or, occasionally, the Green Party candidate, but Ms. James actually won her race by running solely on its line. The Atlantic Yards project has split the members of Working Families down the middle—but strangely enough, it didn’t poison the party’s endorsement for the 35th District Council seat, which Ms. James won this spring.

What ACORN does with its endorsement is another matter.

“This is really not a debate between ACORN and myself,” Ms. James said. “This is really about development and how development should go forward in the city of New York, and whether we in the city and the state of New York should be subsidizing a basketball arena and 17 buildings.”

Ms. James is all in favor of affordable housing, but she says she wants the towers to be lower, and she also wants to devote the land that would be used for the arena to build more affordable housing. She helped draft a plan with some neighborhood architects outlining such a project, and many of its aspects were adopted by a rival development company, Extell Corporation, which submitted the only other bid to the M.T.A. (besides Forest City’s) for the Atlantic Yards.

Extell wouldn’t need the government to seize property under eminent domain—another major grievance in the Forest City plan—but it is asking for at least some of the $200 million that the city and state have offered Forest City to cover the rail yard, purchase property and do other improvements. (A study by the Pratt Institute Center for Community and Environmental Development estimates that the true cost of Forest City’s plan—including tax credits that the city and state offered under an exclusive agreement signed in March—might exceed $1 billion.)

Extell is still vague about affordable housing—the company only learned that the M.T.A. had put the land up for sale a few weeks ago—but it has said that it would put aside 30 percent of its units at non-market rates. How that compares to Forest City’s plan is a matter of some debate. The housing agreement, signed by Ms. Lewis and Mr. Ratner in May, stipulates that 2,250 units will be non-market units. (The top price, at $1,440 a month for a studio, however, is about market rate for the area.) But it’s less clear about the condominiums and additional rentals that Mr. Ratner is suggesting he will build instead of office space, for which there is less of a demand. If Ms. Lewis fails to win any more units through subsequent negotiations—a possible but unlikely scenario—Forest City would end up devoting just 31 percent of its rentals to non-market rates.

Forest City seems flexible on the height of its towers, but it won’t start discussing lowering them until the governmental review begins. “We are completely prepared to address the density issue and the density question, which we know they will raise with us as part of the approval process,” said Mr. Stuckey, the Forest City executive vice president. “Although we have a lot of reasons to believe that what we have proposed makes perfect sense, obviously we know that there is a process, and we haven’t begun that process yet.”

Ms. Lewis, on the other hand, long ago sacrificed the scale of the neighborhood. If this debate, at heart, is about the “community”—the “brownstone people” versus the “brown and black people”—then Ms. Lewis’ position is all the more curious, considering that the housing plan she had fought for will set aside 225 units for families making as much as $94,200 a year—a tacit acknowledgment that the upper-middle class needs help also. “I think the density issue actually helps to address the jobs problem, the housing problem and the amenities problem,” Ms. Lewis said. “I don’t think any other plan does it. We have no problem with the density, because it is so far outweighed by other benefits.”

The opposition is trying its best to pick apart the housing agreement, as well as the so-called community-benefits agreement that Mr. Ratner signed last month with eight community groups, including ACORN. Again, do eight groups represent the entire community? The most visible opposition group, Develop-Don’t Destroy Brooklyn, lists 48 groups as either being against or having serious reservations about the Atlantic Yards project on its Web site. The community-benefits agreement—which includes goals for Forest City to meet in terms of minority hiring, job training and leasing to minority-owned stores—is too easy to get out of, according to one critic, the Reverend Clinton Miller of the Brown Memorial Baptist Church.

But the very diversity of the project’s opposition—advocates for low-income residents joining property owners concerned about a changing neighborhood—is also problematic. On the one hand, how can critics complain that only 20 to 30 percent of Forest City’s units will be truly low-income, when Extell’s lower towers wouldn’t accommodate any more? Few people with experience in grassroots work think that ACORN could have won any more concessions. “They did better than I thought they would, and they didn’t beat anybody up to do it,” said Brad Lander, the director of the Pratt Institute Center and former head of the Fifth Avenue Committee. But he remains ambivalent about the project, waiting to hear more details on traffic and the subsidies. “I just don’t feel ready to pick between Ratner and Extell,” Mr. Lander said. “I have a lot of reservations, but I also think it’s a lot of affordable housing and a meaningful number of union jobs—and I like basketball.”

Another community organizer put it this way: “One day I think, ‘Oh, it’s a pretty good arrangement,’ and the next morning I wake up and say, ‘What the **** is going on?’”

What sort of day will it be when members of the M.T.A. board—and other public officials down the line—wake up and have to make a decision on Atlantic Yards? Whether or not they think the plan has its imperfections, they know that by rejecting it, they’ll be rejecting a massive affordable-housing package. And “affordable housing” has become as American as apple pie in New York today. Ms. Lewis knows that. It will be very hard for anyone to take away her slice.

[Jasonik]

“What’s great about Gehry’s buildings is that they bloom like flowers, and maybe they will fade—maybe the celebratory nature won’t be the same after 50 years.”
Well said.

[Fabrizio]

A lot of Ghery´s stuff is crass. It seems to be designed for people with insecure taste who haven´t a clue. He´s like some oldster trying to be wild and crazy and hip at all costs. His designs are like those life-of-the-party people you try to avoid.

I´ll take Piano.

[billyblancoNYC]

Sharpton is this local scumbag pretend-reverend (he does not minister to an actual church) who knowingly perpetrated false rape charges against an innocent upstate prosecutor, basically ruining the poor guy's life. A jury found Sharpton guilty of defamation. He refused to pay the award, claiming he has no assets (his home, cars, fancy suits are all held in the name of his organization), and has yet to apologize. Later, he incited a riot against a white-owned Harlem store, leading to seven of its (minority) employees being burned to death. He is a media whore whom the guilty white liberal NYC media feels compelled to report on as some sort of respected figure. You can read some more of Sharpton's lowlights here:


http://slate.msn.com/id/2087557

http://slate.msn.com/id/76476/



Bless you...

[Alonzo-ny]

Wow sharpton sounds like an real asshole, like i said in my original question he should get his nose out of this it aint got shit to do with him and i dont care what his opinions are. Anyway in response to the piano/gehry article ive got say i prefer piano, his design for the glass shard tower in london is beautiful, ive always found gehrys (especially the guggenhiem) a bit hard for the eyes to comprehend and make sense of, i havent really had time to study all his work as all you studying and qualified architects will know how tight the schedule can be. That said i did prefer gehrys design for the times building.

[NYguy]

Wow sharpton sounds like an real asshole, like i said in my original question he should get his nose out of this it aint got shit to do with him and i dont care what his opinions are.


Actually, contrary to the statements of those posted above, Sharpton is a reverend. In the black community, you don't have to have a congregation to be considered a reverend. In fact, most don't.

That being said, you don't have to care for his opinion any more than you do anyone elses. The reason its a media story is the fact that Sharpton is perceived as the kind of activists who would be against large developments such as these. But as mentioned before where it concerns this development, things are no longer as one-sided as they were. More and more people are beginning to realize that the stance of the anti-development crowd is not in their own best interests. New developments bring new jobs and new oppurtunites, whereas those railyards have been sitting there for years.

[NYguy]

VILLAGE VOICE

The Battle of Brooklyn
Grassroots groups split on whether arena plan scores for borough

http://images.villagevoice.com/issues/0529/murphy.jpg

Divided and conquered: Brooklyn's divided not only by rail but also by the Atlantic Yards plan.

by Jarrett Murphy
July 19th, 2005


In February 2000, the veteran activists at ACORN—the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now—demonstrated against developer Bruce Ratner over hiring practices at the Atlantic Center mall he operates. The protesters wanted the stores there to hire more kids from the community and pay living wages. Cops threw the rabble-rousers out. They kept shouting from the sidewalk.

Five years later, Ratner's firm Forest City Ratner has proposed a massive development comprising an NBA arena for his New Jersey Nets and thousands of residential units across the street from the mall, over the MTA's Atlantic Avenue rail yards and on surrounding blocks. But ACORN won't be rallying against Ratner this time. Instead, the group will help sell the Atlantic Yards deal to government agencies, community groups, and the media.

Under a deal with the developer, in exchange for Ratner's promise to provide affordable housing and a host of other community benefits, ACORN and several other nonprofit organizations have agreed to support the Atlantic Yards plan. That alliance pits them against longtime allies who think the goodies that Ratner has offered are not worth the price: perhaps 15 new high-rise buildings—one of them possibly 60 stories tall—built with the help of public subsidies and, perhaps, the bulldozers of eminent domain.

The way the rail yards split the landscape, the Ratner proposal has divided Brooklyn. ACORN has fallen out with local city councilwoman Letitia James, whom the group helped to elect but who now opposes the plan. Reverend Herbert Daughtry, a well-known clergyman, has broken with an organization he founded and set up a new group to support Atlantic Yards.

Some residents in the footprint of Ratner's proposal have sold out to the developer. Others are hanging on.

It's all about hanging on—for everyone involved—in the face of gentrification, which has accelerated in Brooklyn in recent years. Some of the people affected by Atlantic Yards arrived in earlier waves of displacement. That makes project supporters unsympathetic. "We just think that folks who have been part of the gentrification of the community don't get to define the community," says New York ACORN executive director Bertha Lewis.

Not everyone in the footprint is a newcomer. But if a new wave of new residents is coming, ACORN asks, why not ride it for all you can? "Downtown Brooklyn is growing, and if it's growing, let's get a piece of the action. Let's get something for the community," says Greg Blankinship, co-chair of ACORN's Prospect Heights/Crown Heights chapter. "This is progress."

ACORN, which has chapters in many cities, has always prided itself on being the kind of nonprofit that delivers results and not just rallies. That means its workers have adopted roles that grassroots activists don't usually play. Longtime advocate for tenants, it's also the landlord of several properties. It has partnered with banks it once criticized for redlining. And an independent political consulting group for which some ACORN activists have worked has done $400,000 worth of organizing for city candidates since 2001.

That pragmatic approach shaped the group's response to Ratner's proposal. Lewis says she didn't find opponents of the arena compelling, because "it's not really up to us if this thing comes to fruition or not." But if it happens, she says, "we shouldn't wait until it's all done and we can't affect it."

So when ACORN came up with a housing plan that it thought would create long-term affordability and Ratner was willing to listen, the seeds of a deal were sown. The fruit of months of negotiations was a 50-page "community benefits agreement" in which Ratner pledges to make 50 percent of the apartments affordable (2,250 units), set aside construction contracts and leased space for minority- and women-owned businesses, give public housing residents and low-income people from the immediate area priority for any jobs, and house a health clinic and day care center in the project. A long list of other benefits is also included. Along with Ratner, ACORN, and Daughtry's Downtown Brooklyn Neighborhood Alliance, signers include Brooklyn United for Innovative Local Development, Public Housing Communities, and the New York State Association of Minority Contractors.

Lewis contends that the deal is the first such legally binding community benefits agreement in city history and calls it unique because it imposes a stricter income ceiling in the affordable-housing component. The pluses of Atlantic Yards, she says, outweigh the worries about its size and the people it might displace.

"I think that when you take all of it together this is a net gain for Brooklyn especially and for New York City," Lewis says. "The net gain is it can stop some of this tidal wave of gentrification. It can supply, over the next 10 years, 15,000 jobs—good-paying jobs."

But there's disagreement about the size of those benefits. Forest City Ratner quotes an estimate of a $1.55 billion net gain to the city and state over 30 years. But the New York City Economic Development Corporation arrives at a much smaller $524 million fiscal gain to the city. (The EDC doesn't report a figure for the state.) To break even, the city and state have to get back more in taxes than the $500 million in public financing Ratner would use.

Critics of the proposal—including Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn, the Fifth Avenue Committee, and the Pratt Area Community Council—see far larger costs than the dollar figures. The character of the neighborhood might change dramatically. Eminent domain could be used to force people out of their homes for a private development. And there's the precedent set by such a major project as Ratner's not going through the city's land use approval process, which does not apply to state property like the MTA-owned rail yards.

Ratner's plan is still a long way from a green light. Assuming his bid for the rail yards beats rival developer Extell's smaller-scale proposal, Ratner still faces a state environmental review and the Public Authorities Control Board—the body that doomed the West Side stadium. "And who knows what can happen at that point?" Forest City Ratner's Bruce Bender tells the Voice.

As that process unfolds, the community groups will play the important role of giving Ratner street credibility. But critics say the deal between Ratner and the community groups makes promises it can't deliver. Ratner can't tell his tenants to hire local or low-income people; he has agreed, instead, merely to spur discussions. If Ratner sells Atlantic Yards, the deal doesn't require that the community benefits agreement remain in place.

Even in the affordable-housing plan, critics see the devil in the details. As in all housing programs, the income tiers are based on regional statistics, which cite income levels much higher than Brooklyn's. The effect is that 10 percent of the apartments might be set aside for people making more than $60,000 a year and who would pay rents that aren't much lower than market rate. Given those potential income levels, and the fact that the project includes 2,250 market-rate apartments and 1,500 condos, City Councilman Charles Barron calls Atlantic Yards "instant gentrification."

None of the community groups allied with Ratner are getting any fees under the agreement, although they might be well positioned to eventually bid for contracts to provide some of the services that the agreement covers, like affordable housing and the day care center.

As the best known of the groups involved, ACORN will play a particularly important role in selling the Atlantic Yards deal (a recent picture of Lewis smooching Mayor Bloomberg, for example, was priceless publicity for hizzoner). For several years Ratner, like several other city business figures, has donated money to ACORN, but officials at the group scoff at the idea that they've been bought off.

Critics, however, say ACORN has bought into the dubious notion that it faced a choice between joining with Ratner or being left with nothing for Brooklyn's low-income people. In fact, the deal's opponents say, it's possible that a smaller-scale development could have generated similar community gains.

"Ratner's project is probably the least efficient, most harmful way of creating affordable housing," says Daniel Goldstein of Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn. "I believe that ACORN has been trying to do the right thing. I don't think there's anything nefarious. I just think it's shortsighted and that they've set up false arguments. It's a false debate."

[NYguy]

NEWSDAY

Details of Brooklyn plans unveiled


By The Associated Press
July 22, 2005

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority on Friday released details of the competing bids for the Brooklyn railyard where developer Bruce Ratner wants to build a new home for the Nets basketball team.

According to the Ratner proposal released by the MTA, the developer's Forest City Ratner Companies has offered to pay $50 million in cash and $156.4 million in improvements to the transportation hub where it plans a Frank Gehry-designed basketball arena and a series of residential towers that would transform the low-rise Brooklyn skyline. The firm also proposes to spend $163 million in what it calls extraordinary infrastructure costs, including $99 million to build a platform over the railyard. Ratner's firm would use $200 million in city and state subsidies for infrastructure improvements on its 21-acre project.

The bid by Extell Development Company offers $150 million in cash for the 8.4-acre railyards and proposes using $150 million in public subsidies for a smaller project that it called "less dense, lower-rise and contextual to the surrounding neighborhoods."

Forest City Ratner said in a statement Friday that its project offered public benefits including a state-of-the-art new train yard and improved subway station entrances nearby.

[NYguy]

So, let me see if I understand this correctly:

Ratner

$50 million cash
$156 million for transportation hub
$163 million for extra cost
minus $200 million city/state subsidies


Extell

$150 million cash
minus $150 million public subsidies


So it seems it comes down to this:

Ratner
$369 million minus $200 million subsidies = $169 million overall

Extell
$150 million minus $150 million subsidies = nothing

Of course, its not that clear cut....

[pianoman11686]

Rival Bid Tops Ratner's Offer to Develop Brooklyn Site

By CHARLES V. BAGLI

Published: July 23, 2005

A rival bidder to Bruce Ratner, the developer, has made a $150 million cash offer for development rights at the Atlantic railyard in Downtown Brooklyn, three times the amount Mr. Ratner bid for the property, where he proposes a $3.5 billion tower complex that includes a basketball arena for the Nets, stores, parks and 6,000 apartments.

The rival bid, made by the Extell Development Company, is a far more modest $1 billion proposal to build almost 2,000 apartments over the yard. Mr. Ratner, who also intends to acquire many of the parcels to the east of the yard, bid only $50 million for the development rights, according to documents released yesterday by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

The difference in those bids could be a problem for the Ratner proposal, even though it has far more political support. The agency's board, which is set to choose between the two offers at its monthly meeting on Wednesday, may have to contend with a new law that requires it to take the highest offer, without regard to any political considerations.

Assemblyman Richard Brodsky, a Westchester Democrat, said that the authority "ought to live by the law," which was passed in June but does not take effect until late this year.

In a further complication, an appraisal commissioned by the transportation agency and released yesterday put the value of the development rights at $214.5 million, far more than either bidder is offering.

The contest is reminiscent of the Jets' long, costly and ultimately losing battle with Cablevision to build a $2.2 billion stadium over a railyard in Manhattan. The agency accepted the Jets bid, even though Cablevision offered more money. But in June, the state's top legislators refused to approve the project. The matchup in Brooklyn promises to be no less politically charged. Gov. George E. Pataki, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and dozens of other elected officials, labor leaders and housing activists support Mr. Ratner, a politically astute and well-established developer based in Brooklyn.

But Extell, an upstart developer active in Manhattan, has fashioned a proposal intended to curry favor with local residents and others who view Mr. Ratner's proposal as an oversize and heavily subsidized intrusion on a quiet, low-scale neighborhood. It contains a number of conditions that could trip it up and is not easy to compare directly with the one from Mr. Ratner.

But unlike Mr. Ratner, Gary Barnett, Extell's president, has vowed to avoid using the state's condemnation power to acquire property and to go through the city's land use review process. Mr. Barnett has said that he decided to bid for the land only after community groups opposed to Mr. Ratner's project sought out rival bidders.

"Extell is prepared to do more for the community than Forest City," said Councilwoman Letitia James, who opposes the arena project, referring the Mr. Ratner's company. "They're also prepared to work with the entire community, not just a select few. They'll build to scale and not a bunch of skyscrapers."

The contest is over the rights to an 8.4-acre parcel known as Vanderbilt Yards, a potentially valuable site opposite Atlantic Terminal, the city's third-largest transportation hub, with 10 subway lines and a station for the Long Island Rail Road. The railyard now forms a waterless moat between the surrounding neighborhoods, but the residential project proposed for the site could form a vibrant bridge between the communities.

Extell has proposed building 1,940 apartments in a series of 11 buildings on the site, ranging from four to 38 stories. The project would include landscaped walkways, recreation, 1,000 parking spaces and 573 subsidized apartments for low- and moderate income residents.

But his bid requires a subsidy of up to $150 million from the city and the state for infrastructure. The closing will not take place until after the company obtains the needed public approvals, a process that could take a year or longer.

Supporters of Mr. Ratner's project contend that there will be tens of millions of dollars in additional public benefits from his project, ranging from jobs and additional tax revenues from the arena for the M.T.A. to affordable housing and mass-transit improvements.

Mr. Ratner, chief executive of Forest City Ratner, plans to build a glass-walled arena for the Nets at the western end of the property and 15 towers containing office space and 6,000 apartments, with some soaring up to 50 stories.

He is also planning for 1,500 condominiums and promising to build 600 affordable, for-purchase homes, either on or off the site.

Under a nonbinding agreement signed in March, the city and the state each agreed to provide Mr. Ratner with $100 million for infrastructure work related to the entire project.

In a statement released yesterday, James Stuckey, executive vice president for Forest City Ratner, said that only $100 million of the government money would be used at the railyard, in contrast with Extell's plan to use up to $150 million there. Mr. Stuckey also said that his company would spend $163 million to build a platform over the yards, as well as retaining walls.

One leading opponent of the Ratner plan, Daniel Goldstein, a spokesman for Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn, who lives in a condo that would be demolished to make way for Mr. Ratner's arena, said that the transportation agency should delay its vote until September so it could carefully consider the two offers.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2005/07/23/nyregion/23atlantic2_lg.jpg
A rendering of the Vanderbilt Yards in Downtown Brooklyn by the Extell Development Company.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2005/07/22/nyregion/23atlantic_lg.jpg
An aerial view of the arena block proposed by Forest City Ratner.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

[Fabrizio]

I love the crystal ball tchotchkes.

[ZippyTheChimp]

:p

http://www.phobe.com/tp/

[NYguy]

I love the crystal ball tchotchkes.


Well, if Long Island can get one, Brooklyn can too...


DAILY NEWS

Railyard plans are detailed


By PAUL D. COLFORD

The wraps came off the bucks in plans to build atop the Atlantic Ave. railyards in Brooklyn - and the dueling developers are many millions apart.

Forest City Ratner Cos. is offering the Metropolitan Transportation Authority $50 million in cash for rights to the 8 acres, but other planned extras balloon the bid to an estimated value of $369 million.

Chief among the extras is Ratner's plan for a new storage facility for Long Island Rail Road trains that use the yards. Extell Development Co., whose bid early this month was welcomed by community groups opposed to Ratner's bigger overall plan, is offering the MTA $150 million in cash while also planning to use up to $150 million in public funds.

MTA spokesman Tom Kelly said the agency's board could vote on the bids at its next meeting on Wednesday.

An appraisal done for the MTA values the 8 acres - which stretch from Fifth Ave. to Vanderbilt Ave., between Pacific St. and Atlantic Ave. - at $214.5 million.

Though the scope of the two developers' plans were already known, the MTA released their detailed documentation yesterday, along with the financial breakdowns.

Of the $200 million in public funds available for infrastructure work, such as building a platform over the railyards, Ratner would use $100 million at the MTA site while Extell said it wouldn't go above $150 million. Ratner will use an additional $100 million in public funds elsewhere in his project.

A key difference between the two proposals is Ratner's plan to spend an additional $82 million for the storage facility and yard upgrade, as well as another $163 million for the platform. Though the 8 acres up for grabs comprise what's formally known as the Vanderbilt Yard, Ratner's plans for the expanse are part of a 21-acre development, called the Atlantic Yards Project.

The project, being designed by star architect Frank Gehry, includes a sports arena, at Atlantic and Flatbush Aves., for the Brooklyn Nets basketball team that would be built in part over the railyards. Company President and CEO Bruce Ratner, who owns the New Jersey Nets, plans to move the NBA team from the New Jersey Meadowlands sports complex.

In all, the Atlantic Yards Project envisions 7.8 million square feet of housing, office and retail space, including about 3.3 million square feet over the Vanderbilt Yard. A cluster of high-rises would soar up to 60 stories.

Extell stressed in a statement yesterday that it "submitted a $150 million all-cash offer net to the MTA, which is three times the net amount offered by a competitive bidder."

Extell, whose tallest building would stand 28 stories, also noted that its mixed-use proposal "is less dense, lower-rise and contextual to the surrounding neighborhoods of Prospect Heights and Fort Greene." Daniel Goldstein, a spokesman for Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn, a coalition of community groups fighting Ratner's plan, said: "Extell is offering three times as much cash, therefore they should win the bidding."

Goldstein said DDDB would work to head off a quick MTA decision on the bids until their economic benefits are better known.

[ablarc]

The Extell plan would be contextual if Brooklyn were Co-op City.

We need to put to rest the idea that contextual design's a question of height, when it's actually a function of footprint. Extell features a single building that's blocks long, while Gehry breaks his scheme down into bite-size components such as exist in real cities.

The Extell scheme is Robert Moses planning reborn. Ironic that the community supports it as being more in scale. Just shows how deluded they are.

No excuse for that kind of ignorance if you're going to shoot off your mouth in public.

[Fabrizio]

A long wall of a building in a park type setting....isolated and without context....were have these people been for the last 30 years? No lessons learned?

From the Ghery plan to this.... bad to (slighty) worse....

[NoyokA]

A long wall of a building in a park type setting....isolated and without context....were have these people been for the last 30 years? No lessons learned?

From the Ghery plan to this.... bad to (slighty) worse....

Fabrizio I don' think you understand that the Ghery plan is preliminary, that said it will look entirely nothing like the models presented. It is merely the type of architect Gehry is, his designs do and do not evolve, they may maintain an underlying theme. What you see is typical Gehry, the boxes and the sphere’s, it is a massing model, the boxes represent areas of the building he wants to be flat, the sphere’s areas that he wants to be curved. You said you loved the crystal ball tchotchkes, I can almost guarantee you those will not last into the final design as the original design of the Disney Concert Hall featured such sphere’s, as do almost all his preliminary designs. You cannot criticize a design that is not complete; you can rightfully criticize other aspects of the plan such as scale and density since those have been demonstrated in the massing models.

[ablarc]

Fabrizio I don' think you understand that the Ghery plan is preliminary, that said it will look entirely nothing like the models presented. It is merely the type of architect Gehry is, his designs do and do not evolve, they may maintain an underlying theme. What you see is typical Gehry, the boxes and the sphere’s, it is a massing model, the boxes represent areas of the building he wants to be flat, the sphere’s areas that he wants to be curved. You said you loved the crystal ball tchotchkes, I can almost guarantee you those will not last into the final design as the original design of the Disney Concert Hall featured such sphere’s, as do almost all his preliminary designs. You cannot criticize a design that is not complete; you can rightfully criticize other aspects of the plan such as scale and density since those have been demonstrated in the massing models.
Everything you said is true, Stern.

I would add: the Extell plan's preliminary, too; but you can see that after any amount of development, it will still be a turd.

[Fabrizio]

"You cannot criticize a design that is not complete; you can rightfully criticize other aspects of the plan such as scale and density since those have been demonstrated in the massing models".


Stern : There is thread after thread on this forum where we are critizing designs on renderings and models..... designs that are surely not complete....designs that will evolve. If on this forum we "cannot criticize a design that is not complete" then you should have informed us long ago.

BTW: The "tchotchkes" comment was me joking... no I´m not expecting crystal balls LOL. I know very well how to "read" Ghery´s models and renderings. I´ve known his work since his house in Santa Monica a million years ago (long before Ghery was known outside of a very strict circle), I know Bilboa (which with reservations I actually like) and Dusseldorf . With this Brooklyn project the signature Ghery style is there, and that is enough for me (and others if you scroll through this thread) to criticize.

[NoyokA]

"You cannot criticize a design that is not complete; you can rightfully criticize other aspects of the plan such as scale and density since those have been demonstrated in the massing models".


Stern : There is thread after thread on this forum where we are critizing designs on renderings and models..... designs that are surely not complete....designs that will evolve. If on this forum we "cannot criticize a design that is not complete" then you should have informed us long ago.

BTW: I know very well how to "read" Ghery´s models and renderings. I´ve known his work since his house in Santa Monica a million years ago (long before Ghery was known outside of a very strict circle), I know Bilboa (which with reservations I actually like) and Dusseldorf . With this Brooklyn project the signature Ghery style is there, and that is enough for me (and others if you scroll through this thread) to criticize.

Wrong choice of words, I didn’t mean you literally couldn’t, but that you shouldn’t. The purpose of my post was to say it’s somewhat frivolous to criticize a design as if it’s the design that will be built.

[NoyokA]

In the end Miss Brooklyn will look more like this:

http://www.pbase.com/archit_kderek2k3/image/45826560/medium.jpg

http://www.pbase.com/archit_kderek2k3/image/45826482.jpg

And nothing like this:

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2005/07/22/nyregion/23atlantic_lg.jpg

[ablarc]

I know very well how to "read" Ghery´s models and renderings.
Well then, you know that some elements in his models are just placeholders until he figures out what they actually are. When you're an abstractionist and an innovator you don't have prior examples to guide you. The crystal ball will eventually turn out to be...something you can build.

By contrast when you're just a copyist or a regurgitator, you don't necessarily have to develop your design; you already know what it is from the get-go, since you're recycling something you've already seen, with at most minor variations.

The Extell plan requires no further development. Since it consists entirely of familiar elements, you can assess it just as it is; and you can see that it's crap.

[Fabrizio]

Ablarc/Stern: I don´t know how many of Ghery´s projects you fellows have visited or how long you´ve even been aware of his work. Whether the final project is like those Stern has posted or like the models that EVERYONE here has been commenting on, my feelings remain unchanged. I´m judging the project on his record. I think Ghery is the WRONG man for this project.


But even so, Ablarc please note: about the Extell design I commented: "From the Ghery plan to this.... bad to (slighty) worse".

[ablarc]

^ Have you seen the Stata Center?

[Fabrizio]

I have not visited it, though the design is similiar to his garish, tasteless project in Dusseldorf.

Here is James Kunstler on the Stata Center:

http://www.kunstler.com/eyesore_200405.html

Another poster here, kznyc2k, who has visited Stata had this to say about it:

"I'm a 15 minute walk from the Stata Center at MIT and well, I went once, I saw, I felt awkward, and I most likely will never visit it again. Timeless it is not".

http://www.wirednewyork.com/forum/showthread.php?t=4322&page=36&pp=15

[ablarc]

Lol, the last three of those are my photos! My batteries ran out of juice before I got to the other (much better) side. Kunstler must have borrowed the pics from one of the forums where I posted them.

http://www.cyburbia.org/forums/showthread.php?t=11671

My accompanying comments were also somewhat unflattering, but my view of this building has mellowed considerably. The worst thing about this building: no ground floor commercial; but that's not Gehry's fault.

More: http://www.urbanphoto.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=72&highlight=stata

[Fabrizio]

You should drop Kunstler a line.

Perhaps your feelings about the MIT project have "mellowed" over time, but those scary photos plus your comments ( as well as the comments of the other posters ) pretty much sum up my feelings.

I think one Ghery building might be wonderful... an eccentric oddity that we can embrace ... but a downtown city project? No way.

[Citytect]

Hmmm... So it's okay to look at this preliminary design and judge it ONLY IF you are going to approve of it? Both sides of this little debate here are doing the same thing; using Mr. Gehry's previous designs and builts works to read where this prelim. design is headed. I think Fabrizo can read it just as well as the supporters of his design.

[ablarc]

^ That's right; he doesn't like Gehry, and we do.

[bkmonkey]

The New York Times seems to have mispoken. Compared to the other articles, which take a cautious aproach, the Times headline proclaims that Extell has topped Ratner, when indeed that is not the case

[Citytect]

I think one Ghery building might be wonderful... an eccentric oddity that we can embrace ... but a downtown city project? No way.
Exactly.

Downtown Brooklyn is going to be a Frank Gehry theme park. How nausiating!

[lofter1]

Exactly.

Downtown Brooklyn is going to be a Frank Gehry theme park. How nausiating!

Although I haven't visited the Stata Center my gut reaction to it is similar to the reaction I had on a recent visit to Universal Park in Orlando: after a few hours I felt like I had to get out quick.

I've been to the Music Experience in Seattle and the Disney Concert Hall in LA -- I love them both.

I think Gehry's work is much stronger as individual, self-contained units...

But I'm keeping an open mind and hoping that if Ratner gets the Atlantic Yards development that Gehry will come up with something amazing -- and it gets built in its full glory.

[pianoman11686]

The New York Times seems to have mispoken. Compared to the other articles, which take a cautious aproach, the Times headline proclaims that Extell has topped Ratner, when indeed that is not the case

When I first saw the headline, I thought: "Oh no, the MTA already chose Extell?" After a few lines, it becomes clear that the title is meant to convey the fact that Extell is offering the MTA more cash up front for the railyards, thus "topping" Ratner's smaller offer of 50 million. It's not incorrect, but I think it could have been better worded, though.

[bkmonkey]

When I first saw the headline, I thought: "Oh no, the MTA already chose Extell?" After a few lines, it becomes clear that the title is meant to convey the fact that Extell is offering the MTA more cash up front for the railyards, thus "topping" Ratner's smaller offer of 50 million. It's not incorrect, but I think it could have been better worded, though.

it is not incorrect, it howerver is misleading, as Ratner's offer has greater "value" than Extells (upgrades, plus money)

[peb]

Forgive me for posting this link if this has already seen the light of day. This "Pacific Plan" is devoid of any details, however, from an urban planning standpoint seems to deserve some attention.

http://www.boerumhillbrooklyn.org/archives/LandUse/pacific_plan.htm

The biggest problem that I have with Gehry is that I don't feel his talents lie in urban planning. Regardless of whether you like his stylistic architecture, at this stage in the process, the bigger concern should be how he handles the overall urban plan (especially if you live in Brooklyn). Ratner and his various square footage demands are also a problem, but Gehry seems to have given a great deal of autonomy on the overall design. They both need help.

[bkmonkey]

Interesting comparison to the New York Times article from the Daily News




Slam dunk for Brooklyn


http://www.nydailynews.com/images/editors/header_editorials.gif




The bids for the right to build one of the largest and most important developments in Brooklyn's history have been opened, and the winner, no contest, is a $3.5 billion plan for housing, offices and an arena for the basketball Nets.

The project has been a clear winner since developer and team owner Bruce Ratner floated the idea of building over the Long Island Rail Road train yard in downtown Brooklyn, as well as on surrounding properties. The only question turned out to be whether a competing entrepreneur would step forward with a proposal that offered even more economic and social benefits.

Didn't happen. One rival, Gary Barnett of Extell Development, proffered a plan that would create far less housing, far fewer jobs and far less economic activity. And, of course, Barnett would not give Brooklyn its own pro basketball team complete with an arena at the intersection of Flatbush and Atlantic Aves.

Ratner's project would encompass 16 buildings on 21 acres in a prime location that has stubbornly escaped development for decades, largely because of a rail cut along Atlantic Ave. A new community would rise with at least 6,000 housing units, including 2,250 in which rents would be set at levels affordable to working- and middle-class New Yorkers. Barnett, who was recruited to the bidding by Ratner's community opponents, came through with only 1,373 residential units on 8 acres, with just 573 units set aside as affordable.

The two developers also went head-to-head in making money offers to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority for the okay to build over the railyard. Here, the calculations get tricky, because they made apples-and-oranges proposals.

Barnett promised to pay the MTA $150 million but would require $150 million in subsidies from the city and state. Ratner put $50 million cash on the table for the MTA and would call on the city and state for $200 million in subsidies - but he would also spend $256 million making improvements to MTA facilities. Those would include construction of a new railyard at the site and improvements to the nearby IRT and BMT subway hub. The cost of those improvements - if the MTA wants them - would put Ratner way over the top in direct monetary benefits to the public. Subtract those costs, and Ratner is still the runaway winner because his plan is so much more sweeping. Think about having a pro team in Brooklyn for the first time in half a century, a classy facility for concerts and other entertainment and thousands of construction jobs. The MTA should award the yards to Ratner and then get into serious negotiations aimed at pushing his $50 million cash contribution higher. The MTA's appraisal pegged the value of the yards at $214.5 million. They should find a happy medium and start building.

[Clarknt67]

Barnett promised to pay the MTA $150 million but would require $150 million in subsidies from the city and state.

Wouldn't it be nice to live in the world of a real estate developer?

Let's go to Le Cirque! My Treat! (Do you have $400 to cover it?)

[ablarc]

Although I haven't visited the Stata Center my gut reaction to it is similar to the reaction I had on a recent visit to Universal Park in Orlando: after a few hours I felt like I had to get out quick. .
Since you’ve been to Universal Park, your reaction fits in the category of reportage; and though I've never seen Universal, I’d theorize that my reaction would be the same.

I have seen Stata Center, and so I’ll theorize that if you saw it, you’d no longer link it with your Universal Park experience; the only link offered is the tired, commonly heard and utterly untrue theory that any newly-created place that’s genuinely different is doing a Disney. The difference between Disney and Gehry is that Disney borrows his glory and Gehry doesn’t.

It’s pretty obvious you recognize this:

I've been to the Music Experience in Seattle and the Disney Concert Hall in LA -- I love them both.

I think Gehry's work is much stronger as individual, self-contained units...

But I'm keeping an open mind and hoping that if Ratner gets the Atlantic Yards development that Gehry will come up with something amazing -- and it gets built in its full glory.

You have an open mind; that’s perfectly compatible with “wait and see” plus a little healthy skepticism (“I think Gehry's work is much stronger as individual, self-contained units...”). That’s the view amplified by peb:

The biggest problem that I have with Gehry is that I don't feel his talents lie in urban planning. Regardless of whether you like his stylistic architecture, at this stage in the process, the bigger concern should be how he handles the overall urban plan.
Being one myself, I know that all designers are vexed by the widespread and unexamined theory that you can only be trusted to do what you’ve repeatedly demonstrated your competence to do. A developer is likely to wonder if you’re capable at housing if your portfolio’s full of office buildings, and so you get pegged.

What this common theory omits is that if you’re very good at one thing, you’re likely to be just as good at some closely-related discipline. Thus Michelangelo, who wielded a pretty mean chisel, was also no slouch when he picked up a paint brush; and when it came to architecture, he had no peers. And let’s not forget his urban design accomplishments; Rome had to wait for Bernini before anyone matched the Campidoglio. (Btw, he was also pretty good at writing sonnets and composing music, though others outdid him at these pursuits.)

So here’s what I know from personal experience about Gehry and his buildings:

1. His buildings, though photogenic, are even more amazing in the flesh.

2. Though he’s had no major urban design projects built to prove it, he has the same perception of what constitutes a good city as most folks on this forum. He has nothing to learn from me or I daresay pretty much anyone on this forum about streetwalls, ground floor retail, pedestrian circulation, good streetscape and all the other things we value for making good cities.

3. Though he attended Harvard when they were already teaching Bauhaus nonsense, independent thinking let him emerge unscathed; this can’t be said of most of his classmates, as most folks aren’t smart enough to avoid the indoctrination that accompanies “education.”

4. He’s not just smarter than 99% of us in ways that you can measure with a standardized test, he’s also well-spoken, perceptive, witty and wry. Those are the components of self-awareness; there’s no question in his mind who he is and what he’s up to, and he’ll leave no question in yours. After all, by age 76 some wisdom’s bound to have accumulated in an open-minded man, and he has the same wide-eyed wonder mixed with a little world-weariness that Einstein was noted for.

5. Like Einstein, he’s a genius. It’s trendy in our populist times to pooh-pooh the very existence of this trait, but culture now as always is most persuasively propelled into the future by those who discover and invent rather than regurgitate. Hundreds of us can calculate answers using Einstein’s formula, but it took him to come up with it. And who would deny Stephen Hawking’s genius? Or Picasso's?

6. Like them, Gehry isn’t looking for a comfortably familiar recycling of old-shoe urban design; you can go to Cooper-Robertson for that, and end up with Battery Park City: pretty good maybe, but no one will mistake it for a work of genius.

Brooklyn’s in good hands; what emerges will be world class. They’ll travel from Guangzhou and Kano to see it.

For a while it’ll have more gawkers than the Empire State Building.

And even the biggest nay-sayer will come around in time, swelling with pride; who in Paris still hates the Eiffel Tower?

[lofter1]

ablarc, thanks for that post -- always good to get input from someone with far more knowledge than I have myself.

Of course to judge any piece of architecture (or sculpture and many other creative works) based merely on a two-dimensional rendering or plan is somewhat foolish. These endeavors exist in three dimensions (sometimes more) and are meant to be experienced one on one.

I'm all for Gehry doing the Atlantic Yards development -- but only if Ratner and others leave hiim be to do what he does.

My current favorite dream is that Gehry will be hired to to the new Fiterman Hall (as I've posted here: http://www.wirednewyork.com/forum/showthread.php?t=4244&page=2&pp=15&highlight=fiterman)

[Fabrizio]

Ablarc: Nah. It´s actually very simple. You look at the body of his work. Ya sit there and you look through it. And yeah he´s a genius and all. But you sit there and you look through it.... and ya say to yourself: do we want this genius guy to design such a big chunk a Brooklyn? The concert halls and museums are beautiful and a loony looking college campus... why not? But where are the apartment buildings and office towers and buildings built onto lively street fronts? Oh yeah, he´s a genius so o f c o u r s e it just follows that he´ll be able to deal with all of that.

Sorry, but I think a lot of people will not buy your reasoning and don´t want to be part of Ghery´s first experiment in urbanism.

[ablarc]

Fabrizio, you'd like Boston; no chance of anything new being tried there.

You'd also enjoy Florence, but not so much in the 1400's.

[Alonzo-ny]

I really wish it was easier for me to see some gehry buildings. I plan on visiting his maggie center in the city i study architecture in dundee, scotland. The only reason ive not seen it yet as i didnt believe gehry would set foot there as its pretty gritty compared to new york or bilbao. I plan on visiting some cities the week before i go home so any gehry buildings in the US you can suggest

[ablarc]

Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles; Stata Center, MIT, Cambridge, MA.

[peb]

Ablarc, I agree with most of your argument. It has a lot of merit as theory. However, relying on genius in place of the study of a discipline is dangerous.

Like Einstein, he’s a genius.

One could also say:

Like Le Corbusier, he's a genius. Le Corbusier's intellect was never in question. However, as an urban planner his genius was less apparent. His ideas of the Radiant City were out of touch with reality and devoid of real practical urban planning. Whether you like his work or not, his importance as an architect cannot be disputed. However, brilliance can be undermined by a lack of knowledge and study. Urban planning is more than just an extension of architecture. Whatever happens at the Atlantic Yards, the need for real urban planning should not be minimized.

If someone can point to an example of visionary urban planning on the part of Frank Gehry, it would put my mind at ease.

[Jasonik]

I'm more worried about knockoff contextualist hacks that will extend this funhouse vernacular into the surrounding areas. This could be a stylistic copycat plague on Brooklyn if the development is as commercially successful as I imagine it will be...(not that a more tempered and restrained interpretation of his gestural moves would be a bad thing).

[ablarc]

Don't worry, peb. I've spent enough time with Gehry to know there's nothing any of us can teach him about urban planning. He understands the city exactly as we do; all the things we like are the things he likes. And that's been true since many of us were born (he's 76).

Because of his dizzying schedule he's seen every city you can name, and he's no fool: why should he like Tulsa or Albuquerque? Would you if you didn't live there and you spent half your time in European capitals?

The difference between Corbu and Gehry: Corbu was a genius who wanted to replace real cities; Gehry's a genius who likes them just fine they way they've always been (the real ones, that is).

Just look at the drawings, peb (on the site you linked us to) to see that there's nothing fundamentally different about Gehry's Brooklyn plan. The planning per se is orthodox current good planning practice (that didn't come from Ratner, incidentally; look at that guy's past performance).

The only thing that's different is the actual appearance of the buildings. He just wants to push the envelope of the buildings' appearance a little; that's what'll make it more interesting than drab ol' Battery Park City.

[ablarc]

I'm more worried about knockoff contextualist hacks that will extend this funhouse vernacular into the surrounding areas. This could be a stylistic copycat plague on Brooklyn if the development is as commercially successful as I imagine it will be...(not that a more tempered and restrained interpretation of his gestural moves would be a bad thing).
That, yes; that's a genuine worry. Wherever something successful is done, the hacks produce second-rate knock-offs in an attempt to cash in. Drive around the vicinity of Seaside FL for evidence of that.

.

[peb]

The biggest problem (in my opinion) with the whole project is the scale. The facets of the "Pacific Plan" which I previously linked to, that I liked, were the reduced scale, and the minimizing of superblocks. With the arena being built, some cross streets will have to be sacrificed. However, extending the existing streets of Fort Green, through the "Atlantic Yards," to Prospect Heights, will help the integration of this development with the existing neighborhoods. Superblocks with open spaces in the middle tend to wall out the surrounding areas. This also frequently creates dead space at their centers instead of interesting neighborhood space. I would like to see Gehry working with a template closer to the Pacific Plan than the intial Ratner plan. If Gehry is going to come up with a master plan that reinvents urban space, then I'm all for it. Unfortunately it is common practice for developers and architects to replicate the same urban mistakes that were made in the past.

Good point about "Corbu". Still a good example of genius not being the only criteria.

[pianoman11686]

Well this just keeps getting more interesting...

Development Rival Offers Compromise on Nets Arena

By CHARLES V. BAGLI

Published: July 26, 2005

The real estate investment group battling with the developer Bruce Ratner for control of the Atlantic railyard near Downtown Brooklyn offered a compromise yesterday that it said would allow both parties to declare victory: The group would incorporate Mr. Ratner's plan to build a glass-walled basketball arena for the Nets into its project.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority is scheduled to review the rival bids, and possibly select a winner, at its board meeting tomorrow. The investment group, led by Gary Barnett, president of Extell Development Company, has offered $150 million in cash for development rights at the 8.3-acre site, or three times as much as Mr. Ratner.

Knowing that the city and the state want to provide a home in Brooklyn for the Nets of the National Basketball Association, Mr. Barnett said yesterday that if he won, his company would resell a portion of the development rights for no additional cost to Mr. Ratner so that he could build the basketball arena, now expected to cost more than $500 million.

But Mr. Ratner, who has worked for three years on a $3.5 billion proposal for the arena and 6,000 apartments at the railyard and on adjoining parcels of land, brushed off the proposal. He contends that the transit authority and the public will get far more from his project than the $50 million he bid, including a newly built railyard, affordable housing, transit station improvements and tax revenue from the arena.

"Forest City Ratner has an unmatched record in Brooklyn and throughout the city for developing and completing highly complex projects," said Joseph DePlasco, a spokesman for Mr. Ratner and his company, Forest City Ratner. "Also, they already have in place a long-term partnership with community groups and community leaders to develop thousands of needed jobs and 2,500 units of affordable housing while generating billions of dollars in revenue for the city and the state."

It is unclear whether Mr. Barnett's offer to Mr. Ratner will have any effect on the authority board when it examines the two proposals. But he is contending with the fact Mr. Ratner enjoys political support from Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, Gov. George E. Pataki and numerous elected officials.

Mr. Barnett and Extell, who developed their proposal over the last month, have a more modest goal of building 1,940 apartments, 573 of which would be for low- and moderate-income residents, parks and a school or community center on a platform over the railyard. His buildings would range from 4 to 28 stories; Forest City Ratner plans towers as high as 60 stories.

Mr. Barnett said he would cut the number of apartments by as much as a third if he incorporated Mr. Ratner's arena into the project.

Mr. Barnett's proposal, which was developed in consultation with some neighborhood groups, has picked up support from the opponents of Mr. Ratner's project who say it is out of scale with the area. Yesterday some of those groups urged the authority to delay voting in order to consider both proposals carefully.

The authority's board members will be looking at two very different proposals, if only because Forest City Ratner's plan is far more detailed. It proposes, for example, to build a new and improved railyard for the authority for $182 million, pay $50 million over time for the increased operating costs, and spend $20 million cleaning up the site. In addition, Mr. Ratner would spend $163 million erecting a deck over the yard, on which he would build the arena and some residential and commercial buildings.

But Mr. Barnett estimates that doing all that would cost no more than $150 million. The Extell budget estimates that a platform would cost $108 million, leaving only $42 million to cover the cost of moving the tracks and rebuilding an electrical substation. It does not specify how much it would spend on toxic cleanup or whether the new railyard would increase the authority's capacity to store and clean trains there.

Mr. Ratner argues that Mr. Barnett's proposal underestimates the amount of work that must be done to make the project work.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

[Citytect]

I'm really looking forward to seeing what Gehry's final plans look like. I like a good deal of his work. I find a good deal of it bothersome. Yes, he's a visionary thinker and has certainly made an impact in the architecture world. He's done some great stuff - genius even. But it's silly to think he has to be a great urban planner because he's a so-called genius architect, and because in history there have been a few "geniuses" who attained great things in more than one field. There are innumeral other "genuises" who were just good at one thing. peb gave a great example. There's simply no guarantee that a genius of one field, architecture in this case, will be genius of another field, urban planning.

Gehry's talent is untested at this scale in a city fabric. There's reason for skepticism. No guarantees this will turn out great. It's a little worrisome.

However, I'm in favor of the project on the whole. It will be a success financially. I'm just unsure it will be as great as it should be when all is said and done.

[Fabrizio]

Ablarc:

"Fabrizio, you'd like Boston; no chance of anything new being tried there.

You'd also enjoy Florence, but not so much in the 1400's".

(How borish.....) dear Ablarc... just because I don´t care for this Ghery project MUST that then follow that I´d like Boston because "no chance of anything new being tried there."?

And the Florence comment?

Stick to the issues.... to the merits of the argument without getting personal. Thank you.

[ablarc]

^ Sorry, Fabrizio; I didn't mean to be boorish or personal; should have used an emoticon.

As you know, Florence was cutting-edge in the quattrocento; they weren't afraid to go out on a limb with the risky and new, and it all panned out [mixed metaphor]. We still admire the results half a millenium later; we can't see today how radical it once was because it became the template for subsequent art and architecture. That may or may not come to be the case with Gehry; but even if he proves to be a dead end (likely), it'll be an honorable dead end, like Gaudi.

Imagine Barcelona without Gaudi.

.

[michelle1]

Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles; Stata Center, MIT, Cambridge, MA.LA’s Disney Concert Hall is unbelievable

[ablarc]

Ablarc, I agree with most of your argument. It has a lot of merit as theory. However, relying on genius in place of the study of a discipline is dangerous.
Well, if "study of a discipline" is your criterion, Gehry has a degree in Urban Design from Harvard, and a lifetime of globetrotting.

My confidence in him comes from conversation. His heart's in exactly the right place: like you and me, he prefers the street-level experience of Charleston to Charlotte, Bruges to Brasilia. I can report that in the same way as I can tell you whether my wife likes anchovies.

If someone can point to an example of visionary urban planning on the part of Frank Gehry, it would put my mind at ease.
Visionary or otherwise, nobody's asked him before; architects get pegged. If you want track record, check out Cooper-Robertson; there's a track record of safe mediocrity (verging on banality). Or after Seaside, how much real brilliance have you seen from Duany?

Track record? Pshaw, that's overrated.

[BrooklynRider]

The "compromise" offered by Extell really is ridiculous. They'll let Ratner build his arena, which would then cut back the Extell's proposed housing by one third. I was not a supporter of the scale of Ratner's proposal and I find the overall plan by Gehry garish. However, Extell is not the answer. I hope they get the boot (and quick).

The flip side to all my point-counterpoint on this stuff, is that we are in the midst of a building boom and I'd like to see it continue. I don't want this to drag out - but I'd like to see as much gusto put into a major Downtown Brooklyn development.

[NoyokA]

Fabrizio I think you’re looking at this in idealistic terms while other forumers are forced to look at this in realistic terms. The reality is that there are two bids for the site and only one will win. Ratner proposes a new Central Business District designed by world-renowned architect Frank Gehry, Extell proposes in modern material a throw back to the principles of the worst housing projects designed by some unkown architect. Those are the only two options, one will be picked, and there are no third or theoretical options. Since this is the case most forumers have wisely favored the best plan in terms of reality.

[elfgam]

The key thing that makes NY vibrant is DENSITY. The problem with stadiums is that they become big black-holes in the urban fabric of a city. The way to offset this, correctly, is to amp up the density and vibrancy of the area around them and to activiate the edge of the stadium so that it enlivens rather than deadens the city. When it comes to the number of units less is not always more. In this no-man's land of atlantic yards (and the stadium) you need LOTS and LOTS of people to make it feel like New York and not Cincinnatti (nothing against that city, just an example).

The Extell proposal to cut the number of appartments by a third and give the space over the stadium misses the point entirely: by doing so it makes the neighborhood worse, not better. The ratner scheme gives the critical mass of people (not enough in my opinion, but still a good start) to re-center Brooklyn on the intersection and to essentially "swallow" the stadium. This influx of people will be good for Brooklyn: more taxes, more shoppers, more eaters at restaurants, more attendees at BAM, more people in PTA meetings, more donators to the Brooklyn Museum, and an even higher profile for Brooklyn.

I wish people who are against this would look at what they're doing: in trying to fight Ratner they've agreed to something that is the worst of both worlds: it puts up a lot of appartments, but not enough to negate the negative qualities of the immediate area (or stadium if it is added). While I disagree with them, I respect their right to hold that Ratner should not build so much. However, they are doing themselves and their borrow a disservice by throwing their lot with a developer thats going to put a banal monstrosity that still has all the problems of the ratner scheme with none of the benefits.

[BPC]

Ratner should at least come up with an extra $100 million to match the Extall offer. As a subway rider, I am offended by the giveaway.

[ablarc]

elfgam: all good points.

NIMBYs could use some lessons in genuine self-interest.

[JMGarcia]

Ratner should at least come up with an extra $100 million to match the Extall offer. As a subway rider, I am offended by the giveaway.
Would you rather have Extell give the TA $100 million do go down Pataki's black hole to pay interest on all the bonds he has force the TA to issue or would you rather all Ratner's transit improvements. If you think that $100 million in cash is going towards any sort of transit improvements you're not understanding the TA very well IMO. I'm also of the opinion that Ratner will make improvements much more economically than the TA has shown they are capable of.

[NoyokA]

Would you rather have Extell give the TA $100 million do go down Pataki's black hole to pay interest on all the bonds he has force the TA to issue or would you rather all Ratner's transit improvements. If you think that $100 million in cash is going towards any sort of transit improvements you're not understanding the TA very well IMO. I'm also of the opinion that Ratner will make improvements much more economically than the TA has shown they are capable of.

Good point. Atleast with Ratner's proposal area subway stations will be upgraded and renovated, more money would otherwise be used for who knows what.

[ablarc]

Good point. Atleast with Ratner's proposal area subway stations will be upgraded and renovated, more money would otherwise be used for who knows what.
Just so the bookkeeping allows a higher figure to appear on paper, so Ratner can nail down the project, and the Times isn't left with misleadingly reporting that Extell's offer is higher. People often don't read the fine print in a news story.

[Fabrizio]

Stern : "Fabrizio I think you’re looking at this in idealistic terms while other forumers are forced to look at this in realistic terms". "Since this is the case most forumers have wisely favored the best plan in terms of reality".

Stern perhaps you should follow the thread before making such statements. About the Extell plan I posted this:

"From the Ghery plan to this.... bad to (slighty) worse...." ( post #652 )

Meaning? I favour the Ghery plan over the Extell plan.

Now that we´ve got that out of the way.... may I have reservations about Ghery and his plan all the same?

[Fabrizio]

Ablarc : "As you know, Florence was cutting-edge in the quattrocento; they weren't afraid to go out on a limb with the risky and new".

Oh really? I don´t know what you are talking about. Risky and new in terms of engineering yes.... but stylistically, the quattrocento was about the revival of ancient Greece and Rome... the re-birth of classical order in architecture.

It was a reverence for antiquity.

[ablarc]

^ Don't be disingenuous, Fabrizio; this is regarded as a period of great innovation; the Gothic was being swept aside and replaced by new ideas and ways of doing things that owed much less to ancient Rome than to the new spirit of looking forward. The Renaissance didn't just remind us of the past; it led us into the future.

Risky and new: it took courage to stand up to the reactionary forces of Savonarola, who overthrew Lorenzo de Medici and ruled with terror to 1498.

It's one of several periods when history went back to the future.

That's what's happening in city planning these days; we've re-discovered the tried and true methods of city-building, and we see that they lead into an improved future; and we're sweeping aside the Corbusian detour that led into Robert Moses' dead end.

I'm sure you agree.

[Fabrizio]

I´m not being being disingenuous. It was a period of great innovation but as you perfectly sum up it was "when history went back to the future".

I feel you are wrong to think (at least in architecture) that the period
"owed much less to ancient Rome than to the new spirit of looking forward" (...or at least we could save that discussion for another thread...and there would be plenty of opinions flying ).

"The Renaissance didn't just remind us of the past; it led us into the future"... agreed... but it did INDEED remind us of the past.

And it is because "we've re-discovered the TRIED AND TRUE methods of city-building, and we see that they lead into an improved future; and we're sweeping aside the Corbusian detour that led into Robert Moses' dead end" is EXACTLY why the Gehry plan has me skeptical. I want to see his contribution to the tried and true methods of city-building. I have´nt seen them. You´re telling me to have trust. I don´t buy that.

[kliq6]

Ive got a funny feeling they, THE MTA will select the Extell Bid

[NoyokA]

I have butterflies in my stomach too, we should know tomorrow.

[ablarc]

And it is because "we've re-discovered the TRIED AND TRUE methods of city-building, and we see that they lead into an improved future; and we're sweeping aside the Corbusian detour that led into Robert Moses' dead end" is EXACTLY why the Gehry plan has me skeptical.
We all have the right to be skeptical, but you needn't worry; Gehry's no believer in Corbusian planning. If it gets built, you'll see that.

Right now, we need to be praying that Extell's idiotic abomination and cynical power-play don't succeed.

[Jasonik]

July 22, 2005

Starring Frank Gehry

http://www.calendarlive.com/media/photo/2005-07/18587123.jpg

By taking leading roles in billion-dollar projects in L.A. and New York, he has helped usher in the era of "starchitects."

By Christopher Hawthorne, LA Times (http://www.calendarlive.com/architecture/hawthorne/cl-et-grand25jul22,0,6213588.story?coll=cl-home-more-channels) Staff Writer

At the age of 76, Frank Gehry may be changing the rules of architecture yet again.

His Los Angeles firm, Gehry Partners, has already created the first successful model for fully integrating digital technology into architectural practice. And with his Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, which opened in 1997, he proved that progressive architecture can itself operate as a kind of urban planning — that if a new building is enough of a draw, it can revitalize a city or region as effectively as the most comprehensive master plan.

Now comes the news that Gehry has been named lead architect on a massive project in each of America's two largest cities: one along Grand Avenue in downtown Los Angeles, for the developer Related Cos., and the other atop the Atlantic Rail Yards in Brooklyn, with Forest City Ratner.

The combined budget of the projects tops $5 billion. Together, they suggest that we've entered an era in which ambitious developers are not just open to the notion of working with architecture's boldest talents but, in certain high-profile cases, are desperate to avoid working without them. So-called "starchitects" have become too valuable now, as urban alchemists and as marketing vehicles, for developers to ignore. This is particularly true when those developers are relying on public approval — and public opinion — as is the case with Grand Avenue.

The fact that Gehry seems largely to have dictated the terms of these agreements only strengthens that impression. In each case, he's negotiated the architectural equivalent of final cut for a Hollywood director.

While some directors given carte blanche from big studios are invigorated by the responsibility, others find it overwhelming or lose their creative focus. The same is true in architecture. And Gehry has tended to do his best work when he is constrained — by tight budgets, political squabbles or awkward sites — and his most disappointing when he is fully autonomous. That alone is a reason for a measure of wariness about this pair of projects, in which the developers have taken pains to smooth the architect's path.

To be sure, Gehry is a singular figure in the profession these days. It is not just the exuberant, provocative nature of his buildings that makes him attractive to Related and Forest City. It is also his successful track record when it comes to high-stakes urban designs, such as Walt Disney Concert Hall and the Guggenheim, and the rigorous process his partners have developed for executing his high-flying formal language.

Fairly or unfairly, Gehry is viewed as less temperamental and more of a known quantity than any other architect who can credibly claim to be experimentally minded. It is hard to imagine an American commercial developer giving such a free hand to Rem Koolhaas, Zaha Hadid or Thom Mayne, for example, at this stage in their respective careers.

And as the plain-speaking Gehry himself is quick to point out, he knows how to talk to developers. In large part, he landed these commissions because by all accounts the men at the helm, Related's Stephen Ross and Bruce Ratner of Forest City, felt comfortable taking a risk with him.

Still, the sheer size and cost of the developments and the prominence of their sites mean that they will be seen as test cases for a new relationship between commercial real estate and urban design in this country. After steering clear of cutting-edge architects for decades, developers in a few cases have begun recruiting them, particularly for high-end housing. In Manhattan, architects including Richard Meier, Winka Dubbeldam and Santiago Calatrava are working on or have completed residential buildings where cutting-edge design is a central part of the marketing package. But seen in the larger context of the real estate industry, that's been little more than a flirtation.

This is a full-on love affair.

Officials at Related admit they "begged" Gehry this summer to sign on as more than simply an advisor to the $1.8-billion Grand Avenue project, which will combine retail space and residential towers with a large new civic park. Advising had been the extent — officially, anyway — of his role in recent months as he worked behind the scenes to help shape a master plan produced by Skidmore, Owings and Merrill and unveiled in May.

Related executives — and local power brokers including Eli Broad, who chairs the Grand Avenue Committee overseeing the redevelopment — knew they were lacking both an architect with wide fame and a prominent local talent for Grand Avenue. Gehry knew they knew. And that meant lots of leverage for the architect.

He ultimately worked out a deal to take on the bulk of the project's $500-million first phase, which includes a mixture of residential and retail on a site bordered by Grand Avenue and 1st, Olive and 2nd streets. Gehry will design a 50-story hotel and condominium tower at the corner of Grand and 2nd Street, across the street from Walt Disney Concert Hall. It will be his first skyscraper in Los Angeles (a residential tower in Lower Manhattan that he is building with Forest City Ratner may well be completed earlier) and by far his most sizable project in his adopted hometown.

Significantly, Gehry will produce the tower without the aid of a so-called executive architect, a larger corporate firm that is often called in to work alongside experimental or high-design architects on projects of this scale.

Gehry Partners will also handle the two- to four-story retail pavilions lining 2nd and Olive and meandering through the middle of the site toward Grand and 1st: roughly 225,000 square feet of retail space in total, set in a landscape designed by Laurie Olin. Related had originally penciled in Howard Elkus, whose Boston firm Elkus Manfredi Architects designed the suffocatingly earnest Grove open-air shopping center here, for those retail pavilions.

It remains unclear who will design the second tower in phase one, which will rise roughly 30 stories near the corner of Olive and 1st. If it is not Gehry, it is likely to be one of his former young colleagues now working independently — say, Michael Maltzan Architecture or Daly, Genik Architects. In either case, Gehry would serve a complicated paternal role in overseeing the tower's progress.

Gehry's work on the $3.5-billion Brooklyn project, proposed for a six-block-long site atop the Atlantic Rail Yards and awaiting final approval, will be even more sweeping. The development, which will also proceed in phases and thus may be scaled back over time, will begin with the construction of a 19,000-seat arena for the NBA's Nets, which now play in New Jersey, and four complementary towers. In all, Gehry could wind up designing more than a dozen buildings in the project. His firm is also entirely responsible for the master plan and for the connective tissue that will join the various towers at ground level.

Gehry, who studied planning briefly at Harvard and worked early in his career with the planner and shopping mall pioneer Victor Gruen (http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040315fa_fact1), has occasionally, and rather hopefully, described himself an "architect/urbanist" in recent years. He sometimes complains that he's underrated as a planner, and that the public mistakenly believes his office does little more than produce buildings that stand defiantly apart from the surrounding urban context.

In 2000, working with David Childs of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, Gehry produced a fluid design for a Manhattan skyscraper to house the offices of the New York Times, a project that ultimately went to Renzo Piano. (For his part, Piano was content to collaborate on the design with a more conservative firm, in this case Fox & Fowle.) He later landed the Manhattan residential tower job with Forest City Ratner. And Gehry Partners is now at work, with the firm Cooper, Robertson Partners on a master plan for an extension of the Harvard University campus across the Charles River.

Still, Gehry has never designed anything that approaches either the Brooklyn or Grand Avenue projects in cost or complexity. To commit to both at essentially the same moment suggests that he has his eye fixed on his legacy and on ensuring a continuing flow of work and more prominent roles for some of his partners, notably Edwin Chan, Marc Salette and Craig Webb. The fees from these two jobs could keep a good-sized firm going for close to a decade.

While the firm's participation is good news for both cities, there is surely such a thing as too much Frank Gehry. To that end, it is encouraging to learn that the architect's recent focus on the Brooklyn project has been convincing Forest City to reduce its bulk by several hundred thousand square feet. In Los Angeles, the participation of other, younger designers — for the park as well as the commercial parcels — may help the project achieve something more than a vibrantly monolithic appearance.

In the end, what makes these projects exciting and precarious is that in their level of ambition, and their just-add-water approach to urbanism, they resemble nothing an American architect has ever had the chance to attempt. College campuses have occasionally been given over to a single firm, but never whole parcels of urban development at this scale, and certainly never to a figure as prominent, and as forward-looking, as Gehry. As the architect himself acknowledges, there are no models here, no precedents — in his own career or anyone else's.

[bkmonkey]

Ive got a funny feeling they, THE MTA will select the Extell Bid

I would have to disagree with you, Mayor Bloomberg's appointees on the MTA board are voting for the areana, (he was four), as well as Pataki's apointees ( he has about 7) several other board members were quoted as saying, that they were leaning towards the Ratner bid. The rest are undecided. There are 17 members on the board I think. However the bottom line is, there is way to much political support for the Ratner bid to be rejected. In the bigger picture, Ratner is the veteran, and Extell is the rookie, the MTA knows that (especially with Extell's recent building collapse) Ill post an article soon.

[NoyokA]

Good point and as the MTA has shown so well they could care less about public opinion. Its all about politics and politics are all about momentum, Ratner's project has plenty of momentum and I have to say it will be choosen.

[debris]

I think you're referring to this one in NY Newsday:

BY PRADNYA JOSHI AND JOSHUA ROBIN
STAFF WRITERS

July 26, 2005


Mayor Michael Bloomberg's four representatives on the MTA board will vote in favor of a proposal to build a $3.5-billion development in Downtown Brooklyn that several community group oppose, several city and MTA officials told Newsday Monday.

Support from Bloomberg's delegates on the board adds strong momentum to Forest City Ratner's plan to build a housing and office complex complete with a basketball arena for the Nets. Gov. George Pataki, Bloomberg and numerous influential leaders have already thrown their support behind the Ratner plan, known as the Atlantic Yards project.

Ratner and another developer, Extell Development Co., are vying to build real-estate projects above the MTA's Vanderbilt Yard in Brooklyn. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority's board is expected to choose a bid tomorrow, and board members have already been briefed on the details.

Several community groups oppose the Ratner project because of congestion and size concerns, and they are asking the MTA to delay its vote.

But sources say that even if the MTA picks a developer tomorrow, the authority could negotiate a better price or make other changes to the plan before entering into contract.

Ratner has offered $50 million in cash but pegs its bid at $329.5 million in what the company calls "economic benefits." Extell has offered $150 million in cash and says its proposal is three times Ratner's value.

Both cash amounts fall short of a $214.5 million appraisal done for the MTA.

Neither Pataki nor his officials have made calls to his six representatives, according to MTA board members and Pataki's office. But his board members are known to hew closely to his desires.

MTA chairman Peter Kalikow can vote a second time to break a tie. Kalikow, a real-estate developer and political patron of Pataki, was unavailable for comment. Other members represent nearby counties.

Suffolk representative Mitchell Pally said he has been briefed on the proposals but has asked for more information and will wait until tomorrow to hear the debate before deciding.

"I don't want to preclude my fellow board members who may have opinions or issues that I never raised," said Pally, vice president for government affairs of business group the Long Island Association.

Bloomberg's delegates were more convinced in favor of Ratner's plan.

One person involved with the mayor's delegation sees the arena and housing proposal as worth $281 million -- $50 million in cash and the remainder in environmental and infrastructure improvements. However, Extell doesn't plan to use controversial eminent domain laws to take over private property in the area, as Ratner has proposed.

The cash-strapped MTA is trying to raise as much as $1.4 billion for its own projects, substantially from selling off property rights to land it owns.

Assemb. Richard Brodsky (D-Westchester) said yesterday that the MTA should negotiate with one developer or the other to realize the "full market value" of its site.

Staff writer Glenn Thrush contributed to this story.

[ablarc]

In the end, what makes these projects exciting and precarious is that in their level of ambition, and their just-add-water approach to urbanism, they resemble nothing an American architect has ever had the chance to attempt. College campuses have occasionally been given over to a single firm, but never whole parcels of urban development at this scale, and certainly never to a figure as prominent, and as forward-looking, as Gehry. As the architect himself acknowledges, there are no models here, no precedents — in his own career or anyone else's.
Rockefeller Center?

[billyblancoNYC]

I would have to disagree with you, Mayor Bloomberg's appointees on the MTA board are voting for the areana, (he was four), as well as Pataki's apointees ( he has about 7) several other board members were quoted as saying, that they were leaning towards the Ratner bid. The rest are undecided. There are 17 members on the board I think. However the bottom line is, there is way to much political support for the Ratner bid to be rejected. In the bigger picture, Ratner is the veteran, and Extell is the rookie, the MTA knows that (especially with Extell's recent building collapse) Ill post an article soon.

I hope you're right. This Extell thing would be a disaster and one of the largest wasted opportunities in the history of NYC.

[ZippyTheChimp]

http://www.archpaper.com (http://www.archpaper.com/)

Developmentally Challenged

Developers have been catching on that brand-name architects and community outreach can add dollar value to their projects. That’s a big development in itself, but doesn’t always translate to good development. Peter Slatin reflects on how developers can do good while doing well.



The sudden tussle between developers over Brooklyn’s Atlantic rail yards throws into grand scale a classic New York question: Do developers give a damn about how their buildings impact a given community?

Bruce Ratner, wearing Frank Gehry on his sleeve from the get-go, rode into Brooklyn Borough Hall in December 2003 to unveil a master plan for an arena-anchored district, which includes millions of square feet of office, retail, and residential real estate, much of which will rise from a platform built over the Atlantic rail yard. The plan, which would overwhelm the two adjacent, low-scale neighborhoods of Fort Greene and Prospect Heights, has also had community opposition from the get-go. This hasn’t stopped it from ballooning in ambition, scale, and budget. But despite the project’s unwieldy size, difficult financing, and an angry community, Ratner’s chances of winning the bid for the rail yards, being auctioned off by the MTA, are excellent. He started from the top down, lining up powerful political supporters, sports celebrities, investors, and yes, a superstar architect. The MTA soft-peddled its RFP, which has given Ratner’s effort the appearance of a closed deal.

>A community group, Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn, began contacting developers in hopes of finding one that would make an alternate bid. Enter Gary Barnett and Extell Development Corporation with their scaled-down scheme: 2,000 units topping out at 28 stories compared to Ratner’s 6,000 units at 60, spread out over 8 acres instead of 21. Extell’s architect is Cetra/Ruddy, a decent if uninspired production firm whose vision lacks the punch and excitement of Gehry’s fistful of highrises. The Extell scheme does, however, provide connecting tissue and green space for the two low-scale, old Brooklyn neighborhoods that will be divided under Ratner’s plan. lining up powerful political supporters, sports celebrities, investors, and yes, a superstar architect. The MTA soft-peddled its RFP, which has given Ratner’s effort the appearance of a closed deal.

What does all this say about whether developers care about the places they transform? The answer is, They do care…up to a point. Good development is almost always a trade-off that begins and ends with the pencil—and I’m not talking about the drafting pencil. lining up powerful political supporters, sports celebrities, investors, and yes, a superstar architect. The MTA soft-peddled its RFP, which has given Ratner’s effort the appearance of a closed deal.

It also says that good-guy developers can switch hats, well, on a dime. Barnett is a white knight in this part of Brooklyn, but he is under heavy fire from Upper West Siders railing against his plans for two skyscrapers straddling Broadway at 99th and 100th streets. (The project is now under even more scrutiny after a structure on the 100th Street site collapesed on July 14.) Ratner, at one time the city’s commissioner of consumer affairs, is the cat’s meow to sports fans seduced by the idea of the major leagues returning to the borough, but others see his plan as antithetical to everything Brooklyn, even though he has hired one of the world’s great architects. The architects of Cetra/Ruddy might be regarded as heroes in Fort Greene and Prospect Heights, but in Red Hook they are the bad guys, having designed the six-story residential project at 160 Imlay Street that the local Chamber of Commerce recently tried to halt (See “By Hook or Crook,” page 1). The point is, you never know who the good guy is. lining up powerful political supporters, sports celebrities, investors, and yes, a superstar architect. The MTA soft-peddled its RFP, which has given Ratner’s effort the appearance of a closed deal.

The good news is that more and more developers want to be the good guy. They are patronizing good architecture, even if their motivations are not entirely altruistic. Good design sells, in the end, better than bad design. It lasts longer, both physically and psychically; it creates its own set of values. Developers have also realized that good design is not the province of well-known architects. Indeed, we’ve seen some pretty horrible work by high-profile architects in prominent locations—work that can drastically alter the character of a neighborhood, like Astor Place, for example. In such an event, one can only hope that the pre-existing condition has enough depth and breadth to sustain itself. lining up powerful political supporters, sports celebrities, investors, and yes, a superstar architect. The MTA soft-peddled its RFP, which has given Ratner’s effort the appearance of a closed deal.

Given these circumstances and the multiple real-world challenges that confront any project, it’s especially exciting when good development—informed but not intimidated by context and community—comes into place. And good development is happening throughout the city on a wide variety of scales and property types. Even as examples of tired design and cheap production abound, one can find reason to celebrate smart efforts at different stages of development, especially in residential and office design. lining up powerful political supporters, sports celebrities, investors, and yes, a superstar architect. The MTA soft-peddled its RFP, which has given Ratner’s effort the appearance of a closed deal.

Take the small Chelsea/Meatpacking District projects of developer Jeffrey M. Brown. From the start, both in Manhattan and Philadelphia, Brown has turned to SHoP Architects for his renovations and new projects, and has been unafraid to let them have their own ideas. Brown has pushed the envelope farther than did developer Robert Wennet, another Meatpacking District maven who was also active in neighborhood development in cities such as Miami and Washington, D.C. Developers like Time Equities have also long sought ways to use their project to enrich their neighborhoods, as well as themselves. Richard Meier’s fine Perry Street towers stand out in the way they draw on their neighborhood for context and then alter it with a single stroke. That effect is driven as much by siting as by design. Should developer Frank Sciame’s vision for Santiago Calatrava’s twisting residential palace ever be realized, it too will transform a historic district with a magnificent gesture. lining up powerful political supporters, sports celebrities, investors, and yes, a superstar architect. The MTA soft-peddled its RFP, which has given Ratner’s effort the appearance of a closed deal.

On the office-building or commercial front, there are a handful of projects in the works that are significantly different from the standard-issue skyscraper to indicate that their developers have a committed vision. The least obvious of these is 505 Fifth Avenue, designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox for developer Axel Stawski’s Kipp-Stawski Group. It’s a relatively small, neat design that is not all that unconventional. But Stawski has gone the extra mile inside, commissioning reclusive light artist James Turrell to transform the building’s lobby into a light sculpture that is intended to go beyond decoration, setting it a world apart from the granite/ marble standard by requiring something in turn from visitors. lining up powerful political supporters, sports celebrities, investors, and yes, a superstar architect. The MTA soft-peddled its RFP, which has given Ratner’s effort the appearance of a closed deal.

Just a block west is the city’s second largest construction site, after Ground Zero (which is not something we can discuss here while considering good development). The big hole is for One Bryant Park, designed by Cook + Fox for the Durst Organization. In contrast to 505 Fifth, this is a huge building. It deploys crystalline forms in a tapered structure to minimize its undeniable bulk. But the developer’s announced intention to achieve LEED Platinum status is an important step for a commercial structure of this size, especially since about half of the space is being built on spec. The use of an efficient cogeneration energy system, recycled steel, sub-floor air circulation, and graywater recycling are all part of the package. lining up powerful political supporters, sports celebrities, investors, and yes, a superstar architect. The MTA soft-peddled its RFP, which has given Ratner’s effort the appearance of a closed deal.

Finally, there is the Hearst Building at 57th Street and Eighth Avenue, designed by Foster and Partners as a corporate and environmental showcase. Without flinching at the sharp contrast between historic and contemporary, the architects scooped out the guts of the old headquarters, built for Hearst by Joseph Urban and George B. Post & Sons in 1927, and inserted a new iconic structure in the base. Hearst is seeking LEED Gold certification. If one can accept (or even consider) the difficult premise that there is such a thing as good corporate citizenship, this building strives to express that. lining up powerful political supporters, sports celebrities, investors, and yes, a superstar architect. The MTA soft-peddled its RFP, which has given Ratner’s effort the appearance of a closed deal.

While developers and architects will always do battle over design’s place in the hierarchy of place-making—still a very linear concept in the minds of most development practitioners—continued pressure can help move that mark. And then there will always be some who understand that architecture is the fulcrum that can successfully balance neighborhoods and returns.


Peter Slatin is the founder of www.theslatinreport.com (http://www.theslatinreport.com/), and writes our regular real estate column, Curbside. He lives in what was an unglam Upper West Side developer monstrosity when it was built that is considered highly desirable real estate today.


Copyright © 2005 The Architect's Newspaper, LLC |

[NYguy]

NEWSDAY

MTA to negotiate exclusively with Ratner

By JOSHUA ROBIN
July 27, 2005

The MTA voted this afternoon to negotiate exclusively with developers planning a basketball arena and high-density residential community on the authority's downtown Brooklyn rail yards, shutting out for now a rival bid that sought a more modest neighborhood on the site.

The 11-1 vote allows Metropolitan Transportation Authority officials to seek more money from developer Bruce Ratner for the Atlantic Avenue site, giving them 45 days to reach a new agreement.

If the deal isn't struck in that time, MTA officials could return to discussions with the rival developer, the Extell Development Co.

The vote today is a blow against some residents of the communities that surround the rail yards, who had sought to block Ratner's plan to bring a Nets basketball arena to the area.

The arena would be surrounded by high-rise apartment buildings.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority board, which has 14 voting seats, received the Brooklyn bids July 6 but most board members were only briefed on the offers this week.

Ratner, which first proposed a housing, office and basketball arena plan in December 2003, has won the endorsement of several key public officials and low-income-housing advocacy groups.

But a vocal coalition of community groups has been opposing those plans, saying that traffic congestion, the extensive size of the projects and other issues don't make the plan workable in Brooklyn.

Extell planned a smaller-scale project with housing and retail.

In addition, the coalition, Develop - Don't Destroy Brooklyn, sent a letter to the MTA pointing out that Ratner plans to use the controversial eminent domain law to take over private property and that residents will file lawsuits.

"There's no way the MTA can deliberate and truly evaluate these bids by tomorrow," said Daniel Goldstein, a group spokesman.

[lofter1]

http://www.ny1.com/ny1/content/index.jsp?stid=1&aid=52380

MTA Postpones Vote On Atlantic Rail Yards
July 27, 2005

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority was scheduled to decide today who will win the rights to develop the Atlantic Rail Yards in Brooklyn, but the agency's vote has been postponed.

At an MTA board meeting Wednesday in Manhattan, the agency decided to delay a vote on a winning bid for the right to develop over the rail yards by at least 45 days. The agency says it decided to postpone the vote because they're hoping developer Bruce Ratner will sweeten the deal.


MTA Chairman Peter Kalikow says he was disappointed with Forest City Ratner's bid.


“I think that the bid that we did get from Forest City, while complete and well thought out, frankly was not as high as I expected,” said Kalikow. “I expected the MTA to receive more money.”


The Extell Corporation is competing with Forest City Ratner for the property. The company has submitted a smaller plan, but it does offer more money.

They are hoping their plan gets more consideration now that there is a delay.

“I think our bid speaks for itself,” said Extell’s Lela Goren. “There's $100 million more there for the MTA and for the riders of the MTA, and I think the MTA has a fiduciary duty to its agency and to its riders to pick the highest bid and also to pick the bid that's best for the community.”

Mayor Michael Bloomberg's four appointees to the MTA board are expected to support Ratner's bid, and three others are believed to be leaning his way.

Ratner's plan calls for a sprawling commercial and residential development anchored by a new basketball arena for the New Jersey Nets.

Meanwhile, thanks to a much larger than expected budget surplus, transit officials said Wednesday the MTA could develop the Hudson Rail Yards on Manhattan’s west side on its own.

The MTA says its budget is projected to have an $833 million surplus for this year. According to the agency, that surplus is due in part to tax revenue from the booming real estate market and lower than expected interest rates.

With this newfound funding, the MTA says it is looking into the possibility of building a platform over the west side site and later finding a developer through another bidding process.

It's not clear what all this means for the New York Jets and their stalled attempt to build a football stadium there.

The MTA says the surplus also means it won't have to cut some services on subway or bus lines, and it means more money is available for cleaning and security.

However, the agency still plans on raising fares in 2007, and is projecting an $800 million deficit in 2008.

[kliq6]

Ratner prrobally has to raise his bid to atleast $150 cash as Extell is willing to go to $200 Million.

[NYguy]

The 11-1 vote allows Metropolitan Transportation Authority officials to seek more money from developer Bruce Ratner for the Atlantic Avenue site, giving them 45 days to reach a new agreement.

If the deal isn't struck in that time, MTA officials could return to discussions with the rival developer, the Extell Development Co.


Obviously Ratner will have to increase his bid, but the extras that come with it and raise the bid was enough to allow for the extension. Otherwise, Extell would have been selected as the highest bidder.

[NoyokA]

We already knew the MTA would pick Ratner, this delay is bad news. The delay allows opponents to organize and take legal action.

[NoyokA]

New York Observer:

Dark-Horse Brooklyn Bidder
No Rookie in N.Y. Real Estate

By Matthew Schuerman and Michael Calderone

There was a time when politicians and civic groups would beat up on guys who wanted to build sports facilities in New York, supporting a rival’s plan for apartment houses—affordable ones! popular with voters!—even if the rival had no real-estate experience whatsoever (and a political ax to grind).

That was back in February.

Now a guy steps forth to defeat a stadium plan who is also an experienced real-estate man toting a portfolio of 26 buildings, and he still can’t get no respect.

This time around, the sports fan, Bruce Ratner, is offering the Metropolitan Transportation Authority $50 million for land on which to build a stadium and a cluster of retail and residential buildings. The rival bidder, Gary Barnett, wants to buy the same land for $150 million—and he’s not building a stadium.

Follow the money, right? But the choice, which the board of directors could make as early as this morning, is harder than it might seem.

No one really knows much about this season’s rival, Gary Barnett. He’s not part of the cozy New York City developers’ club, where you avoid overt fisticuffs by making back-room deals. Nor is he someone to fool around with.

About five years ago, Mr. Barnett entered a contract to develop a parking lot off of Times Square. When the land was about to be seized by the Empire State Development Corporation to make way for the new New York Times tower—which was to be created by none other than Bruce Ratner—Mr. Barnett ended up bankrolling the parking-lot owner’s lawsuit. He, and the parking lot owner, lost. Just wait till next year!

So is Mr. Barnett bidding on Vanderbilt Yard, the eight-acre M.T.A. parcel in Central Brooklyn, just because it’s payback time? Is he just another James Dolan, the Cablevision C.E.O. who bankrolled the opposition fight on the West Side stadium and who, when it looked like he was losing, decided to bid on the land himself and proposed a housing-and-office complex for the site? That’s the $100 million question.

Then again, who else but a lone wolf would dare upset the apple cart of prearranged subsidies and Mayoral endorsements to actually respond to the M.T.A.’s request for proposals? No one else bothered.

The Expert Upstart
Newspapers have taken to calling Mr. Barnett an upstart, or an unknown, but he’s actually been working in real estate for about 15 years, first as an investor and more recently as a developer. Previously known as Gershon Barnett—and, before that, as Gershon Swiatycki, according to court papers—Mr. Barnett bought and sold diamonds for several years before starting a property investment company. Extell, which was called Intell until a year ago, started out investing in the Midwest in the early 1990’s. (Mr. Barnett, through a spokesman, declined a request for an interview.)

He bought and sold the former Enron headquarters in Houston, started a hotel- condominium complex on Boston Harbor, and did a 1.5 million-square-foot renovation in downtown Chicago.

He owns 19 properties in New York, all of them conversions or renovations, aside from the W Times Square Hotel, which he built back when it was the Planet Hollywood Hotel. Mr. Barnett was half of the team, along with the Carlyle Group, that recently bought 77 acres of land and three buildings from Donald Trump and his partners. And it was his contractor, preparing the site for a 31-story tower, that was demolishing a supermarket on upper Broadway when it collapsed on July 14, just in time to give him bad P.R. for his fast moves in Brooklyn.

“The difference between him and other New York City developers is that his is a very quiet company,” said Nancy Ruddy, president of Cetra/Ruddy Architects, the firm designing the Vanderbilt Yard plan and several other Extell projects, including the 550-unit Orion on West 42nd Street and the co-op conversion of the Stanhope Hotel across from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. “He hasn’t wanted the publicity of certain developers who want to be in the papers. He prefers to operate quietly. He’s a very genteel, soft-spoken person.”

It’s pretty hard to operate quietly when you enlist the Carlyle Group to buy out Trump, isn’t it?

On the other hand, what developer would agree to personally appear before a community board and endure three hours of verbal abuse from that peculiar New York species known as the irate neighbor? And yet he did.

On June 15, Mr. Barnett strode into the Community Board 7 meeting in the basement of an Upper West Side synagogue. The gathering was standing-room-only, bringing out typically less-active members of the community who saw the flyers pasted up and down Broadway. Concerned residents wanted to find out what was happening in their backyard. Following a PowerPoint presentation, which included a quick peek at the renderings of two 30-plus-story condominiums, the dark-haired, bespectacled developer addressed the irate crowd wearing a fine dark suit, according to audience members.

This wasn’t Brooklyn, where well-heeled activists would welcome Extell’s proposed 28-story buildings. The residents living near 100th Street and Broadway can’t stand the idea of a couple of towers just a few stories higher. They’ve formed groups called Stop Extell and Westsiders for Responsible Development. Mr. Barnett’s critics often cited increased traffic, the height of the buildings and an influx of a wealthier demographic that may drive out local businesses as reasons to stop the proposal—all the things, by the way, that Mr. Barnett’s allies in Brooklyn complain about in Mr. Ratner’s plan.

“When they went through the presentation, people were stunned,” said Toni Cindrich, an Upper West Side resident who turned into an activist four days after the meeting. “When the architect’s renderings were projected on the screen, there was an audible gasp. People could not believe it.”

But Mr. Barnett and company left the synagogue unscathed, and—despite the Gristedes collapse one month later—he still plans to go forward with the luxury development. Unlike in Brooklyn, Mr. Barnett already owns that property on the Upper West Side, and he can build that high as of right.

The array of civic groups and government watchdogs that came out against the Jets stadium earlier this year have been a lot quieter about the arena in Brooklyn. In large part, that’s because Mr. Ratner is proposing the type of feel-good development that earned Cablevision such civic accolades. Affordable housing? Check. Mixed-use? Check. And all right near a busy transit hub that just got renovated and would have to be renovated yet again? Jackhammers are music to these people’s ears.

Forest City spent months negotiating agreements with local groups that promise jobs to minority-owned firms, as well as a training program and a housing scheme for low- and middle-income folks.

“Forest City has been very clever at gaining community support,” said Gene Russianoff, staff attorney for the Straphangers Campaign, a transit advocacy group that opposed the West Side stadium. “With the Jets, there wasn’t even an attempt at outreach.”

Indeed, though Forest City Ratner gained Mayor Bloomberg’s support, Hizzoner hasn’t stumped for Mr. Ratner’s project nearly as much as he did for the Jets stadium. Mr. Ratner’s support is more grassroots. Instead of Mike, he got Marty Markowitz, Brooklyn’s teddy bear of a borough president, who can’t pass up a Junior’s cheesecake because eating one just might generate another job. Mr. Ratner also got 15 other elected officials, from Senator Chuck Schumer on down, to write letters of support that were included in the bid book submitted to the M.T.A.

Some of these supporters even wrote identical letters.

“Although the benefits to Brooklyn will be enormous, we shouldn’t lose sight of the tremendous state- and city-wide benefits this project will provide.” So saith Senator Schumer, Representative Edolphus Towns, Assemblymen Roger Green and Joseph Lentol, State Senator Carl Andrews, and City Council members Lewis Fidler and Bill deBlasio.

Where’s the Beef?
Forest City has claimed that its bid actually represents $329.4 million in revenue for the M.T.A. But that includes not just the $50 million in cash, but all the money that Forest City will spend on cleaning up the land, moving and covering the rail yards, and creating open space—and also an estimate of the portion of sales taxes from all the money spent at the shops at Atlantic Yards that will go to the transit agency.

Extell’s bid also represents much more than the $150 million in cash. Mr. Barnett pledges to maintain the new rail yards and abide by all other requirements set down by the M.T.A. He predicts that he can move and cover the rail yards for $150 million—which seems unrealistically low compared to Forest City’s plan, which sets aside $281 million for the effort. Then again, the M.T.A.’s own appraiser thinks it can be done for a mere $57 million. Mr. Ratner’s supporters point to Extell’s lack of specificity as a weakness—though Mr. Barnett had just six weeks, instead of a year and a half, to work up his bid and garner community support.

Mr. Barnett subscribes to the 33 principles of development adopted by a coalition of community groups headed by Develop—Don’t Destroy Brooklyn. These principles include certain items, like limiting the height of the buildings and forbidding the use of eminent domain, that Forest City Ratner expressly violates. Mr. Barnett also subscribes to certain elements, such as hiring minority- and women-owned firms and providing job training and affordable housing, which are considered the pluses of Forest City’s plan—although his offer is neither as specific nor as extensive as the agreements that Forest City put together over the past 18 months.

Mr. Barnett also tells the M.T.A. in his bid that he hasn’t had time to do an economic-impact analysis. No matter what the results of that analysis show, however, it’s hard to imagine that it would generate more tax revenues than the $2.1 billion that Mr. Ratner is claiming his project will earn over the next 30 years. Forest City’s plan is simply bigger than Extell’s, which means more jobs, more housing and more tax revenue.

To Mr. Ratner’s supporters in Brooklyn, Extell’s plan looks pretty wimpy.

“The reduced amount of opportunity is unacceptable,” said Marie Louis, vice president of Brooklyn United for Innovative Local Development, or BUILD, a group that came together a year and a half ago to support the Forest City project. “We can’t afford to trade 2,250 units of affordable housing for 573. We can’t afford to trade 15,000 jobs to less than a third of that from Extell. You can’t see that when you’re a member of a household with a $100,000 income.”

[ablarc]

Bad news. This guy Barnett is as shifty as his name. That scheme of his is toilet paper. His building collapses up on Broadway. He's dismantling a nice old hotel on Fifth Avenue, where he's putting a sidewalk planter strip in place of a sidewalk cafe.

Shyster.

[ZippyTheChimp]

The following article contradicts the NY1 report.


July 28, 2005
M.T.A. to Deal Only With Ratner on Brooklyn Bid

By CHARLES V. BAGLI (http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=CHARLES V. BAGLI&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=CHARLES V. BAGLI&inline=nyt-per) and SEWELL CHAN (http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=SEWELL CHAN&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=SEWELL CHAN&inline=nyt-per)

Despite a higher cash offer from a rival bidder, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority voted yesterday to enter into exclusive negotiations to sell the developer Bruce C. Ratner the rights to build an arena for the Nets and office and residential buildings over a railyard in Downtown Brooklyn.

Over the next 45 days, the authority expects to bargain with the developer over one major issue: money. Mr. Ratner, who heads the development company Forest City Ratner, had offered $50 million in cash for the development rights, or one-third the amount offered by a rival, the Extell Development Company. But Mr. Ratner argued that his bid was actually worth $329 million because he would build a new, larger railyard, pay for any increased operating expenses that the authority would incur, make several transit improvements and generate millions in tax revenues from the arena.

But while M.T.A. officials seemed to like his plans, they still wanted more money.

"The bid that we did get from Forest City, while complete and well thought out, was not as high as I expected," Peter S. Kalikow, the chairman of the authority, told the board at its monthly meeting. People close to the board had said late Tuesday that it would not make a decision yesterday, and the vote to favor the Ratner bid came as a surprise.

It remains to be seen just how much higher Mr. Ratner's bid must go. An M.T.A. appraisal said the 8.3-acre parcel, at Flatbush and Atlantic Avenues, was worth $214.5 million. The land is potentially valuable because a new residential development could form a lively link between the communities that the railyard separates.

As part of a $3.5 billion project, Mr. Ratner, who bought the Nets basketball team and plans to move it to Brooklyn, has proposed building the arena, office space and 6,000 apartments on the railyard and on an adjacent 13 acres to the east. The developer said he would set aside 2,500 units for low- and middle-income residents and lined up support from the city and the state, which each agreed to provide $100 million in subsidies.

Forest City Ratner is the development partner for the new Midtown headquarters for The New York Times Company.

The only M.T.A. board member to dissent from yesterday's vote, Mitchell H. Pally, declared that both bids were insufficient and rejected the idea of entering exclusive negotiations with only one of the prospective buyers. As for Mr. Ratner, "We have no assurance that they'll come up with one more cent," said Mr. Pally, the board's Suffolk County representative, who suggested that the authority talk with both bidders simultaneously. "We will then be forced to decide in September what to do."

Mr. Kalikow, a former developer, countered that he had been in real estate for 38 years and had never negotiated two leases for a property at once. "It's immoral," he said.

Although Extell's bid was higher than Mr. Ratner's, M.T.A. officials said it was not very detailed. Gary Barnett, Extell's president, expressed disappointment with the M.T.A.'s decision.

"They apparently are giving him an opportunity to change his bid," Mr. Barnett said in a statement released yesterday, referring to Mr. Ratner. "We believe we should be extended the same opportunity. We are considering all of our options."

George Arzt, a spokesman for the company, ruled out suing.

But Daniel Goldstein, a spokesman for Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn, which opposes the Ratner project as an oversize intrusion, said his group was considering a legal challenge. It is "unconscionable that the M.T.A. would enter exclusive negotiations with the lowball bidder," he said.

Extell proposed a more low-scale project that would not require condemnation of private property to build 1,940 apartments in buildings ranging from 4 to 28 stories, along tree-lined walkways atop a platform over the railyard. The Extell bid presumed that it could obtain up to $150 million in government subsidies.

At a public hearing before the board meeting, more than 50 speakers argued for or against Mr. Ratner's project. James E. Caldwell, a longtime resident, said Mr. Ratner was "an angel from heaven," bringing jobs, affordable housing and a professional team.

But State Senator Velmanette Montgomery, a Brooklyn Democrat, said the project "seeks to overbuild and destroy the communities around it."

At the opening of the new American Airlines terminal at Kennedy Airport yesterday, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said he wanted to ensure that jobs were created at the railyard site and that the arena and moderate-income housing were built.

"There's a site where virtually almost every single elected official, including those in Albany, are in favor of it," he said. "These are jobs. This is the future of Brooklyn, the future for our city."




Copyright 2005 (http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/copyright.html) The New York Times Company (http://www.nytco.com/)

[BrooklynRider]

Kalikow talking about "immoral"? His management of the MTA has been immoral. Just recently he was crying about deficits and pushing for fare hikes. Now, he wants to use this "surprise" surplus to build a platform to support Johnson's stadium. This supports every criticism made in the past year about the MTA having no governmental oversight and having two sets of books. The guy needs to be given the pink slip.

[ZippyTheChimp]

Now, he wants to use this "surprise" surplus to build a platform to support Johnson's stadium.Not what was reported.

From this post,...
Buoyed by an unexpected surge in tax revenue, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority announced yesterday that it would have a surplus of $833 million this year and that it would consider using the money to create a giant platform over its West Side railyards, which it could then sell to developers for office and apartment towers.

[kliq6]

Id assume that is Ratner give $150 Million cash, the same as Extell, who cant change there bid durning this period of time, the project will go forward.

As for the MTA platform to possible be built on Hudson Yards, im with Brooklyn, Kalikow is a joke and on top of this he wants whatever developer gets the site to build him a new office tower, after the 2 Broadway mess, PLEASE!!!!!!!!!

[billyblancoNYC]

Simple, give $214million in cash, subtract $164 for the infrastructure improvements, and voila...you have the best damn bid in town.

[bkmonkey]

Its been silent for the last couple of days, no news at all. Does anyone know anything about how the negotiating is going?

[kliq6]

They said it was a 45 day period, dont expect to hear anything till next month. Kalikow may be considered a jerk by many but he wants the most money for that site, since he is a developer and knows what it could be worth.

What hey didnt say is that durning the meeting he was going to cancel the vote till Sept since he thought the Ratner bid was a joke. Bloomberg called and got him to go into neg with Ratner to come up with a deal.

[lofter1]

They said it was a 45 day period, dont expect to hear anything till next month.

Nothing of much consequence happens in NYC in August. All the big power players are away on vacation.

[bkmonkey]

well... there was that silly blackout two years ago

[lofter1]

Heheh -- You're right...

Shouldn't have qualified that to be specific to no business deals.

[NoyokA]

Since the models released are solely for massing purposes I would guess that Miss Brooklyn will be Brooklyn’s tallest building but will be more than 620 feet. I can only assume that they massed the 60 storeys in a formula for a 20 foot lobby and 10 feet per floor. When the building is designed I would say that the 60 storeys in modern-day terms and other factors such as empty decorative space and mechanical floors will be the equivalent of an 800-900 foot building.

[NoyokA]

New York Times:

August 3, 2005
New M.T.A. Panelist Takes a Walk on the Wild Side: He Disagrees
By SEWELL CHAN

Before the board of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority voted last week on a contentious land deal, its members spent two hours listening to 53 speakers. Most of them gave impassioned, even angry, remarks aimed at influencing the board's vote.

The fervor was not unusual, but what followed was. One member objected as the board, with little debate, agreed to begin exclusive negotiations with Forest City Ratner, one of two developers competing for the right to build over a railyard the authority owns east of Downtown Brooklyn.

"Both bids are deficient," said the lone dissenter, Mitchell H. Pally, who contended that the authority could get more money by negotiating with both bidders at once. "I greatly support delaying the vote because I don't believe either bid is supportable in its present form."

The board overruled Mr. Pally, even though its members conceded his point. "Basically, the only thing that is missing from the Forest City Ratner proposal is money," one member, Nancy Shevell Blakeman, said - before she, too, voted to negotiate solely with the company.

Mr. Pally, who represents Suffolk County on the board, is one of four new members who took office in June, but he has already emerged as an outspoken - and unpredictable - voice on a panel that is not known for public deliberation or disagreement.

Two days before the vote on the land deal, he offered blunt comments about Alstom, a French company that was hired to build subway cars for New York City. "They're not off to a very good start," Mr. Pally said after listening to officials explain why a test train would not be delivered on time.

Mr. Pally also surprised the board, including its chairman, Peter S. Kalikow, when he suddenly came to the defense of a long-planned project to build a third track along the Main Line of the Long Island Rail Road. Money to plan the project was included in the authority's new five-year capital plan, but state lawmakers have reserved the right to veto the construction. Mr. Kalikow conceded that the authority agreed to the veto provision grudgingly, and only so that Albany would approve the rest of the capital plan.

Mr. Pally, who is 53 and lives in Stony Brook, is hardly an outsider to the realm of government. While he was still in law school, he began working in the State Senate, where he eventually was a top adviser to two Republican senators, John D. Caemmerer and Norman J. Levy, who were chairmen, consecutively, of the Transportation Committee.

Mr. Pally worked on major laws that mandated the use of seat belts and child restraints and provided for reserved parking spaces for disabled drivers. He also helped to secure state approval for two bond issues, in 1979 and 1983, that raised construction money for highway and transit projects. Since 1985, Mr. Pally has worked for the Long Island Association, a business group, where he is now the vice president for government affairs.

Despite his background in government, Mr. Pally has a reputation for independence, which probably explains why the Democratic county executive, Steve Levy, turned to him to serve on the board even though he is a Republican.

"That board is often known to be a rubber stamp," said Mr. Levy, who was elected in 2003. "One of the reasons we wanted someone like Mitch is that he comes with his own mind and a great deal of expertise in the area of transportation." He added, "This is one of the first appointees who's shaking it up, and not afraid of casting a dissenting vote."

The previous Suffolk County representative, Alfred E. Werner, joined the board in 1982 and served longer than any of the current members. He worked with five chairmen of the authority and was seen as a close ally of the incumbent, Mr. Kalikow. Mr. Werner voted in November for a fare increase, over Mr. Levy's objections.

Mr. Pally, in an interview, said he did not want to be seen as critical of his colleagues on the board, but he suggested that members could afford to scrutinize the proposals placed before them more carefully. "There could be more discussion about public policy issues at the meetings," he said. "It's important at a board of that kind for the members to interact. You learn different people's perspectives."

While the board makes decisions that affect millions of commuters, its members generally do the bidding of their political patrons. The 17 voting members are all technically appointed by the governor, but effectively, six report to the governor, four represent the mayor of New York City, and three are delegates from Westchester, Nassau and Suffolk Counties. The last four voting members, all from suburban counties, collectively share one vote. There are 14 votes. (An additional six members are nonvoting.)

The board is not diverse. Of the 17 voting members, there are only three women and two black men. Most of them work in law, finance, real estate or government. Only a few have transportation experience, including two new members, Susan G. Metzger of Orange County, who has worked in environmental engineering, and Carl V. Wortendyke of Rockland County, who works in bridge and dam construction.

Mr. Pally said he was already spending 10 to 15 hours a week reading the reams of documents members are asked to review and approve. "People have called me crazy for taking a six-year job and not getting paid," he said with a laugh.

[sfenn1117]

Since the models released are solely for massing purposes I would guess that Miss Brooklyn will be Brooklyn’s tallest building but will be more than 620 feet. I can only assume that they massed the 60 storeys in a formula for a 20 foot lobby and 10 feet per floor. When the building is designed I would say that the 60 storeys in modern-day terms and other factors such as empty decorative space and mechanical floors will be the equivalent of an 800-900 foot building.

:eek:

Wow. I hope you're right.

[Gulcrapek]

I hope not. If it looks anything like the latest 'preliminary renderings,' I might knock my head into a few walls.

[NoyokA]

I hope not. If it looks anything like the latest 'preliminary renderings,' I might knock my head into a few walls.

As already mentioned it’s a preliminary design and the final design won’t look anything like it, just like a 60 storey office building won't be 620 feet, it’s for massing purposes.

Miss Brooklyn will look more like this:

http://www.pbase.com/archit_kderek2k3/image/45826560/medium.jpg

http://www.pbase.com/archit_kderek2k3/image/45826482.jpg

[NoyokA]

The Battle of the "Jews"...


The Forward:

New York Skyline in the Balance As Real Estate Titans Square Off
By NATHANIEL POPPER
August 5, 2005

It is a battle that has involved collapsing buildings, racially-charged protests and two of New York's most powerful Jewish developers, pitted against each other for the future of New York's skyline.

At stake, say community activists, are the characters of two iconic, heavily Jewish New York neighborhoods known as bastions of middle-class liberalism.

The main battlefield is a plot of land in downtown Brooklyn that has been opened for development by New York's Metropolitan Transit Authority. The authority agreed last week to enter exclusive negotiations for the site with Bruce Ratner, a well-connected scion of Cleveland's most prominent Jewish family, who is planning to build an arena and move the professional basketball team he owns from New Jersey to Brooklyn.

Ratner is facing heat from a competing developer: Gary Barnett, a reclusive, publicity-shy Orthodox Jew. Barnett's proposal has won over some community activists who complain that Ratner's mammoth plan to remake 21 acres of Brooklyn ignores the character of the storied neighborhood, in the heart of a borough that still calls itself "America's fourth largest city."

The Brooklyn battle, however, is not the whole story. While Barnett is depicted as a concerned citizen in Brooklyn, he is the subject of protests 10 miles north on the Upper West Side, the traditional nerve center of New York's Jewish cultural elite. Opposite a synagogue on 100th Street, Barnett's company, Extell Development Corporation, is building two high-rise apartment buildings that activists say will destroy the character of the quiet, middle-class neighborhood in the shadow of Columbia University.

Adding to emotions, the project is a partnership between Extell and the Carlyle Group, an international investment firm that has close ties to President Bush, and was famously portrayed in Michael Moore's film "Fahrenheit 9/11" as a tool of Texas and Saudi Arabian oil interests.

"What's really interesting here is that there's a Jewish man in bed with the Saudis to build this project," said Miki Fiegel, the head of the main community group, who was interviewed at a protest at the building site last week. "The profits are going to go back to Saudi Arabia — a country that wants to push Israel back into the sea."

Similar criticisms of Barnett have been voiced at community meetings in Brooklyn by Ratner's supporters, even though Carlyle is not involved in that project. A spokesman for Barnett, Bob Liff, dismissed the criticism as "beneath the people who are raising that kind of comment."

The construction of the two Upper West Side towers was temporarily halted by the city July 14 after an existing building on the site collapsed during demolition work, injuring five passersby and garnering international headlines.

It is the proposals in Brooklyn, however, that have attracted the most attention, primarily because of their scale. At issue are the Vanderbilt Rail Yards, an 8.6-acre expanse of train tracks that the Brooklyn Dodgers once hoped to convert into a new stadium before they left for Los Angeles.

Ratner's plan would create a new arena for the New Jersey Nets basketball team, which he bought last year. His proposal extends far beyond the arena, however, to include a string of apartment and office buildings designed by the pop-architect Frank Gehry. Gehry's vision would reshape Brooklyn's downtown, currently an aging district dominated by pre-World War II architecture, with new structures rising as high as 60 stories.

The transit authority has been negotiating with Ratner for more than a year, even though the project was officially open for competing bids. A community group opposed to Ratner — called Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn — sent letters to 100 developers asking them to submit alternative bids. Barnett was the only one to respond. Following the activists' guidelines, he submitted a plan that would cover only 8.5 acres and have buildings rising to 28 stories.

The transit authority was not impressed. On July 27, it entered exclusive negotiations with Ratner for 45 days to hammer out a deal. Ratner has offered $50 million for the site, far less than Barnett's $150 million. The authority hoped to push Ratner higher. Barnett's spokesman said his bid remains on the table.

Ratner's opponents come mostly from Prospect Heights, a gentrifying enclave just south of the rail yards. It sits at the edge of Park Slope, a sprawling neighborhood second only to the Upper West Side as a bastion of Jewish liberals.

Facing the protesters, Ratner has lined up his own cadre of community activists from mostly minority districts further east, who say his plan would do more for minorities. He has signed an agreement promising to give 35% of construction jobs to minorities. His plan also offers 2,500 middle- and low-income apartments, as compared to Barnett's 573.

At one community hearing, Ratner's supporters called the Jewish spokesman for the don't-destroy group a "trust fund baby," according to the New York Sun.

"I don't want to make this out to be a black versus white situation," said James Caldwell, president of a pro-Ratner group called Build, "but it seems like that's what it's turning out to be."

Daniel Goldstein, the spokeman for Develop Don't Destory, said the racial language is "a deliberate attempt by this developer to divide communities." Goldstein pointed to the black clergy group working with his organization, as well as to three local black politicians who have opposed Ratner.

On the Upper West Side, Barnett has made some effort to reach out to community members. At a community board meeting at a local synagogue, Barnett presented his plans for the two towers — one 31 stories and the other 37 stories — and then listened to two hours of criticism from community members.

The Upper West Side has undergone rapid change in recent years, as an influx of lawyers and bankers has driven up prices and forced out many of the middle class Jewish intellectuals and artists who long dominated the neighborhood. Community activists said Barnett's project, a mile north of other such high-rises, was one more sign of unruly development in the area.

Unlike Ratner in Brooklyn, Barnett does not have community members arguing his case on the West Side. However, he has secured the necessary legal rights and permits, making his plan all but unstoppable.

In a further irony, he won the right to exceed neighborhood height limits in part by acquiring air rights — the trading of height limits between adjacent properties — from a parcel recently sold by the cash-strapped Jewish Theological Seminary of America. The seminary had sold the parcel to a church.

In response to criticism that the towers hurt the area's character, Barnett's spokesman said: "People have a right to say their piece. It's important to note that everything has been done by the book. It will continue to be done by the book."

The collapse of the building has fueled opponents' hopes of winning changes in the zoning laws that allowed Barnett to win his building permits. The city is investigating whether criminal charges should be brought against the demolition company hired to take down the previous structure. A city spokesperson said construction will likely resume after the investigation ends.

The community activists who are backing Barnett in Brooklyn say they don't plan to join protests against him on the Upper West Side.

"Every large or medium developer in New York has problems with the communities they are trying to build in," said Goldstein, of the anti-Ratner group. "It's a much lesser of two evils here in Brooklyn."

[Alonzo-ny]

How big is downtown brooklyn in terms of office space, like which city has comparable space with it. Before and after ratners developments

[Gulcrapek]

Metrotech has most of the prime space, it's about 7 million sf.

[bkmonkey]

on the Mayors website it says that Downtown Brooklyn has as much office space as Atlanta, or St. Louis. Metrotech has alot of it, but there are alot of other offices.

[JCMAN320]

Jersey City has more office space than Downtown Brooklyn does. We have more office space than Saint Louis and Miami combined and have close to exceeding the amount of Atlanta, also about 80% of NASDAQ’s sales volume are now traded in Downtown JC aka Wall Street West.

As a side note I'd be lying to say that I'm not happy that Ratner's development is hitting more than a few speed bumps. I love Downtown Brooklyn it reminds me of Downtown JC. It has character and feel all it's own. I go to Brooklyn quite frequently and I walk pass that stretch of Flatbush where the development would tear up the small brownstones and couple of blocks east as well as a bunch of funky little restauraunts and businesses. A smaller scale of development would be far more fitting in with the neighborhood. To use my city's skyline as an example, at the waterfront, the buildings are huge and as you go inland they decline in height to more fit in with the beautiful historic downtown neighborhood density, in other word I think something of about 30 stories would be perfect. I think Extell would be better of an idea because of it's size and it leaves MY NETS IN NEW JERSEY and hopefully go to Downtown Newark with the Devils because on one thing I agree is that the Continental Arena is a pain in the ass to get to :). Also that area of DT BKLYN doesn't need to become another Penn Plaza with more traffic, more people, and streets flooded with people once the games are over. But this just my opinion.

[kliq6]

Office space IN BK may be more then in Jersey City boro wide but the prime stuff is really only in Metrotech. DOnt worry about office space, Atlantic Yards wont probally wont contain much if any

[bkmonkey]

Actually, Downtown Brooklyn exceeds Atlanta, Jceman,It is a well known fact that Downtown Brooklyn is the third largest buisness district in the NYC area. Ratner's development will have some office space, perhapas a million square fleet. That is why the UN is considering this area above Downtown Brooklyn. Keep in mind that the Nasdaq is an electronic affair, the actual trading takes place on servers. Metrotech has much of the office space, but there are numerous other skyscrapers, such as the ones that line court street and montague street. Downtown Brooklyn is filled with munincipal offices (such as nycta, and all the courts) As downtown Brooklyn grows bigger, Atlantic Yards will encorporate more of the office space. Especially in Miss Brooklyn, and the other tower along flatbush avenue. The Atlantic yards, will create a sutitble transition between downtown, and the surrounding neigborhoods

[billyblancoNYC]

Jersey City has more office space than Downtown Brooklyn does. We have more office space than Saint Louis and Miami combined and have close to exceeding the amount of Atlanta, also about 80% of NASDAQ’s sales volume are now traded in Downtown JC aka Wall Street West.

As a side note I'd be lying to say that I'm not happy that Ratner's development is hitting more than a few speed bumps. I love Downtown Brooklyn it reminds me of Downtown JC. It has character and feel all it's own. I go to Brooklyn quite frequently and I walk pass that stretch of Flatbush where the development would tear up the small brownstones and couple of blocks east as well as a bunch of funky little restauraunts and businesses. A smaller scale of development would be far more fitting in with the neighborhood. To use my city's skyline as an example, at the waterfront, the buildings are huge and as you go inland they decline in height to more fit in with the beautiful historic downtown neighborhood density, in other word I think something of about 30 stories would be perfect. I think Extell would be better of an idea because of it's size and it leaves MY NETS IN NEW JERSEY and hopefully go to Downtown Newark with the Devils because on one thing I agree is that the Continental Arena is a pain in the ass to get to :). Also that area of DT BKLYN doesn't need to become another Penn Plaza with more traffic, more people, and streets flooded with people once the games are over. But this just my opinion.


C'mon, man...please. If the Nets weren't moving, you'd love Ratner's plan. If Ratner wanted to do the same in JC, we'd be hearing about it all day long.

[JCMAN320]

No to be honest with you not really. JC is only builidng on empty lots of old warehouse and train yards, the city is against demolishing any part of it's neighborhoods especially in Downtown JC. The only way I would love it is if it didn't abuse emminent domain by taking private properties and only if it would be built on empty lots.

[sfenn1117]

A good chunk of the site (including the arena) is a rail yard, which is why the MTA is involved. As for the buildings that will be torn down they aren't very pretty, and Ratner owns many of them already, not many will have to be taken by eminent domain.

I hate basketball, I wish Brooklyn was getting a baseball team back, but I'll take it, it will bring in so much revenue for the city of NY and Brooklyn. I'm sure the Nets give revenue to....East Rutherford? Some tiny town that happens to be on the NJ turnpike with a couple stadiums.

Oh yeah Brooklyn's current tallest building (WSB) borders the site. It's not exactly low-rise, it is at the eastern end of the site but certainly not where Miss Brooklyn will rise. Also great mass transit to the arena too. Where the nets are in NJ there is 0 mass transit.

Yeah, the Nets fit Brooklyn more than East Rutherford. Maybe Ratner will change the team name to something nice.

[Alonzo-ny]

I agree the brooklyn whatevers will be loved when they're in brooklyn instead of that wasteland in nj they need to be somewhere with spirit

[JCMAN320]

I agree the meadowlands is not a place for basketball ( you guys are beating a dead horse with that one we all know this and I agree so enough with the obvious) and the meadowlands are not a wasteland they have been cleaned up and been turned into wildlife preserves and parks in many places by the New Jersey Meadowlands Commision. All I'm saying like I have said before is move them to Newark with the Devils whose arena is ALREADY under construction while there has been nothing happening at the Atlantic Yards. Just think at one end of the PATH line at NYs Penn Station KNICKS and RANGERS, at the other end at Newarks Penn Station NETS and DEVILS. It would strengthen an already great rivalry. Remember until or if they move to Brooklyn, the New Jersey Nets are a way better basketball team the than the New York Knicks.

[billyblancoNYC]

I agree the meadowlands is not a place for basketball ( you guys are beating a dead horse with that one we all know this and I agree so enough with the obvious) and the meadowlands are not a wasteland they have been cleaned up and been turned into wildlife preserves and parks in many places by the New Jersey Meadowlands Commision. All I'm saying like I have said before is move them to Newark with the Devils whose arena is ALREADY under construction while there has been nothing happening at the Atlantic Yards. Just think at one end of the PATH line at NYs Penn Station KNICKS and RANGERS, at the other end at Newarks Penn Station NETS and DEVILS. It would strengthen an already great rivalry. Remember until or if they move to Brooklyn, the New Jersey Nets are a way better basketball team the than the New York Knicks.

And I say, move the Devils to Brooklyn. Why wouldn't that work, too? The new arena isn't built.

[JCMAN320]

Why is that? Can't stand being out matched by New Jersey teams c'mon....Rangers most overpaid hockey team that can't even make it to the playoffs compared to the Devils with less money and have won 3 Stanley Cups in 9 years.....Nets made it to the finals 2 years in a row and the playoffs 4 or 5 years in a row and sewpt the Knicks twice in the playoffs and the last time the Knicks even won the divison was 94.

Also they are already drving piles into the ground on the site of the Devils arena.

[BrooklynRider]

Let's move the Dolan's and Cablevision out to Newark.

[Kolbster]

Why is that? Can't stand being out matched by New Jersey teams c'mon....Rangers most overpaid hockey team that can't even make it to the playoffs compared to the Devils with less money and have won 3 Stanley Cups in 9 years.....Nets made it to the finals 2 years in a row and the playoffs 4 or 5 years in a row and sewpt the Knicks twice in the playoffs and the last time the Knicks even won the divison was 94.

Also they are already drving piles into the ground on the site of the Devils arena.

It doesn't bother us that NJ has sucessful team sports, that is great. We are just interested in having the nets here because we could call them our own team, besides that joke of a team...the Knicks.

Also, speaking of sucess, Who's the baseball team for Jersey?

[NYatKNIGHT]

Also, speaking of sucess, Who's the baseball team for Jersey?

They can take the Mets. ;)

[ZippyTheChimp]

Oh boy. Another NY - JC pissing match.

JC needs Enzyte.

[TLOZ Link5]

Let's move the Dolan's and Cablevision out to Newark.

YES!