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

[BrooklynRider]

Forest City’s Revised Plan: The Details
by Dennis Holt (Holt@brooklyneagle.net), published online 04-06-2006

[/b]Atlantic Yards Nears[/b]
Final Approval Phase
By Dennis Holt
BROOKLYN — As expected by all, and anticipated by supporters, the “final” size of the Atlantic Yards project has been reduced from the previous draft plan, which was put forward last fall. Late last week, Forest City Ratner released new data on this major project as part of production of the final scoping document.

Since the project was fleshed out more than a year ago, supporters have generally conceded that the project is “too big.” Opponents have argued that the entire project is out of place.

The overall size of the project has been reduced by 475,000-square-feet, but at a projected 8,659,000 square feet, it remains the single largest development in Brooklyn’s history. Most of this reduction has come from eliminating 440 market-rate condos, or 412,000 square feet.

The number of rental apartments remains at 4,500 units, half of which will still be affordable. The number of market-rate condos now becomes 110.

The amount of office space has been reduced by 22,000 square feet to 606,000 square feet; retail space will be 247,000 square feet, a cut of 9,000; and hotel space has been shaved by 31,000 square feet to 165,000.

In a statement late Friday, Forest City says that the amount of open space “has increased due to the reshaping and slimming of buildings,” but did not elaborate. The original plan called for 7.4 acres of open space.

About 23 floors have been cut from the project. Three buildings have experienced the most reductions. Building 4, behind the arena at Flatbush and Dean, has been reduced by 165 feet to 322 feet, or about 30 stories. Building 8 at the corner of Carlton and Atlantic has been cut by 70 feet; and Building 16, or Site 5, has been cut by 54 feet to between 30 to 35 stories.

This latter building is proposed to be built over Modells and P.C. Richard at the intersection of Fourth Avenue, Flatbush and Atlantic Avenues. This site was added to the overall project at the request of Forest City and is expected to be the site of a hotel. Forest City controls this site as part of the Atlantic Center and Atlantic Terminal complexes.

The first building, at the apex of Atlantic and Flatbush, is still scheduled to be 620 feet tall, and is intended to be the signature structure of the entire project and area (some have suggested that the building be called “Miss Brooklyn.”) It will be contain offices and apartments, and will connect underground to both the subway-rail complex and the arena.

Most of the other buildings in the project have had their heights raised or reduced by minor amounts. The building that has been raised the most is Building 15 at Dean Street, 6th Avenue, and Pacific Street, which will go from 203 feet to 272 feet.

The scoping document is part of the review and approval process required by the State of New York. The lead agency for this development is the Empire State Development Corporation, the same agency that has overseen the planning for Brooklyn Bridge Park.

The next major effort by the state will be the production of the Draft Environmental Impact Statement, probably in June. It will be an extensive document, with more data than originally planned.

For example, the arc of the area to be studied around the project site will be expanded from one-quarter to one-half mile. This means that the number of intersections to be reviewed for traffic impacts will be 93 rather than 65. And three alternative proposals will be compared to the Forest City project in terms of impacts and projected economic benefits.

For some months, the physical appearance of the project has been amended, and amended again. Forest City plans to host a public meeting on the subject, possibly for some time in May.

After nearly three years of commentary and discussions, the plan for this development is entering its final stages. Full state approval could be obtained by the fall.



© Brooklyn Daily Eagle 2006

[Alonzo-ny]

Am i right in thinking this project is second only to the world trade centre in size in ny history?

[Derek2k3]

I think it will have more sq. ft. than Riverside South but smaller area.

http://www.pbase.com/archit_kderek2k3/image/58374328.jpg

http://www.pbase.com/archit_kderek2k3/image/58374327.jpg

http://www.pbase.com/archit_kderek2k3/image/58374325.jpg

[lofter1]

Such a nice view across the Avenue to Ratner's oh-so-attractive Office Max strip mall.

[BrooklynRider]

Hey, hey - easy killer. That's some classic Ratner-style architecture you're criticizing. Sure it looks like a dump, but, since he has sold everyone on the arguable fact that he is the preeminent developer of Brooklyn, we're supposed to live with appreciation for these original architectural wonders.

I do know that, apart from the people who work there, no one would shed a tear if that monstrosity burned to the ground.

[czsz]

And what's with that hideous brown and green chunk obscuring views of the Williamsburg Bank tower?

[ZippyTheChimp]

That would be the "ugliest building close to a landmark" in all of Brooklyn.

I guess it was permitted because it's shorter than the WBT.

[Fabrizio]

czsz: "And what's with that hideous brown and green chunk obscuring views of the Williamsburg Bank tower?"

" a chunk" is a good description for it.

[ablarc]

I guess it was permitted because it's shorter than the WBT.
That's the reason it's ugly and that's the reason it was permitted. Ugly is permitted: a delicious irony, but completely lost on the aesthetes who contributed to this disaster; they think it's the greedy developer's fault.

If that building's square-footage were reallocated to twice the height and half the footprint it would be OK.

And it would more closely resemble the Williamsburgh building.

[Transic]

Forced to Move, Some Find Greener Grass
By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/nicholas_confessore/index.html?inline=nyt-per)
Published: April 10, 2006

When Bruce Ratner first announced plans to build Atlantic Yards, a vast residential, office and arena project on 22 acres near Downtown Brooklyn, perhaps the biggest practical obstacle he faced was the hundreds of people who already lived and worked there. Many protested, hung banners from windows and joined groups opposing the project.

But others began negotiating buyout offers with the company. Now, more than two years after the project was announced, at least a few former residents say the negotiations with Mr. Ratner's company, Forest City Ratner, provided an opportunity to leave spaces that had grown too small or run-down — and to make a profit in the process.

Erin Coffer, 32, a lawyer who used to live at 636 Pacific Street with her husband, recalled the first time she saw a map of the proposed arena on the local news. "I looked at the map, and looked at where the arena was, and realized, unless I have a skybox, I'm not going to be here any longer."

Her brand-new apartment was beset with problems like burst pipes and faulty wiring. In 2004, with a child on the way, she and her husband sold their condominium to Forest City Ratner for about $1.1 million and moved to Manhattan. They had bought it the previous year for $419, 000.

"They were fair but savvy negotiators," she said of the developers.

In March, Forest City Ratner announced that it owned or controlled nearly all the owner-occupied residential units on the project site, more than three-quarters of rentals and about two-thirds of the commercial properties there. The company owns nearly 90 percent of the square footage it needs to build the development.

Roughly two-thirds of those who owned or rented homes in the area have accepted buyout offers or left on their own, according to Forest City Ratner. About 40 percent of those still there live in rental buildings the company owns or controls.

Many found new homes in Brooklyn; others left New York City entirely. All faced the prospect that the state might take their homes through eminent domain to make way for the Atlantic Yards.

Most of those interviewed for this article said they had mixed feelings about the project; some were less sanguine about the buyouts, or said that the financial settlements Forest City offered could not compensate for the loss of their homes and neighborhood. But even many of those who would rather have stayed said the developer had worked diligently to ensure smooth transitions.

"It's not a black and white thing," said Salvatore Perry, 33, who lived in the neighborhood with his wife for a decade before selling their two co-op apartments at 475 Dean Street to Forest City Ratner for what he called a "very good price."

"We're still dealing with the reality that we lost our community," said Mr. Perry, who now lives in Park Slope. But the developer, he added, "took the time and devoted the personnel to treat us as humans who were going through what was a very disruptive time that we were not going through voluntarily."

Forest City officials said that the deals made good long-term business sense, though they added to the cost of the project. "In a public environment, you don't pull together 90 percent of the land because you're afraid to step up to the table," said James P. Stuckey, an executive vice president. Forest City Ratner is the development partner in building a new Midtown headquarters for The New York Times Company.

For this article, the company agreed to waive contractual restrictions limiting what those who accepted buyouts could say. Several took the chance to air criticisms of the project and Forest City Ratner.

"I've been opposed to this development from the beginning," said Mark Drury, 25, a social worker who moved into a rented one-bedroom apartment on Dean Street with his girlfriend in October 2003, the month the project was announced. Early on, he said, local property owners were the most active in mobilizing against Atlantic Yards. But they pulled back, he added, once buyouts were offered.

A year later, Mr. Drury said, he was at odds with the apartment's owner, who wanted to sell, but needed him and his girlfriend to agree to move out first.

"What's so insidious about the process, and the way it breaks apart the neighborhood, is that by then I was battling with my landlord, against whom I had nothing," Mr. Drury said. He moved out in February 2005, after he and his girlfriend broke up. Eventually, they shared a $5,000 settlement from Forest City Ratner.

"Financially, I've been unaffected by the move," said Mr. Drury, who now lives in Park Slope but will have the option to move back if the project is completed. "Regardless of how they treat me, it's sort of like someone smiling at you and showing a wad of cash while they take your house. Money can't buy you love."

For some owners, however, it appears to have secured at least a little affection. Citing the company's agreement to keep confidential the prices it paid home- and business-owners, Forest City Ratner declined to provide specific figures, but interviews with former owners and an analysis of city tax records indicate that some sold their properties for more than twice what they paid for them after owning them for only a couple of years.

According to a report released in February by the Real Estate Board of New York, a real estate trade group, the median apartment price in the neighborhood, Prospect Heights, increased by about 36 percent last year.
At 24 Sixth Avenue, a condo building which opened in 2002, several apartments bought for less than half a million dollars sold for more than $1 million in late 2004. Nearly all the owners who sold received at least twice their buying price.

Ms. Coffer, who helped negotiate a group buyout agreement between Forest City Ratner and most of the condo owners at 636 Pacific, said the amount of "profit went from the upper 90's to 165 percent."

Mark Klein, the former president of the condominium board, said, "We got a premium on this lemon of a building that turned into a great investment for us."

City records show that Mr. Klein received about $1.1 million for his apartment, more than twice what he paid for it in 2003.

But one owner refused to sell: Daniel Goldstein, the sole owner now living at 636 Pacific and the spokesman for Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn, an umbrella organization for opponents of the project.

In early 2005, he went to a condo board meeting at the company's office — since the Forest City owns most of the building, the board meets there — and asked what would happen if he didn't sell. "One of their attorneys said, 'Then the state will condemn your property,' " he said.

As the company purchased buildings, it also became a landlord to many renters. Mr. Stuckey said that they were offered the chance to move back into units of comparable rent and size in the completed Atlantic Yards project, if it is approved. The company also paid moving costs and broker's fees for those tenants and covered any increase in rent for transitional housing. For those who declined the offer to move to Atlantic Yards, Mr. Stuckey said, the company paid a lump sum, "representing some value of what they would have gained coming back."

Tenant laws generally require similar recompense when a landlord wants to demolish a building. Jennifer Levy, a lawyer with South Brooklyn Legal Services, said that the company was providing "at best what the law already requires."

Those protections, however, would be erased if the properties were handed over to the Empire State Development Corporation, the state agency sponsoring the project. In such cases, the agency is bound by a different, less stringent set of obligations. Mr. Stuckey said that the promise to place tenants in the new complex was beyond what the development corporation would be required by law to do.

"I felt that my choice was, 'Don't accept the buyout and live next to a construction site for the next 10 years,' or 'Accept the money and move on,' " said Marc Wancer, who lived at 24 Sixth Avenue until 2004 and now resides in Mississippi. "The whole process was unpleasant."
For some businesses formerly on the site, especially shops, moving has been particularly complicated.

In 2004, Ngozi Odita and her partner, who run a boutique on Flatbush Avenue called Harriet's Alter Ego, were told by their landlord that they would need to move out within a year. Though they found a new space a few blocks away, it cost $1,000 more a month in rent and eventually required three months and $50,000 to renovate.

"It was a real struggle," Ms. Odita said. They asked for help from Forest City, which gave them $10,000 up front — most of which went to moving costs — and agreed to subsidize the rent increase for three years.

"I would have liked to have more time to plan it," she said. But the new space was larger and the location better, she said. "Things are blessings in disguise."

New York Times (or should I say "Forest Ratner New York Times" ;)) - http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/10/nyregion/10yards.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

[Fabrizio]

ablarc:

"....they think it's the greedy developer's fault."

"If that building's square-footage were reallocated to twice the height and half the footprint it would be OK."

I wonder about that.

For commercial buildings, aren´t large continuous floors more desirable for office space and therefore easier to rent? 1920 & 30´s-style tall & slim would be, of course, much more beautiful, but I can´t believe those greedy developers would ever go for it...

[NoyokA]

Ratner has relaunched an Atlantic Yards website, another promising sign for this development, although the website doesn't provide much in information. The final scope does though, showing elevations for the project on page 11.

http://www.nylovesbiz.com/pdf/AtlanticYards/ArenaFinalScope3-31-06SC.pdf

A model shown on the website:

http://www.atlanticyards.com/

http://www.atlanticyards.com/graphics/photos/gehry_model.jpg

[SilentPandaesq]

I don't know.... I kinda of like it.

The model is what is doing it for me right now. Also I had to go over there the other day to buy a DVD at Circuit city and was reminded that unlike the Yankee's project, this is not destroying lots of nice public use space.

[ablarc]

Why all these free-standing residential buildings? How is that different from Co-op City? Have the NIMBYs foisted this off on Gehry in the interest of getting more green space? If so, they've shot themselves in the foot. This appears to be buildings in a park all over again. Everyone should know that's how you get a project.

Where is the streetwall? Where are the ground floor shops?

Is everything to be sacrificed for useless green space? People are such fools. Amateurs ("the Community") shouldn't be allowed to make specific design prescriptions; it's a formula for failure. In the end no one will like it --not even the Community.

Let Gehry do his job without being second-guessed. He understands cities. But this project isn't right, and I suspect it's not his fault.

[MidtownGuy]

Yes, there has to be ground floor shops and restaurants.
I couldn't find the whole model on the website but from the above pic the buildings look really blah. I hope Gehry isn't forced to dumb down his designs to appease contextualists.

[lofter1]

I understand your argument ablarc, but Atlantic Ave. is like a freeway.

Cute little shops and cafes along that stretch might not work.

And the storefronts across the way (Office Max et al) are grotesque.

[ablarc]

I understand your argument ablarc, but Atlantic Ave. is like a freeway.
You could easily say: "The Champs-Elysees is like a freeway."

Cute little shops and cafes along that stretch might not work.
You could then say: "It's saved by the shops."

[lofter1]

You could easily say: "The Champs-Elysees is like a freeway."

You could then say: "It's saved by the shops."
Where do you live again?

Comparing the Champs-Elysees to Atlantic Avenue makes me think you might be a sightless person.

It will take a lot more than Gehry / Ratner and their millions to transform that roadway into a "boulevard" of shops and strolling.

No where in the planning is there ANYTHING about transforming that stretch of blacktop.

[ablarc]

No where in the planning is there ANYTHING about transforming that stretch of blacktop.
It's not the blacktop you have to transform; it's the sidewalk that abuts it.

Remember the Astor Place transformation we all loved so much? Astor Place is presently a little hellish, no?

The Champs Elysees itself was once not the Champs Elysees.

I'm amused that we call for so much improvement, and then when one of us proposes it we rush to declare its impossibility.

There's eyesight and there's vision. Too much of the former can prevent the latter.

Sure Atlantic Avenue is awful, but it doesn't have to be --any more than any other place has to be awful (except for maybe abattoirs and prisons). There's something truly hopeless about saying: "This place is awful. We can't do anything really good here."

Don't you agree?

[ablarc]

"....they think it's the greedy developer's fault."

For commercial buildings, aren´t large continuous floors more desirable for office space and therefore easier to rent? 1920 & 30´s-style tall & slim would be, of course, much more beautiful, but I can´t believe those greedy developers would ever go for it...
I guess you could say the NIMBYs are inadvertently in cahoots with the greedy developers; they both want short, fat buildings. The difference is: the developers have a sound reason, the NIMBYs are simply deluded by a false and unexamined aesthetic theory to which they simple-mindedly adhere.

[BPC]

Why all these free-standing residential buildings? How is that different from Co-op City? Have the NIMBYs foisted this off on Gehry in the interest of getting more green space? If so, they've shot themselves in the foot. This appears to be buildings in a park all over again. Everyone should know that's how you get a project. ... Let Gehry do his job without being second-guessed. He understands cities. But this project isn't right, and I suspect it's not his fault.

Wow, you blame everybody BUT Frank Gehry for Gehry's pathetic design. Gehry is a modernist -- he cares nothing for streetscapes. He designs LOOK-AT-ME buildings. Don' get me wrong, there is a place for such buildings, but when you put the man in charge of designing a whole neighborhood from the ground up, you are going to get a mess -- a moonscape.

[lofter1]

There's something truly hopeless about saying: "This place is awful. We can't do anything really good here."

Don't you agree?
Absolutely I agree that one shouldn't be hopeless ...

Currently they are re-building Houston St. from West St. east to the Bowery and hopefully this will change what was once basically a thru-way (at least since the subway line was put in beneath Houston St. 50+ years ago) and transform into a terrific urban boulevard. It has been many years in the planning stages and finally last year they began tearing up the streets to re-build the infrastructure (completion for the entire project is scheduled for 2008: PDF (http://www.nyc.gov/html/ddc/pdf/brochures/hwm738.pdf) of the project).

Atlantic Ave. is a much bigger problem and could use a similar transformation --which probably won't get moving for years until there is a critical mass of people living in that area who make enough noise demanding something happen.

Truthfully I don't know what Gehry / Ratner plan for the frontage onto Atlantic Ave. The link to the report doesn't reveal much.

[Citytect]

I think storefronts could work reasonably well on Atlantic Ave. without changing the roadway itself. Perhaps some widened sidewalks with trees? It won't exactly be a grand boulevard, but it could work okay.

I agree with ablarc about the lack of a streetwall. Such a terrible idea. No more towers in a park! There's a way to create parkland in an urban setting without losing the energy associated with lively city streets; this isn't it. I, however, do hold Gehry somewhat accountable for this.

[BrooklynRider]

The opposite end of Atlantic Ave is a lovely shopping strip.

I've surrendered to the fact that this is going through. So, now I'm trying to wrap my head around how the traffic flow in this section. I think they are going to have to add more trafficlights to slow down traffic in order to make it more residential. The biggest challenge is the sheer size of the Flatbush /Atlantic intersection. That's a lot of space between lights to try to regain control of.

[ablarc]

Wow, you blame everybody BUT Frank Gehry for Gehry's pathetic design.
That's because I've conversed with Gehry enough to know he understands cities at least as well as any of us.

he cares nothing for streetscapes.
Simply not true.

He designs LOOK-AT-ME buildings.
Yes, and that doesn't have to be the end of streetscape. The Ansonia and the Little Singer Buildings are both look-at-me buildings.

The fact that Gehry's buildings are buildings in a park is much easier to chalk up to community influence than to Gehry. I'd guess that Ratner shoves the community's wishes down Gehry's [gagging] throat.

At the public's level of sophistication there's a passion to see as much green as possible on a site plan. Left to his owwn devices, Gehry would operate on another level.

.

[BPC]

Left to his own devices, Gehry would operate on another level.

That much with, I agree. Since you and Gehry chat, can you point me to one successful street scape in any Gehry project? I am aware of none. The man got his start designing shopping centers with parking lots in California, and then made his name with splashy museums. The one constant theme of his work is an inability, or an unwillingness, or perhaps just a disinterest, for designing at a pedestrian level. If Brooklynites are to blame for his current crummy design, who are to blame for all his prior ones?

[ablarc]

That much with, I agree. Since you and Gehry chat, can you point me to one successful street scape in any Gehry project? I am aware of none. The man got his start designing shopping centers with parking lots in California, and then made his name with splashy museums. The one constant theme of his work is an inability, or an unwillingness, or perhaps just a disinterest, for designing at a pedestrian level. If Brooklynites are to blame for his current crummy design, who are to blame for all his prior ones?
The facts are right in your post, their interpretation faulty. Though he's an old guy, Gehry hasn't been asked to design commercial and residential buildings in an urban setting until recently.

Like all architects, he goes along with his client's wishes; doing otherwise just gets you replaced.

The early shopping centers were, well, shopping centers in the usual suburban mold; his splashy museums don't call for street-level treatments such as the ones we're talking about. His recent New York projects are the first opportunities he's had to make non-monumental cityscape: InterActive Corp. and the Beekman Street Tower will probably turn out OK in this regard.

It's not inability, it's not unwillingness, it's not disinterest for designing at a pedestrian level; it's lack of opportunity.

You don't think the architect actually decides what goes on the ground floor of his building and how it relates to the sidewalk, do you?

Unfortunately, I know otherwise because I'm in exactly the same boat. I've never had a proper sidewalk/building relationship built either, and it's not unwillingness, disinterest or perhaps not even inability. The plain fact is: none of my clients have ever allowed it. (And neither does the zoning in almost all contexts where I work. You've heard of setbacks and buffers, I assume?)

Gehry is plenty aware of what makes good urban townscape; if he's not doing it, it's because he's not being allowed to.

[ZippyTheChimp]

Latest site plan
http://www.atlanticyards.com/graphics/misc/general_projectplan.jpg

Compare to the original plan.
http://img504.imageshack.us/img504/2519/atlyardssite013hd.th.jpg (http://img504.imageshack.us/my.php?image=atlyardssite013hd.jpg)

In the latest plan, the passages along Atlantic Ave to the green space are too wide. They should only be as wide as a narrow street. In fact, they should be pedestrian streets, with the oportunity for retail to turn the corner.

Atlantic Ave can be fixed as long as the proper sidewalk environment is provided. Just walk west on Atlantic past Flatbush. The only difference with the street itself is two less traffic lanes.

[JMGarcia]

^As usual, too much community input on the concept of "open space" will end up ruining this at ground level. It may still end up working as "architecture" but the "open space" will do more to destroy what the neighborhood is really trying to protect than anything else.

People can be their own worst enemies when they wade into design issues sometimes.

[lofter1]

...can you point me to one successful street scape in any Gehry project?
Disney Concert Hall in LA, for one.

[ablarc]

In the latest plan, the passages along Atlantic Ave to the green space are too wide. They should only be as wide as a narrow street. In fact, they should be pedestrian streets, with the oportunity for retail to turn the corner.
Tell that to the green space mavens.

Atlantic Ave can be fixed as long as the proper sidewalk environment is provided. Just walk west on Atlantic past Flatbush. The only difference with the street itself is two less traffic lanes.
Exactly. Widen the sidewalk and plant some trees.

[ablarc]

^As usual, too much community input on the concept of "open space" will end up ruining this at ground level. It may still end up working as "architecture" but the "open space" will do more to destroy what the neighborhood is really trying to protect than anything else.

People can be their own worst enemies when they wade into design issues sometimes.
They want to see that green color on the site plans.

They want short, stubby buildings.

They think those things will improve the project.

After they get the green space and the stubby buildings they won't like the result, and they'll blame the developer and his architect.

Then they'll get to work doing it to the next project.

[lofter1]

Not to say that this can't be fixed, BUT ...

Atlantic Ave to the west of Flatbush does not serve the same purpose as the raodway to the east:

To the east Atlantic Ave. is a conduit for all those cars from the east that turn onto Flatbush and then go on to the Bridge & BQE.

I would guess that the number of cars / day is vastly less on the west stretch of Atlantic than on the stretch that runs in front of Atlantic Yards.

[ablarc]

^ It's not the number of cars that counts, really; It's the environment you create for the pedstrian.

Have you any idea of the torrent of traffic carried daily by the Champs-Elysees?

You start by relegating the fast-moving through traffic to the very center, away from the sidewalk. Then, barrier-separated you have slow moving traffic with curbside parking on both sides. That forces a crawling pace as folks back into parking spaces. Then, also buffered by a line of parked cars, comes the broad sidewalk with its unbroken streetwall fully lined with shops and cafes. All this is held together by a dense canopy of trees planted in every buffer or separator and on the sidewalks. The feeling is like being in an urban forest. And the cars in the middle are hauling ass at 45-50 mph. But they're way yonder...

Maybe Atlantic Avenue needs to be even wider...?

[BPC]

You start by relegating the fast-moving through traffic to the very center, away from the sidewalk. Then, barrier-separated you have slow moving traffic with curbside parking on both sides. That forces a crawling pace as folks back into parking spaces. Then, also buffered by a line of parked cars, comes the broad sidewalk with its unbroken streetwall fully lined with shops and cafes. All this is held together by a dense canopy of trees planted in every buffer or separator and on the sidewalks. The feeling is like being in an urban forest. And the cars in the middle are hauling ass at 45-50 mph. But they're way yonder...

Funny, this is actually very similar to what we proposed for West Street. But everyone kept telling us you couldn't tame West Street without a tunnel. The DOT finally went with its own plan, which is better than the status quo but not as good as it could have been.

[ablarc]

Funny, this is actually very similar to what we proposed for West Street. But everyone kept telling us you couldn't tame West Street without a tunnel.
Bummer. Got a pic? Would the tunnel have worked? Why or why not?

The DOT finally went with its own plan, which is better than the status quo but not as good as it could have been.
Finished yet? Pic?

[BPC]

Bummer. Got a pic? Would the tunnel have worked? Why or why not? Finished yet? Pic?

Actually, a happy day. Today is the one year anniversary of the cancellation of the West Street tunnel. Yea! As for your question, rather than reopen this long-dead but once heated debate, I can point you to the thread on this subject: http://204.157.1.201/~edward/forum/showthread.php?t=3633&page=8 . From a pedestrian standpoint, the main problem with car tunnels is that they must eventually open up in at least two spots, which spots are ruined by dangerous exit and entry ramps.

As for the DOT's current plan for West Street, it basically involves transforming the street into a "boulevard" with an adjoining pedestrian promenade. Th eplan has many good features, but the DOT never wants to take any of the simple steps that would slow down traffic, which is really the main problem (drivers treat the street like a highway, which it's not). Like everything else related to the WTC Site, the renovation won't be complete for many years: http://www.dot.state.ny.us/route9a/files/takeaway12-13-05.pdf.

[lofter1]

That stretch shown on the pdf in front of the Goldman Sachs building site will change -- since GS demanded that the bike path / pedestrian way be moved farther away from the base of their HQ.

[ablarc]

Every now and then someone will get hit crossing West Street.

But we're way off topic.

[BPC]

Every now and then someone will get hit crossing West Street.

Same with every other steet in Manhattan. But according to traffic statistics, the most dangerous pedestrian intersection in Manhattan is not any of the West Street crossings but rather Park and 33rd. Wanna guess why?

http://www.transalt.org/crashmaps/manhattanpedworst.html

[BPC]

That stretch shown on the pdf in front of the Goldman Sachs building site will change -- since GS demanded that the bike path / pedestrian way be moved farther away from the base of their HQ.

I know it was initially reported that way, but GS later denied that was the case. What the truth is here, I don't think we will know until we see the end result.

[ablarc]

Same with every other steet in Manhattan. But according to traffic statistics, the most dangerous pedestrian intersection in Manhattan is not any of the West Street crossings but rather Park and 33rd. Wanna guess why?
Oh, I know why. But even without the tunnel portal West Street will have drivers with an interstate highway mindset ("g-d pedestrians don't know to get out of the way; one of these days I'll run one down [maybe when I'm drunk]"). Those drivers can presently be avoided by means of ugly bridges.

[BPC]

I agree. I would take 2 of the eight planned lanes for West Street and make them parking lanes, for the reasons you identified with respect to Atlantic Avenue: (1) parking lanes shield pedestrians, and (2) they slow down traffic, with all the in and out. I would add as many stoplights as I could. I would get rid of all the giant green interstate-highway style signage that the State DOT has added to lower West Street of late. I would widen the sidewalks on the east side of lower West Street, which has a string of architectural masterpieces which, with a little elbow room, could create some great street life along the east side. (The west side will never hav much retail, but the planned promenade and existing bicycle path should keep it lively.) And I would see if I could strong-arm Brookfield Properties into creating some exterior retail along that stupid lawn they put in front of their property. If all that is done, you could create an experience something more akin to a typical North-South avenue.

Bringing this back to topic, a lot of the same measures could be used for the bad strecth of Atlantic Avenue, to make it more like the good stretch. Just replace Brookfiled with Ratner.

[ZippyTheChimp]

I've never driven here during rush hour, but my experience with this stretch of Atlantic Ave is that the traffic is less dense than surrounding streets, and the speed is higher. Always happens on a relatively open stretch of road.

Simplest solution is conspicuously placed traffic-light cameras. Ocean Parkway at Church Ave, where it becomes the Prospect Expwy, was a dangerous crossing before cameras were installed.

[Alonzo-ny]

Same with every other steet in Manhattan. But according to traffic statistics, the most dangerous pedestrian intersection in Manhattan is not any of the West Street crossings but rather Park and 33rd. Wanna guess why?

http://www.transalt.org/crashmaps/manhattanpedworst.html

Why

[MidtownGuy]

I used to cross there when seeing a client on 33rd. It is, without a doubt, VERY dangerous. The cars come zipping out of the tunnel like bats out of hell.
You really can't see them until they are almost on top of you.

[ZippyTheChimp]

The Park Ave tunnel is a poor choice for comparison. The distance from the portal to the 33rd st crosswalk is only 190 ft. The roadway reaches grade right at the intersection.

At Vesey St, the portal would be two blocks from the nearest crosswalk, 430 ft. On the southern side, the nearest crosswalk is at W Thames, 700 ft.

[BrooklynRider]

I'm way behind in my thread reading - apologies. The west stretch of Atlantic is where cars coming of the BQE get funneled. It is not as crowded because signals are timed to move traffic along. As the traffic approaches Flatbush, by the time it gets to Smith Street it is growing in volume. By the time it gets to Third Avenue, it is heavy. Only in the wee hours of the morning can you fly down the avenue with no traffic. The problem is the one-two trffic punch of the 6 lane Fourth Ave and Flatbush in consecutive order with a full block separating the two.

Not to say that this can't be fixed, BUT ...

Atlantic Ave to the west of Flatbush does not serve the same purpose as the raodway to the east:

To the east Atlantic Ave. is a conduit for all those cars from the east that turn onto Flatbush and then go on to the Bridge & BQE.

I would guess that the number of cars / day is vastly less on the west stretch of Atlantic than on the stretch that runs in front of Atlantic Yards.

[BrooklynRider]

As usual, too much community input on the concept of "open space" will end up ruining this at ground level. It may still end up working as "architecture" but the "open space" will do more to destroy what the neighborhood is really trying to protect than anything else.

People can be their own worst enemies when they wade into design issues sometimes.

I like the placement of the residential and commercial space, but I can't imagine anyone wanting to live over an arena. The three buildings surrounding the arena should be commercial / retail / hotel. The footprints of the residential remind me of Stuyvesant Town, Peter Cooper Village, and Alfred E. Smith Houses. Pick any one. I can't imagine it being in context with an urban residential area. Maybe my lack of imagination is the problem. I'm picturing either increased crime in the park areas at night or green spaces walled of or fenced off creating big dead ends during hours when they are closed. On paper, not a great masterplan.

[czsz]

What might have been on this site:

http://www.designcollective.com/Planning/Urban%20Mixed%20Use%20-%20Town%20Centers/Newswalk,%20Brooklyn/

Brooklyn's abandoned Daily News building is once again, front page news. The strength of the proposed redevelopment of this historic building lies in its prominent setting. Highly visible from Atlantic Avenue, News Walk celebrates the unique architectural characteristics of the existing structure. The housing component on the upper floors features moderately priced, market rate housing for young professionals. Retail and entertainment uses animate both sides of the street and reinforce the concept that News Walk is a microcosm of the city. Its strategic location straddles the more affluent areas of Park Slope and the ethnically diverse neighborhood of Crown Heights. By acquiring air rights to develop over top of the adjacent Long Island Rail Road Yard, a newly-constructed deck would allow for retail on both sides of Pacific Street and for a new gateway to the project by extending the retail component to Atlantic Avenue. By physically fusing together the two neighborhoods at this social and geographic crossroad, News Walk has the potential to become New York's first truly integrated neighborhood, active, safe, and inviting 24 hours a day.

http://www.designcollective.com/_internal/cimg!0/18zextves6

[JMGarcia]

^That's kind of scary actually.

[antinimby]

http://img87.imageshack.us/img87/1120/atlanticyards4ab.jpg

I have a problem with the two blocks I've marked with X's.
They look like "towers in a park" to me.
And why did they cut off Pacific St.?
Haven't we learned anything from the old WTC?
Isn't it common knowledge that this type of urban design seriously flawed or am I mistaken?
Aren't they complaining about the same thing over at the Con Ed site but here this is what they want?
Makes no sense.

[czsz]

If it's for rich people it's not a project, it's luxury living set amongst rich "greenspace"...

[lofter1]

What might have been on this site: NEWSWALK

When was this proposed?

[czsz]

No idea. It looks very 90s-ish though.

[bkmonkey]

Ratner’s new Web site o’lies


On Bruce Ratner’s new Web site, 636 Pacific St. is an abandoned building (lefy). In reality, it was renovated into a luxury co-op (right).


The Brooklyn Papers / Tom Callan
By Gersh Kuntzman
The Brooklyn Papers

There are lies, damn lies and then there’s Bruce Ratner’s new Web site.

Almost from the moment that www.atlanticyards.com went live, critics began finding half-truths and outright dishonesty on the site — the most glaring example, a several-year-old photo of a gutted building labeled “existing conditions.”

That building — at 636 Pacific St.— was later renovated into luxury condos. Ratner wants to tear it down to make room for an arena for the Brooklyn-bound New Jersey Nets.

Critics say that Ratner’s webmaster intentionally chose a pre-renovation shot to suggest that the area is blighted, a requirement before the state can evoke its eminent domain powers on behalf of the developer.

But Ratner spokesman Joe DePlasco said the old photo of the Atlantic Arts building was a placeholder and that shots on the Web site “will be updated and revised on a regular basis.”

In addition to the bait-and-click on Pacific Street, the virtual Bruce Ratner also lists Rep. Ed Towns (D-Fort Greene) as an unqualified “supporter” of the project.

“We were surprised we were on the Web site,” said Towns’s chief of staff Karen Johnson. “We do support the project … but we do share the concerns of people who could lose their homes. And we applaud the fact that there will be a full environmental review.”

Ratner’s people were surprised by Towns’s surprise.

“We’re surprised to hear this,” DePlasco said. “We appreciate the congressman’s ongoing support and look forward to work with him to improve the project.”

Many activists were stunned that Ratner had also renamed “Miss Brooklyn,” the 62-story building that would tower over the adjacent Williamsburgh Bank Building, to “Ms. Brooklyn,” as it now appears on Forest City Ratner documents.

“The use of ‘Ms. Brooklyn’ vs. ‘Miss Brooklyn’ is part of a larger conspiracy to find out if the editors at The Brooklyn Papers and the opposition bloggers are actually following every little detail.”

Full disclosure: We are.



[I] Do we really need this nonsense journalism? This article was not advertised as an editoral. This paper is a rag...

[lofter1]

The pics mentioned ...

[JCMAN320]

Ayo BKmonkey it doesn't chaneg the fact that the paper is right. When will you people wake up and realize that Ratner is selling half truths and whole lies to everybody. What the hell is it gonna take? HMMM!!! For him to by your property and build an ugly half ass of a building on it and kick your asses out to the street.

[bkmonkey]

Ayo BKmonkey it doesn't chaneg the fact that the paper is right. When will you people wake up and realize that Ratner is selling half truths and whole lies to everybody. What the hell is it gonna take? HMMM!!! For him to by your property and build an ugly half ass of a building on it and kick your asses out to the street.

Although we all know that I disagree with you, I still respect your opinion. Its when you try to mask that opinion as fact, and sell unbiased news papers, that I take issue. If this had been an editorial I would have said "ok" interesting perspective, however It was truth. Especially the part at the end about Ms. Brooklyn. This was utter nonsense and has no place in a paper.

[BrooklynRider]

[QUOTE=brooklynpapers]

Facts from "Ratner’s new Web site o’lies"


1.) "...a several-year-old photo of a gutted building labeled 'existing conditions.' That building — at 636 Pacific St.— was later renovated into luxury condos. Ratner wants to tear it down to make room for an arena for the Brooklyn-bound New Jersey Nets.

But Ratner spokesman Joe DePlasco said the old photo of the Atlantic Arts building was a placeholder and that shots on the Web site “will be updated and revised on a regular basis.” Considering that Ratner's people have been all over the area and have actually bought out units in the building as they consolidated properties, it is a rather transparent lie.

2.) Many activists were stunned that Ratner had also renamed “Miss Brooklyn,” the 62-story building that would tower over the adjacent Williamsburgh Bank Building, to “Ms. Brooklyn,” as it now appears on Forest City Ratner documents. This is indeed trivial, but it is also indeed a fact.

[Transic]

OK. I've been getting headaches trying to figure out what Ratner and FCR are doing. Why are they continuing to present new wrinkles in their plans? Why is Gehry continuing to tinker with his designs? Why is there still a back-and-forth between proponent and opponents?

Why not just go with one final masterplan and run with it?

[NoyokA]

Facts from "Ratner’s new Web site o’lies"


1.) "...a several-year-old photo of a gutted building labeled 'existing conditions.' That building — at 636 Pacific St.— was later renovated into luxury condos. Ratner wants to tear it down to make room for an arena for the Brooklyn-bound New Jersey Nets.

But Ratner spokesman Joe DePlasco said the old photo of the Atlantic Arts building was a placeholder and that shots on the Web site “will be updated and revised on a regular basis.” Considering that Ratner's people have been all over the area and have actually bought out units in the building as they consolidated properties, it is a rather transparent lie.

2.) Many activists were stunned that Ratner had also renamed “Miss Brooklyn,” the 62-story building that would tower over the adjacent Williamsburgh Bank Building, to “Ms. Brooklyn,” as it now appears on Forest City Ratner documents. This is indeed trivial, but it is also indeed a fact.


Who cares? The writers at BrooklynPapers are in serious need of:

1.) Productive lives

2.) An audience, which would arrive with actual news reporting.

[Kris]

http://www.curbed.com/archives/2006_05_atlanticyardsgehry.jpeg

http://www.curbed.com/archives/2006_05_atlanticyardsgehry2.jpeg

http://www.curbed.com/archives/2006/05/11/ratnerville_update_frank_gehrys_latest_revealed.ph p

[Kris]

Architect Frank Gehry Presents Designs For Atlantic Yards Project
May 11, 2006

Developers unveiled new designs Thursday for a scaled back plan for the Atlantic rail yards complex in Brooklyn aimed at winning over critics of the project.

The plans are almost the same as the original, but the buildings are smaller and the project is about a half-million square feet smaller.

The change is intended to end an on-going feud between the developers and residents who say the $3.5 billion project will only increase congestion. They're also concerned about the look and feel of the borough.

Famed architect, Frank Gehry, says the borough inspires his vision for the area.

"We're trying to understand what is Brooklyn, what is the body language of Brooklyn and trying to emulate it without copying it,” said Gehry. “Copying it would trivialize it."

Supporters say the sports complex will bring jobs to the borough and revitalize Downtown.

Some buildings are already being demolished at the site.

Plans call for the arena to be open by 2009.

http://www.ny1.com/ny1/content/index.jsp?stid=1&aid=59342

[czsz]

How does this represent Brooklyn at all?

Paging Fritz Lang...Metropolis is under construction...

[BrooklynRider]

Wow, I can't wait until the model is done. Once they get it cleaned up or get the pro's to work on it, it should be easier to get an idea of what he is proposing.

Also, I see Ratner has alreay pushed across the street to demolish PC Richards and Models. Not entirely objectional, but it sure shows a lot of chutzpah! Thise trees along Fourth Avenue are interesting considering that sidewalk is hollow and sits atop the Pacific Street to Atlantic avenue passageway. They will never grow there - an outright misrepresentation.

Notice the little tiny blocks to the right representing the neighborhood this will be hulking over. Also, I'm betting the "affordable housing" piece is ALL the way to the left - somewhere about the place where the model gets cut off.

One other thing - notice how Ratner has adorned the roof of the abysmal Atlantic Terminal with green felt to simulate "green space." This is the kind of misrepresentation and outright lying residents have had to put up with from this ass. And, I notice he actually shows Atlantic Terminal complete. Still waiting for that "grand atrium entrance" that was scheduled for completion in 2004? 2005? or is it 2012?

[Kris]

How does this represent Brooklyn at all?
It's nice and squat.

[BrooklynRider]

And it is a developer coming in and building something largely out of context and with no regard for residents and existing communities.

[lofter1]

Some responses from CURBED:

I think the foreshortening, showing only half the site, and the fake green roof on top of Target are pretty convincing, don't you?
No one will ever suspect that I'm an evil genius determined to flood Brooklyn's failing sewers in the raw waste of 15,000 new residents and 30,000 drunken fans!!! BwaHaHa!

By Ruce Bratner (http://www.givemeyourhomeorelse.com/)

***

wow that looks amazing! that part of brooklyn does need something right now the emptyness looks ugly.

By armchair warrior

***

C'mon people!
Don't let the shiny, sparkley plexiglass model and fancy-starchitect-parading fool you. It is a hulking, thoughless, badly proportioned developer monster in Gehry drag.
It might be 'interesting' and different from the usual bad buildings we've grown accustomed to, but this is not right. This is mediocre architecture at best.

By Anonymous

***

Fantastic! This will become an instant landmark. Atlantic Yards might even become this century's version of Rockefeller Center. If Olin Partnership does a good job with the landscape, this could really become something special.

By Crawford

***

what the hell is this crap?
it looks like something i saw under construction in Mumbai three years ago.

By chuck

***

This building looks like it hurts. Crumpled, pained, hunched, and damaged are words that come to mind. I have actually liked some of Gehry's buildings, but this is hideous, and it's also too big.

By LC (http://www.glittercannon.com/)

***

gehry-smerhry! looks like a multi-million dollar shanty town to me. sorry 1 hansom pl, meet your ugly kid sister.

By 130

***

"We're trying to understand what is Brooklyn, what is the body language of Brooklyn, and trying to emulate it"
That would be the raised middle finger, judging from that first rendering.

By Anonymous

[lofter1]

Miss Brooklyn ?

http://www.castlechina.com/wdcc_images/wdcc_sw_old_hag.jpg

[krulltime]

Wow this will be awesome really... this will sure place Brooklyn on top of the game in new architecture. Gehry is a genious. Sorry if some of you don't like this project. But it is way much better than a bunch of brick buildings and glass buildings like most that gets built right now in Manhattan. A piece of ghery art architecture to good old Brooklyn!

[Fabrizio]

I don´t know about the rest of it (maybe the look is a bit "million dollar shanty town") ...... but that silvery section at the top is b e a u t i f u l ... all fluttery and waving in the wind. Imagine a tower like that in downtown Manhattan....near the gothic Woolworth´s.....or among the other eloborate beauties.

[Clarknt67]

Yuck!

[ramvid01]

its different to say the least, i just think there is so much going on in the model that only seeing it in person or more drawings of will you really gain a feeling of how the building will really look.

[JMGarcia]

Cities need to move forward. Moving forward, by definition means breaking with context.

I'm not a huge fan of Gehry and I don't think this is one of his very best efforts but I'm completely pleased that something this daring is being built.

[kurokevin]

MY GOD!

I'm sorry, but now I am totally and absolutly convinced. Ghery has created a surreal masterpiece! I adore this building beyond my wildest dreams, and I'm not even much of a Ghery fan.

I'm speechless, simply speechless.

Now I cannot wait for Beekman St. renderings!

[sfenn1117]

Please, Please, Please build this! Don't let it get watered down!!! An instant landmark for the borough of Brooklyn and the city of New York. So unique!!!

I have my doubts that this will be the built design though. We'll see.

[JCMAN320]

This is ugly. I mean cmon I have seen Gehry's work and this is the best he can come up with. I'm still holding to the fact that this will never happen and Ratner will eventually selll the team from all the money is losing.

[Kris]

May 11, 2006
New Design for Atlantic Yards Presented
By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2006/05/11/nyregion/11yard.l.jpg
The Atlantic Yards design, unveiled today by the developer Forest City Ratner, faces opponents with a different vision for Brooklyn.

From across the room, the new plastic-and-wood model of Brooklyn's proposed Atlantic Yards project — unveiled by the developer Forest City Ratner at a news conference today — looked a lot like the old one sitting a few feet away: A 22-acre swathe of glass, brick and metal towers that will loom over the surrounding neighborhoods and forever alter the borough's otherwise sparse skyline.

But in an hourlong presentation, Frank Gehry, the project's architect, and Laurie Olin, its landscape designer, emphasized details that they said would harmonize the project's scale with the neighborhoods it would border. They described shorter and thinner buildings on Dean Street, where the project abuts a mostly low-rise neighborhood, extensive use of glass walls at street level, and what Mr. Olin described as "the biggest stoop in Brooklyn," a sort of public porch planned for the southeast corner of Flatbush and Atlantic.

"It still feels like Brooklyn," Mr. Olin said.

But Mr. Gehry, Mr. Olin and Forest City Ratner officials made clear that the developer and its opponents still have vastly different visions of what, exactly, Brooklyn should feel like, at least in this corner of the borough, where the bustling downtown commercial district shades into a quiet, tree-lined neighborhood of brownstones.

"They should've been picketing Henry Ford," Mr. Gehry said today, dismissing critics who oppose high-density development in the borough. "There is progress everywhere. There is a constant change. The issue is how to manage it."

Opponents of the project have criticized the height and scale of Mr. Gehry's designs, among other issues, and the possible use of eminent domain to make room for them. They have backed alternative plans for the site, including proposals by rival developers that would include mostly low-rise buildings and would not require eminent domain. (Forest City Ratner is the development partner of The New York Times Company in building its new Midtown headquarters, a project that itself involved government condemnation of private property.)

Daniel Goldstein, a spokesman for Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn, which opposes the project, said the new design "puts a Gehry sheen on top of repudiated 1960's-style urban renewal. It's still way too big, and does not change the fact of 16 skyscrapers slammed on top of and next to low-rise, historic neighborhoods."

Mr. Goldstein also criticized Mr. Gehry for declining to meet with residents of the communities surrounding the proposed site. The project "remains an urban planning disaster," he said, because "Mr. Gehry and Mr. Ratner continue to ignore the community."

Today's carefully-orchestrated presentation — Junior's, the famed Brooklyn cheesecake mecca, catered breakfast — came amid one of the most contentious periods yet of what has been a two-and-a-half year battle over the Atlantic Yards, which would be the largest Brooklyn real estate development in decades.

The Empire State Development Corporation, which is sponsoring the project, is in the midst of a state-mandated review of its potential environmental impacts, the final result of which is almost certain to be the subject of legal action. Today, the Council of Brooklyn Neighborhoods, an association of about 40 Brooklyn community groups, announced that it had hired Phillips Preiss Shapiro Associates, a real estate planning firm, to conduct an independent review of the pending study.

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

[pianoman11686]

Judging by the bipolar reactions so far, I can't help but say I have mixed feelings to the revision. The far side of the plan looks like nothing exceptional. In fact, it almost looks like there's too much of an effort being made for contextualization.

Then, what was supposed to be the centerpiece, and was always my favorite part of the plan - the arena - has vanished! It's almost completely obscured now. Has anyone ever seen a stadium so integrated into its surroundings? I don't think it works.

Then there's the icon. I feel like I don't like it at all when I look at the lower levels. The further up I go, the more acceptable, and more likeable, it becomes. I think it's a little too girthy, and doesn't have enough of an exclamation point at the top. The bottom has the possibility of coming out atrocious. What are those: wooden faux-support beams? One thing's for sure. This building will sparkle, in the day and night.

[tmg]

Miss BK could be a beauty. As the Hearst Tower has demonstrated, the combination of high-polished facades with super-transparent glass can look great.

As for the rest of the site, I'm encouraged that he seems to have abandoned the cartoonish massing schemes of his previous model. It looks more like a real city. My only concern is how the central green space is going to remain permeable (so that it is a real public space and not semi-private) while still allowing for the creation of a real streetwall. "Towers in the park" would be a real disappointment. This is a difficult balancing act. I hope they can pull it off.

[lofter1]

http://therealestate.observer.com/2006/05/gehry-gehry-everywhere.html

" ... [Gehry] does make a few token gestures to fit into the borough, however, but they definitely are tokens. The main one is the "largest stoop in Brooklyn" at the point of Atlantic and Flatbush, in front of the arena. One is supposed to be able to see through the lobby and a large window into the arena and make out the scoreboard from this angle (provided someone is not standing in front of you)" :

http://therealestate.observer.com/Gehry%20Largest%20Stoop%20in%20Brooklyn.jpg

[sfenn1117]

The idea of the largest stoop in Brooklyn is very smart. The stoop is a Brooklyn classic....I mean on my street in the summertime it's the place to be, where the neighbors get together.

Very smart move. Good on street level, hanging out before a game, like the big bat at Yankee Stadium.

[ablarc]

M A G N I F I C E N T.



But I wish it were bigger.

[Gulcrapek]

I hate it. Ms. B (may I call it that) could be ok but the rest are incredibly boring and/or ugly. It seems Gehry puts all his effort into the shapes and none to the facades.

[ablarc]

I hate it. Ms. B (may I call it that) could be ok but the rest are incredibly boring and/or ugly. It seems Gehry puts all his effort into the shapes and none to the facades.
Give it time. Those are study models. As the design develops, Gehry's trademark brilliant surface treatments will gradually emerge, as at IAC.

Right now he's still studying the massing; surfaces generally come later. You like Ms. B better because it's further along in the design process, that's all. The others will catch up.

A project like this develops; it can't spring full-formed from Zeus's head.

[BrooklynRider]

Everytime they roll out a new architect model of a Gehry project I wonder, "who dropped it?" as they pull the veil off of it.

Let me shower it with Brooklyn praise: it is better than Scarano or Bricolage!

[lofter1]

Base jumpers, rock climbers and other thrill seekers will have a field day on this one ...

[GLNY]

And it is a developer coming in and building something largely out of context and with no regard for residents and existing communities.

Amen. Ratner is a sure-fire emetic in the NY real estate development world.

But my problem today is Mr. Gehry's hubris. He speaks of harmony? Nothing has been changed to ameliorate his plan’s aggressively alien presence. The design - likely conceived in a mansion overlooking Malibu - bears no trace of a relationship with its modest address. I cringe envisioning a future when this silhouette could be the image of Brooklyn conveyed to Middle America.

Generations have celebrated Brooklyn's economic and aesthetic distance from Manhattan. Those who aspire to luxury, high-rise living can take the traditional walk over the bridge. In the meantime, if Mr. Gehry (or Ratner) wants to understand the "essence" of Brooklyn, come to Park Slope to be hen-pecked, or to Bensonhurst for a much-needed beating.
.

[ablarc]

Please, Please, Please build this! Don't let it get watered down!!!
I think it already has been. It's certainly shorter than it was or ought to be. You can expect the NIMBYs to dumb it down some more.

Then will come the aesthetes. That'll be the coup de grace.

Don't get your hopes up. This is New York: millions of architecture critics. That alone isn't bad, but they have the power to change things, and that is bad.

.

[Teno]

People who don't want it built at all are going to hate it no matter what it looks like.

[Citytect]

It's extremely so-so looking. Ms. Brooklyn's mid-section is terrible. Her top and bottom look good, but the top doesn't culminate at all. The arena has become too incorporated into the other buildings. I like the idea of blending it into the base of the towers, but it seems to have gone a step or two too far. I'm still kind of hating the site plan = Flashy towers in a park.

[TREPYE]

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2006/05/11/nyregion/11yardspan.jpg
To me it has a uniquely brilliant silhouette, I love the fact that it is so different than any other scraper we've ever seen and that it is right in a fork in road to prevent obstruction from other buildings (is this a preview of what Beekman could look like?? ;)). But it sure could use a nice spire or crown to give this tower a resounding finish that could be seen from the distances.

I don't like how the arena was concealed so that it has a too subtle presence. The Stoop is a great idea but it has to be very prominent in order for it to have its full effect.

[Kris]

May 12, 2006
Developer Defends Atlantic Yards Plan for Brooklyn
By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2006/05/12/nyregion/yards600.jpg
Frank Gehry, center, architect for the project, said pains had been taken to complement the surroundings. With him yesterday were James Stuckey, left, of Forest City Ratner and Laurie Olin, landscape designer.

Video: Frank Gehry & Laurie Olin (http://nytimes.feedroom.com/?fr_story=297ed61fa3d3c1bf7f4d6eed67755a882a134d1f )

From across the room, the new plastic-and-wood model of Brooklyn's proposed Atlantic Yards project — revealed by the developer Forest City Ratner at a news conference yesterday — looked a lot like the old one sitting a few feet away: a 22-acre swath of glass, brick and metal towers that would loom over the surrounding neighborhoods and alter the borough's otherwise sparse skyline.

But in an hourlong presentation of the project's latest design, Frank Gehry, the project's architect, and Laurie Olin, its landscape designer, emphasized details that they said would harmonize the planned arena and commercial and residential buildings with the neighborhoods they would border.

They described shorter and thinner buildings on Dean Street, where the project abuts a mostly low-rise neighborhood; extensive use of glass walls at street level; and what Mr. Olin described as "the biggest stoop in Brooklyn," a sort of public porch planned for the southeast corner of Flatbush and Atlantic Avenues.

"It still feels like Brooklyn," said Mr. Olin.

But their presentation also made clear that the developer and its opponents still have vastly different visions of what, exactly, Brooklyn should feel like, at least in this corner of the borough, where the downtown commercial district shades into a quiet neighborhood of brownstones to the southeast.

"They should've been picketing Henry Ford," Mr. Gehry said yesterday, dismissing critics who have questioned the pace and scale of development in the borough. "There is progress everywhere. There is constant change. The issue is how to manage it."

Opponents of the project have criticized the density of Mr. Gehry's designs, among other issues, and the government's possible condemnation of property to make room for them. They have backed alternative plans for the site, including proposals by rival developers that would include mostly low-rise buildings and not require eminent domain. (Forest City Ratner is the development partner of The New York Times Company in building its new Midtown headquarters, a project that itself involved government condemnation of private property.)

Daniel Goldstein, a spokesman for Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn, said the new design "puts a Gehry sheen on top of repudiated 1960's-style urban renewal."

He continued, "It's still way too big, and does not change the fact of 16 skyscrapers slammed on top of and next to low-rise, historic neighborhoods."

Mr. Goldstein also criticized Mr. Gehry for declining to meet with area residents. The project "remains an urban planning disaster," he said, because "Mr. Gehry and Mr. Ratner continue to ignore the community."

Yesterday's orchestrated presentation — Junior's, the famed Brooklyn cheesecake place, catered breakfast — came amid a contentious period in the two-and-a-half-year struggle over the Atlantic Yards.

The developer's decision last month to pare back the project's size by about 5 percent has done little to mollify its most astringent critics. And in the next few months, the Empire State Development Corporation, the state agency sponsoring the project, is expected to release a draft study of its potential environmental impacts that will almost certainly be the subject of legal action.

The Council of Brooklyn Neighborhoods, an association of about 40 Brooklyn community groups, announced yesterday that it had hired Phillips Preiss Shapiro Associates, a real estate planning firm, to review the draft study.

Earlier this week, Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn announced the formation of an advisory board to help with fund-raising, outreach and education. The board includes celebrities who live near the proposed site — such as the novelists Jonathan Lethem and Jhumpa Lahiri and the actors Heath Ledger and Michelle Williams — as well as preservationists, activists and politicians.

Yesterday's presentation is unlikely to temper the passions that have rallied them against Forest City Ratner. Though Mr. Gehry had previously suggested the project would be scaled back significantly, he was more elusive yesterday, saying that he had been "paring back" the design. "It is a process," he added.

Mr. Olin dismissed criticism from some community leaders and outside architects that the project's roughly seven acres of open space were too isolated from surrounding streets to be welcoming to residents.

"I don't think one has to worry about trying to draw people into open space in New York City," he said. "If there's open space that isn't closed or fenced in, people find it."

Much of yesterday's discussion focused on the project's 18,000-seat basketball arena, designed after a lengthy survey of arenas around the country. It is designed to "create intimacy" in an otherwise vast space, Mr. Gehry said, with tiers of seating structured so that "the people in the cheap seats are no longer second-class citizens."

Mr. Gehry spoke in sweeping language of his efforts to create "different levels of iconicity," varying the buildings' degree of unconventionality to create a skyline that would fit into the area. A few buildings would still be adorned with Mr. Gehry's trademark undulating panels, including the project's tallest, dubbed "Miss Brooklyn," which he described as a bride with flowing veils.

On the Dean Street side of the project, spaces between buildings have also been widened significantly from some early renderings to create better lines of sight from one side of the project to the other."We didn't take this lightly," Mr. Gehry said. "We spent an enormous amount of time studying Brooklyn."

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

[Kris]

B'klyn Atlantic Yards plans unveiled

By Barbara Barker
Newsday Staff Writer

May 11, 2006, 7:09 PM EDT

Photo Gallery (http://www.newsday.com/sports/basketball/nets/am-atlanticyards-pg,0,2397785.photogallery?coll=ny-sports-headlines)

Architect Frank Gehry unveiled a revised plan for a proposed Nets Arena complex in Brooklyn Thursday, one that the project's developer is touting as a friendlier, scaled-down version of the mini-city that also includes a hotel, office buildings, apartment towers and retail space.

The new proposal keeps the 18,000 seat sports arena, but reduces the maximum size of the Atlantic Yards project by more than 400,000 square feet, down to under 8.7 million feet. Most of the reduction will come from the elimination of market-rate condominium units, though the project remains Oz-like in scale, including 16 towers, ranging in height from 19 to 58 stories.

The site of the proposed $3.5 billion project is at Atlantic and Flatbush Avenues. Half of the project's 4,500 apartments will be reserved for low- and moderate-income families, according to Jim Stuckey, executive vice-president of Forest City Ratner Companies, the project's developer.

"We've spent an enormous amount of time studying Brooklyn, trying to get a sense of what is Brooklyn and what is special about it," Gehry said at a news conference Thursday.

What is special about Brooklyn, according to one opponent of the plan, will be violated by a project of this scale.

"The arena is really a front for a larger land grab," said Daniel Goldstein, a spokesman for Develop -- Don't Destroy Brooklyn. "We're talking about 16 buildings here. (The new plan) puts a Gehry sheen on top of repudiated 1960s-style urban renewal. It's still way too big and does not change the fact of 16 skyscrapers slammed on top of and next to low-rise historic neighborhoods."

Bruce Ratner, the president and CEO of Forest City Ratner Companies, is also the principal owner of the Nets. According to Stuckey, the company is hoping that the arena will be completed in time for the 2009-10 season.

Gehry is sort of the Michael Jordan of name-brand architects, but, having grown up in Canada, is more of a hockey than basketball fan. He said he visited arenas around North America -- his favorites were the Toyota Center in Houston, Conseco Fieldhouse in Indianapolis and Air Canada Centre in Toronto – to see what worked and what didn't. He also talked to players and fans and found out what they craved most was a sense of intimacy, which he noted is somewhat of a challenge in an 18,000-seat venue.

Among the more innovative features of the arena is the steep rise from the court, which allows fans to be closer to the action. It is also designed so the scoreboard – though not the court – can be seen through windows on the street. The roof of the arena will be landscaped green space, part of which will be accessible to tenants of surrounding buildings.

When asked about the critics of the project's plan, Gehry seemed unfazed. Said Gehry: "They should have been picketing Henry Ford…There is progress everywhere. There's constant change. I think the issue is how you manage change."

Copyright 2006 Newsday Inc.

[ablarc]

[IMG]I don't like how the arena was concealed so that it has a too subtle presence.
Exactly.

[ablarc]

I'm still kind of hating the site plan = Flashy towers in a park.
Can't see that in the model.

[GVNY]

Gehry really is a terrible architect.

[JMGarcia]

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2006/05/11/nyregion/11yardspan.jpg

MB on the left is not my favorite tower. Of course, this is a model and one that is not particularly realistic so its just an approximation of what the final tower would look like. Actual materials and construction will alter the impression it gives.

The best part of this plan IMO is the massing of the rest of the towers on the right.

[ablarc]

The best part of this plan IMO is the massing of the rest of the towers on the right.
Definitely New Yorkish.

Or is it New Yorker-ish?

[antinimby]

Can't see that in the model.

http://www.amny.com/media/photo/2006-05/23381584.jpg

[krulltime]

MB on the left is not my favorite tower. Of course, this is a model and one that is not particularly realistic so its just an approximation of what the final tower would look like. Actual materials and construction will alter the impression it gives.

The best part of this plan IMO is the massing of the rest of the towers on the right.

Really? MB is my favorite of all the rest... The other ones are just too square to be that interesting. I think those square ones are design to please the NIMBYs who want to see a more 'character of Brooklyn.' Blah.

MB screams out Gehry. That is his signature tower on the development, and he is just saying to hell with the 'character of Brooklyn' this is me. I just love all the busyness that MB has going on.


http://www.curbed.com/archives/2006_05_atlanticyardsgehry.jpeg


Although I agree that the materials may play a big role on the outcome. But knowing Gehry he will do a masterpiece. To me this is like modern art meets skyscraper building.

Anyway, anyone going to see the movie 'Sketches of Frank Gehry.' It opens today in some theaters in NYC.

[krulltime]

http://www.amny.com/media/photo/2006-05/23381584.jpg

I think that is going to be built to please the NIMBYs who want more open space in the development. Which is dumb I agree.

But at least that parkland seems to be surrounded by the towers as oppose to towers in the parks, which is what the housing projects were built to be.

That means there is interaction on the street level with these towers. At least it seems...


http://www.atlanticyards.com/graphics/misc/general_projectplan.jpg

[antinimby]

Gehry really is a terrible architect.In his defense, his original vision has been NIMBY-fied and what you are seeing now is a water-downed compromise. Equivalent to a Van Gogh working on the sidewalk and taking directions from on-lookers.

The main tower is too busy for me. The rest of the towers look like toy blocks place one on top of another. The arena originally looked elegant from above but now looks like it's covered over with turf.

[Kris]

Gehry, Olin unveil progress on Atlantic Yards design
Forest City Ratner and designers discuss new, mostly unchanged project for stadium, residential and office complex.

http://www.archpaper.com/images/news/2006_0511_atlantic_gehry2.jpg

On May 11, the most recent plans for Forest City Ratner Companies’ $3.5 billion, 8.7 million square-foot Atlantic Yards project were unveiled at a press conference in the Atlantic Terminal Shopping Center, another Ratner development located adjacent to the future development. At the preview, Frank Gehry, the project’s architect, and Laurie Olin, principal of the landscape firm Olin Partnership, presented the most recent designs of the site, whose mixed-use program remains largely unchanged.

The development, which includes a new 850,000-square-foot arena for the soon-to-be-relocated New York Nets, 600,000 square feet of office space, 6.8 million square feet of residential space, and a 165,000-square-foot boutique hotel, has developed significantly since designs were first unveiled last in 2004. In response to an influx of criticism from the community, 500,000 square feet has been shaved off of the original proposal, said Atlantic Yards Development Corporation president Jim Stuckey.

During the press conference, Gehry spoke first, casually prefacing his talk saying that he “didn’t want to design houses for rich guys,” and so went for a masters in city planning after he graduated from school (joking that no one was interested in city planners at the time, which necessitated his return to architecture). He described the new stadium, outlining how he tried to maintain an undisrupted bowl-shape and minimize separation between tiers of seating. The stadium features a ceiling, still in design, cluttered with structural components and what are currently flowing mesh screens to give the atmosphere a sense of intimacy and activity, Gehry said.

Anchored to the northwest of the arena is the project’s largest and most “iconic” (Gehry’s word) building: Miss Brooklyn. “We were experimenting with different levels of iconicity,” said Gehry, who continued: “not every building can be sculptural.” The other buildings vary in height and style in order to create, according to the architect, “a skyline and not a development.” The streetwall along Flatbush Avenue varies in texture, with typical Gehry-style corners and an irregular sawtooth pattern in plan. This “architectural messiness,” as Gehry described it, will hopefully break up the potentially monolithic and cold exterior of the massive arena.

All parties of the development/design team claimed extensive studies of the environment and Brooklyn as a place. Superficial nods such as a giant “Brooklyn-style stoop” at the corner of Atlantic and Flatbush attempt to allay fears that the development will be out of context. Laurie Olin referred to extensive research about the geography and history of the neighborhoods, opting for a topographically diverse landscape that would respond to the slopes, hills, and heights that, he noted, are central to the character of Brooklyn’s neighborhood. Into the center of the development, Olin incorporated promenades, boardwalks, recreational facilities, and a pond. While most of these are slated for public use, the green roof of the arena—which can be seen but not climbed—and the running track around it will be available only to the building’s residents and hotel guests.

As the design is subject to change before the building is fully approved (final approval is expected after the Environmental Statement Impact and public review in October of this year), the purpose of the press conference remains a bit unclear. The greatest opposition to the project—concerned residents and community members—weren’t allowed into the fiercely guarded, press-only conference, which seems like an attempt to dodge accusations of secret planning that developers like the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation constantly face. Given the finality and certainty with which the designers and development team spoke, it seems that New York’s Gehryville, U.S.A. is here to stay.

JAFFER KOLB

www.archpaper.com

[pianoman11686]

The evolution:

http://therealestate.observer.com/Gehry%20NYT%20Version.jpg

http://therealestate.observer.com/Gehry%20at%20Night.jpg

[pianoman11686]

You can tell that the massing of most of the buildings hasn't changed much, except for the straightening out of several slanted facade elements. I really doubt how credible the smaller buildings will appear. Right now they remind me a little of the type of bland cityscape that architects try to recreate in theme parks or, for example, the New York hotel in Las Vegas. They just don't look very authentic to me, and they're not at all representative of Gehry's style. The only other building, besides MB, that could be fascinating is the translucent, tall residential to the northeast of the arena. Speaking of which, I now better understand the decision to make it more "incorporated" into the development. Gehry claims it was done to minimize disruption to the lively street wall, which is a smart decision. In doing so, however, I think the arena's design may have been compromised. Then there's that building across the street from MB, which seems to be overlooked in a lot of the photos. Right now it looks like a missed opportunity. It has no relationship with MB at all. I really hope Gehry keeps working on this. It's gotten better since last year, but still looks like "a development." Brooklyn's had several hundred years to develop, and hence, has that authentic look to it. A project of this scope can't possibly accomplish the same, but I think it can come closer.

[Citytect]

Can't see that in the model.

You have to look harder. All the photos are taken with the arena and Ms. Brooklyn in the foreground. Look past those to the other end of the development and you can definately see something very akin to towers in a park. That part of the model is obscured though, so use the site plan as a reference to the model. There will be no streetwall - my biggest complaint.

[pianoman11686]

A few more photos from New York Observer:

http://therealestate.observer.com/Gehry%20Carlton.jpg

http://therealestate.observer.com/Gehry%20Starbucks.jpg

[Fabrizio]

You guys throwing around the NIMBY this and NIMBY that sound like Sean Hannity on Foxnews. Ninja said it well in another thread.... it´s like the Neocon Republicans talking about those "liberals". It´s truly know-nothing.

___________

In the meantime, even Ghery openly panned his first version. Yeah....I know he was bowing to the NIMBY´s. Sorry guys, but I´ll give the man more credit.

The first was nightmare-ish... a new set for a remake of the WIZ. It looked arrogant.

What I do like about this latest design is that it´s sort of a Red Grooms sculpture come to life....it does say New York....in a
big way.

BRILLIANT that it is "contextual".... there is culture there. Ghery doing his "thing" with no regard to "place" and history would be stupid.

Street wall? No street wall? I like that at the early stages, there are already sketches of what´s happening down on the street....it´s reassuring.

[Citytect]

You guys throwing around the NIMBY this and NIMBY that sound like Sean Hannity on Foxnews. Ninja said it well in another thread.... it´s like the Neocon Republicans talking about those "liberals". It´s truly know-nothing.

Haha. Funny but true.

Something else about the model: This building is sooo ugly...

http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b195/nova_cain/other/11yardspan.jpg

[ZippyTheChimp]

Greenie, I also don't see the "towers in the park." Is the model going on display?

I like the evolution of the design, but I agree with observations about Ms Brooklyn's stumpiness.

[Citytect]

You can't really make out 'towers in a park' in the photos of the model because the photo only show the arena and Ms. Brooklyn with the portion of the development that contains the park land and buildings without a streetwall obscured. As someone else noted Gehry's plan is more of 'towers surrounding a park' than 'towers in a park', as the buildings seem to be pushed up to the street not set back.

Even in the photos of the model, you can make out singular, stand alone buildings spaced apart. Taking this information and the drawing of the site plan together, you can reasonably infer that there will be no streetwall on that end of the development. It will be - building, green space, building, greenspace, etc. The arena fills in the holes on the other end and makes for a much livelier street presense.

[Kris]

The towers are too weighed down to soar. Terrible proportions. Is Brooklyn's "body language" fat inertia?

[JMGarcia]

The towers are too weighed down to soar. Terrible proportions. Is Brooklyn's "body language" fat inertia?

Actually yes. Soaring is not a Brooklyn thing at all. Squat buildings are.

Personally I think MB would be a better tower without the big hips.

[JMGarcia]

You can't really make out 'towers in a park' in the photos of the model because the photo only show the arena and Ms. Brooklyn with the portion of the development that contains the park land and buildings without a streetwall obscured. As someone else noted Gehry's plan is more of 'towers surrounding a park' than 'towers in a park', as the buildings seem to be pushed up to the street not set back.

Even in the photos of the model, you can make out singular, stand alone buildings spaced apart. Taking this information and the drawing of the site plan together, you can reasonably infer that there will be no streetwall on that end of the development. It will be - building, green space, building, greenspace, etc. The arena fills in the holes on the other end and makes for a much livelier street presense.

Buildings pushed up to the street rather than setback is a very good thing IMO.

Buildings surrounding a park sounds a lot like every brownstone neighborhood in the city where the buildings are pushed to the street and the center of the block is everyone's back yard.

[MidtownGuy]

Is Brooklyn's "body language" fat inertia?

yeah, too much Junior's cheesecake.

[ablarc]

Buildings pushed up to the street rather than setback is a very good thing IMO.

Buildings surrounding a park sounds a lot like every brownstone neighborhood in the city where the buildings are pushed to the street and the center of the block is everyone's back yard.
Yeah, that's right, but it's the gaps in the streetwall that are problematic.

[MidtownGuy]

The top section of Miss Brooklyn is lovely, I like what the building does at street level, the stoop is intriguing.. but she's stunted and perhaps a bit fussy.

I'm so glad they scrapped the plans that looked like a Roger Rabbit set. I like radical architecture but that was just goofey.

[Jasonik]

http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7822/2842/1600/FlatbushStMarksSmall.jpg (http://brownstoner.com/brownstoner/archives/2006/05/gehrys_design_t_1.html#comments)

[ablarc]

^ Very nice. Without those towers there's just too much sky in Brooklyn and not enough skyline.

[Jasonik]

http://www.skypic.com/boston/8-9018.jpg

The quaint low-rise Back Bay on the left, the quaint low-rise South End on the Right, in the center the Prudential Center built over 23 acres of old rail yards.(Christian Science Center foreground)

http://rfi.bostonhistory.org/boston/full/001023.jpg
Train yard at the Prudential Center, ca. 1955

https://wfs.bc.edu/bowesst/ab/prudential.jpghttps://wfs.bc.edu/bowesst/ab/1967.jpg (http://architecturalboston.com/Forum/viewtopic.php?t=132&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=prudential+center+centre&start=0)

Ada Louise Huxtable called it [Prudential Tower] "a flashy 52-story glass and aluminum tower... [part of] an over-scaled megalomaniac group shockingly unrelated to the city's size, standards, or style. It is a slick developer's model dropped into an urban renewal slot in Anycity, U.S.A.—a textbook example of urban character assassination." (1964): "Renewal in Boston: Good and Bad," The New York Times, April 19, 1964

How could she have known it was the natural application of the High Spine (http://www.boston.com/news/globe/living/articles/2006/02/26/bostons_tall_buildings_reflect_an_inspired_idea/?page=full) planning principle established by the Committee on Civic Design in 1961.

[lofter1]

Personally I think MB would be a better tower without the big hips.

Yep -- time to get a new skirt ...

[Derek2k3]

Large rendering of Star Jones. (http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/3667/1536/1600/FlatLantic.1.jpg)
Plenty More here
http://www.atlanticyards.com/html/footer/images.html

[NoyokA]

I for one am a huge fan of the base of the tower. Just cover up the tower and maybe you'll see what I do. I dont think the base and the tower transition at all.

[NoyokA]

This is a very clever approach to render some buildings of the development as wood cut along with other Brooklyn Buildings. The approach is false, it makes it look like the development will only have a few number of buildings.

http://www.atlanticyards.com/graphics/may06/gehry3.jpg

Im a huge fan of this development and I am confident Gehry will refine Miss Brooklyn into something exceptable. Im not a big fan of underhanded approaches like this though.

[NoyokA]

For the most part this project will look like Dusseldorf, an urban planning success!

http://www.guggenheim.org/exhibitions/past_exhibitions/gehry/images/projects/projects_images/neue001_lg.jpg

http://www.atlanticyards.com/graphics/may06/olin8.jpg

The argument that this is merely towers in the park and nothing different than a housing project is entirely false.

http://www.atlanticyards.com/graphics/may06/olin3.jpg
http://www.atlanticyards.com/graphics/may06/olin4.jpg
http://www.atlanticyards.com/graphics/may06/olin6.jpg
For One it will have extensive street level retail.

http://www.atlanticyards.com/graphics/may06/olin1.jpg
If you look at the site plan the opportunity for streetlevel retail is extensive, each building abuts the street. Instead of occupying the entire site the buildings are narrow, they greet the street and have parkland behind them.

This isnt dirt lots, "green", and playgrounds. This is a destination! Why is this a destination. Location has something to do with it, the Nets have something to do with it. But this a Frank Gehry development and people flock to see Gehry works, especially with the scope and size of this project and the hot ticket Gehry is and Brooklyn is.
http://www.atlanticyards.com/graphics/may06/olin5.jpg

I forgot to mention, Projects dont have ponds:
http://www.atlanticyards.com/graphics/may06/olin7.jpg
Or undulating fascades. These buildings force people to interact with them, people will willingly take time out of there day in order to be encapsulated, admire, or detest them.

Its the same reason people love labryinths.
http://www.atlanticyards.com/graphics/may06/olin9.jpg

And Battery Park City, although I'm not the biggest fan of BPC, it is nice. And this project will have its nice seclusive parts afforded by the parks.
http://www.atlanticyards.com/graphics/may06/olin10.jpg

And then there's the Stoop. A place to take it all in. A public place for a project, largely a public work.

[ablarc]

Need one more high-rise: between Williamsburgh Savings Bank and Ms Brooklyn.

Also, I love the way Gehry succeeded in becoming different architects for different buildings. He set himself that goal about a year ago, and he succeeded.

This is the most exciting architectural project proposed in New York in my lifetime; it will have a bigger positive influence than Lincoln Center.

Jasonik, your comparison with Boston's Prudential/Christian Science complex is very apt. That eruption of big buildings complements and improves the urban experience of both quaint rowhouse districts that flank it, and helps keep them blissfully intact and unchanged, by reducing pressure to develop in those precious places. Just so, this project will actually help preserve Brooklyn's rows. At the same time, Brooklyn will finally get a decent downtown (though one hopes even more will be added).

.

[ablarc]

...Metropolis is under construction...
You said it, Cz.

http://66.230.220.70/images/post/gehrybrooklyn/01.jpg

Finally that stupendous urban vision will see the light of day.

Brooklyn will finally take its place squarely on the map as a worthy (though still junior) rival of Manhattan, despite the petty and benighted cavilings of those of its citizens who are kneejerk-oppositionists and small-minded (literally!) ignoramuses. The issue here was never "Is this like Brooklyn?"; the issue was always "Is present-day Brooklyn as good as it can get?" Of course, the answer was always "No!"; after all nothing's perfect and Brooklyn in particular as the U.S.'s fourth biggest city was not too hard to see as...shall we say...lacking something. This is the something it's been lacking.

Fabrizio, here's an apt illustration of the distinction between a NIMBY and a preservationist. A NIMBY is an abuttor who opposes for selfish or ignorant reasons; a preservationist is a public-spirited member of the culture who hates to see nice things replaced by schlock. In this case all there was to preserve was a railyard and some pretty dispensable buildings. What will replace them is a masterpiece.

.

[pianoman11686]

I think this is a great alternate perspective of Miss Brooklyn:

http://www.atlanticyards.com/graphics/may06/gehry6.jpg

And correct me if I'm wrong here, but I think this shows Miss Brooklyn will actually relate well with Williamsburg Savings Bank Tower, perhaps even complementing it:

http://www.atlanticyards.com/graphics/may06/gehry11.jpg

Just goes to show you, nothing in Gehry's work is clear-cut.

[krulltime]

^ Yeah finally Mr. Savings Bank Tower will finally have a girlfriend, Miss Brooklyn (With big hips!) ;)

[ZippyTheChimp]

^
Ms Big Hips and Big Willy.

LOL.

Or is this sophomoric sexist humor.

[Kris]

New York Daily News - http://www.nydailynews.com

No neon for Nets arena, but foes still turned off
BY ELIZABETH HAYS
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Saturday, May 13th, 2006

Don't expect flashy neon signs at the proposed Nets arena in Brooklyn.

Instead, developer Bruce Ratner plans to project images directly onto the glass building during games - but turn them off at other times to help it blend in with the surrounding area.

"This is more of a residential district. This would not be Times Square," architect Frank Gehry told the Daily News Editorial Board yesterday. "The question was how do you create activity at game time and have it disappear."

Ratner officials also are considering embedding light-emitting diode images into the glass that also could be turned off.

Gehry has released new designs for the project, which he touts as fitting in better with surrounding neighborhoods.

But in another development, a group of Brooklyn legislators said yesterday it would try to force Ratner to scale back the project by about a third.

Assemblyman James Brennan (D-Brooklyn) and five colleagues - including vocal arena supporter Assemblyman Roger Green - are introducing a bill that would cut the size of the project to 6 million square feet from nearly 9 million.

In exchange, the bill would slash the amount Ratner has to pay to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to buy and prepare the site to $140 million, down from $450 million.

[MidtownGuy]

Assemblyman James Brennan (D-Brooklyn) and five colleagues - including vocal arena supporter Assemblyman Roger Green - are introducing a bill that would cut the size of the project to 6 million square feet from nearly 9 million.

CUT IT DOWN MORE??!!! W T F.
The Lorena Bobbitts of architecture. Why do they insist on smashing down every grand vision until it's stupid, unexciting and impotent?

[ablarc]

CUT IT DOWN MORE??!!! W T F.
The Lorena Bobbitts of architecture. Why do they insist on smashing down every grand vision until it's stupid, unexciting and impotent?
Lol, back when they were Babbitts they were boosters of big new buildings, but now that they're Bobbitts...

That's a good name for NIMBYs obsessed with emasculating size: "Bobbitts". Has a certain resonance...

[BPC]

New York Daily News - http://www.nydailynews.com

No neon for Nets arena, but foes still turned off
BY ELIZABETH HAYS
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Saturday, May 13th, 2006

Don't expect flashy neon signs at the proposed Nets arena in Brooklyn.

Instead, developer Bruce Ratner plans to project images directly onto the glass building during games - but turn them off at other times to help it blend in with the surrounding area.

"This is more of a residential district. This would not be Times Square," architect Frank Gehry told the Daily News Editorial Board yesterday. "The question was how do you create activity at game time and have it disappear."
...

What exactly is wrong with neon?? The arena will be across the street from a shopping mall. I am not a huge fan of this project, but I see no reason why Ratner should not light the damn thing up, unless he is trying to save on his ConEd bill.

[antinimby]

What exactly is wrong with neon?? The arena will be across the street from a shopping mall. I am not a huge fan of this project, but I see no reason why Ratner should not light the damn thing up, unless he is trying to save on his ConEd bill.Ratner bowing to NIMBYs again. Big, bright, flashy signs is also a big no-no. Don't you know?

Instead, developer Bruce Ratner plans to project images directly onto the glass building during games - but turn them off at other times to help it blend in with the surrounding area...Gehry has released new designs for the project, which he touts as fitting in better with surrounding neighborhoods.

[ablarc]

If this keeps up, the NIMBYs (not preservationists, Fabrizio!) will ruin this project. Then, when nobody likes it, they'll say, "I told you so!"

[antinimby]

The centerpiece of this project, that is, the complex comprising of MB and the arena should never be designed with 'blending in with the neighborhood' in mind. That is an intersection of two large major thoroughfares, every effort should be make it lively not sedate. The blending in stuff should be left for the eastern, residential portions.

If everything was suppose to blend in, we wouldn't have ESB, Chrysler, Rockefeller Center, UN, TWC, NYT, BofA, Hearst, Seagrams, Citigroup, WTC, Woolworth, AIG, 40 Wall St. I may have left out others but you get my point. Heck, even the beloved Williams Savings Bank was and still is out-of-scale with its neighbors.

[Clarknt67]

Jim Stucky, manager of the project spoke to Brian Leher on NPR today, you can download or stream it from www.wnyc.org.

He made a good point about the scale of the project in that buidling on top of the railyard and all the infrastruction costs are in the neighborhood of $900 million, and are fixed regardless of the scale of the project. In other words, a small scale project is unworkable.

[BrooklynRider]

The question is what is deemed small scale? Is this current design considered "big", when it has already been scaled back? If the project is cut another 33% is it then small?

[Clarknt67]

well, Brian Leher confronted Stucky on the fact that this scale down brings the square footage from 9.2 million sq. ft. down to 8.7 million. Not much of a scale down.

By small scale though, I was pointing out that most opponents apparently think that it should match the adjacent 3 or 4 story brownstone neighborhoods, and that just isn't enough profit margin to justify anyone investing in the needed infrastructure.

[BrooklynRider]

I don't think it should be that low and I think that most people in the surrounding areas would agree that it would not make sense to build a platform for low-rise development. The question to your statement is what would constitute "enought profit margin?" Who determines that? Ratner? The City? MTA?

[krulltime]

Smaller Size Proposed for Atlantic Yards


By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE
Published: May 16, 2006

Assemblyman James F. Brennan, a Brooklyn Democrat, introduced legislation yesterday that would require the developer Forest City Ratner to reduce the size of its proposed Atlantic Yards real estate development by about three million square feet, or roughly a third. In exchange, the bill would offer up to $15.4 million a year in state money to subsidize below-market-priced housing in the project, a 22-acre residential, commercial and arena development near Downtown Brooklyn. The bill would also relieve Forest City Ratner of about $310 million in costs associated with renovating and buying building rights over the railyards on the site of the project. Five other Brooklyn members of the Assembly are also sponsoring the legislation.


Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

[ablarc]

Bad news.

[TonyO]

^ Stucky was asked about this by Brian Lehrer. They say they are "studying it"...which is not true of course, but I don't blame him. The scale down is a completely silly idea - it sits on a transit hub.

Goldstein from DDDB was practically hyperventilating trying to get his points across. He tried to vilify Gehry and Ratner. His members seem impressive, but so are Ratner's supporters. Extell's plan isn't a real plan, and I could put together 20 pages of pro-forma projections in less than an hour (its called Argus).

Its sad that this guy with his weak arguments can affect a project like this that really does create housing. He talks about how Gehry is an egomaniac? Please, Goldstein's all about his 15 minutes here.

[ablarc]

Gehry is not an egomaniac.

[BrooklynRider]

In between the lines of all of this proposed "scaling back" supported by politicians previously beholden to Ratner are lots of give backs and expenses that are now born by the public. This stinks to high heaven of a preconceived scheme. Ratner got the approval to build and is the sole developer in negotiations. He got the nod from Pataki, Bloomberg and the site is outside of city review. At this point, he has everything to gain and nothing to lose. This proposal is nothinbg more than politicians selling out their constituents - which becomes much easier in a city with term limits. You have to wonder where they were when all the protests were taking place. Why the sudden change of heart? What exactly are they responding to that wasn't there six months to one year ago?

[ablarc]

This stinks to high heaven of a preconceived scheme...
It does?

This proposal is nothing more than politicians selling out their constituents
How? They're going for a smaller scheme. Are you saying the constituents want a bigger project?

Come to think of it, maybe they do --in which case they are being sold out.

But to whom? Not Ratner; what does he have to gain from a smaller scheme?

- which becomes much easier in a city with term limits...
Why?

You have to wonder where they were when all the protests were taking place. Why the sudden change of heart? What exactly are they responding to that wasn't there six months to one year ago?
Yeah, you can wonder about that.

But how do you go from that to concluding they're now in Ratner's pocket? Wouldn't the opposite conclusion come more naturally?

[BrooklynRider]

Ratner's original plan and primary desire was to build the arena. The elected officials calling for a reduction were absent or in Ratner's corner during the public input process. They all supported the proposal. The key part of the "scaling back" request is the fact that Ratner gets air rights for free and subsidies for the housing that HE had promised to build as part oft he plan.

With term limits, elected politicians can act in their own interest as opposed to their constituent's because they will not face re-election. If there is no one to answer to in Fall, there are no consequences.

This was one of the original concerns of opponents of Ratner's project, presenting one grand plan and the not deliivering. Once the arena was built, would he follow through on his pledge to build housing? These politicians looked at all the same info - and I'm sure more - than the public has. Why the demand for it to be smaller after the approval process has concluded? These new concerns and "legislation" seem destined to lose. Ratner was already granted the right to build. If he challenges the legislation and wins. The politicians get to say "we tried." If he challenges and loses, he gets $310 million in air rights for free and part of the housing he proposed subsidized.

[ZippyTheChimp]

Ratner's original plan and primary desire was to build the arena. The original plan was to include considerably more commercial development. If you remove the arena from that plan, that project still had financial viability. The arena and the Nets were a vehicle to gather popular support.

Brooklyn history is often cited in objection to the project, but that is a myopic view. Fifty years ago, Brooklynites would be amazed at how this project, sitting on a major transport hub, is being whittled away to nothing.

I hardly ever resort to a term that is overused here, but this is an example of NIMBYism worthy of the dictionary.

[TonyO]

Metro NY

Letting a thousand projects bloom

by amy zimmer / metro new york

exerpt...

MAY 17, 2006
Letting a thousand projects bloom

by amy zimmer / metro new york

> email this to a friend

MAY 17, 2006

The Empire State Development Corporation is involved in more development projects today than ever before. ESDC Chairman Charles Gargano talked to Metro about the expansion of the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, Moynihan Station and other ongoing projects.


What do you say to Brooklynites concerned about the Atlantic Yards?

The facts are that we didn’t really have to use eminent domain because there were friendly condemnations done. The amount of condemnation that we had to do was very small. I grew up in Park Slope, and another big blunder by the city was we lost the Brooklyn Dodgers. They wanted to build a new Ebbets Field at the Atlantic Yards. And because of that blunder in the ’50s, we have had a blighted look in the Atlantic Yards for nearly 50 years. There will always be people who object because everybody has different personal interests, and that’s OK. But I think what you have to do is do it for the majority.

Michael P. Ventura also contributed to this story.

[BrooklynRider]

The facts are that we didn’t really have to use eminent domain because there were friendly condemnations done. The amount of condemnation that we had to do was very small.

These two sentences are contradictory. They are using emminent domain, although I give Ratner credit for buying out those landlords willing to sell.


I grew up in Park Slope, and another big blunder by the city was we lost the Brooklyn Dodgers. They wanted to build a new Ebbets Field at the Atlantic Yards.

I believe the big blunder was at the state level because Robert Moses was so opposed to building the new stadium over a transportation hub as opposed to building it in the center of a parking lot like his Shea Stadium.

And because of that blunder in the ’50s, we have had a blighted look in the Atlantic Yards for nearly 50 years.

The only areas blighted at the time Atlantic Yards was proposed was the Atlantic Center (built by Ratner), the actual Atlantic Yards (owned by the same state Mr. Gargano represents) and the lot bounded by Flatbush Ave, Atltantic, 5th Ave and Pacific Streets.

The blocks around it were gentrifying and the neighborhood was coming along very nicely.

There will always be people who object because everybody has different personal interests, and that’s OK. But I think what you have to do is do it for the majority.

Certain laws in this country are set to prevent the majority from imposing its will on the minority and infringing upon their rights. There are definitely different personal interests, where one lives and what happens to one's neighborhood is extremely personal.

Mr. Gargano may have grown up in Park Slope, but he's not here now. I'm not sure what he was implying be making that statement, but it is irrelevant to the present situation.

I'm resigned to the fact that this project is going to happen. We are getting a new Starret City in the middle of Brooklyn along with an arena from a man who has turned Downtown Brooklyn into a suburban office park hostile to pedestrians. But, this b.s. of misrepresenting the use of emminent domain by calling it "condemnation," blaming the residents of the area for blocking the construction of a new Ebbets Field (when it was the state) or calling the neighborhood where Brooklynites were investing and improving the properties "blighted" is politi-speak at best.

Charles Gargano is a liar.

[BigMac]

Architectural Record
May 17, 2006

Revised Atlantic Yards Plan Less Bulky, Yet Still Huge

http://archrecord.construction.com/news/images/060517atlantic1lg.jpg

http://archrecord.construction.com/news/images/060517atlantic2lg.jpg

On May 11, Frank Gehry, FAIA, unveiled new models for his 22-acre Atlantic Yards development in downtown Brooklyn. He says the latest work is more sympathetic to the scale and character of the residential area that the project borders. Some of the buildings are shorter and less bulky than those that were previously presented. Many of them will have glass walls at street level, and others will not be built so closely together. Most of the buildings will be clad either in metal, glass, or brick, and their designs are generally much less unorthodox than the models presented last July. For instance many buildings that had been tilting in various directions in the prior models are now standing straight up.

Making the project fit into the neighborhood will certainly be a challenge. The $3.5 billion project, which would be located at the intersection of Flatbush and Atlantic Avenues, would be the largest project in the history of the borough. It would include about 600,000 square feet of office space; 6.79 million square feet of residential space; 850,000 square feet of sports and entertainment area, which would be used as a new arena for the New Jersey Nets. There would also be 247,000 square feet of retail, and seven acres of open space. The plan calls for four office towers of 35 to 60 stories, located near downtown Brooklyn’s commercial corridor.

“It’s possible to make this project fit into the area, to open it to more light and air,” says Jim Stuckey, president of Atlantic Yards Development Group. He says the arena will be fronted on most sides by residential buildings, helping it blend into the area. Its glass portions will be open to the street, showing off the building’s interior. While huge buildings, like the 620-foot Miss Brooklyn Tower and the arena itself, highlight the project the majority of structures will be low-rise brick residential buildings. Stuckey says the materials of many of the projects are undecided, but that some would be more iconic than others.

“If we had all iconic buildings this would be just a jumble,” he says.

The eastern edge of the site, which creeps into the more residential, low-density neighborhood of Prospect Heights, would form a superblock, with seven residential buildings of 20 to 40 stories. Gehry’s design includes 4,500 rental units and 1,500 market-rate condos.

Neighbors still complain that the project’s developers, Forest City Ratner, have not solicited enough public input for the plan, which will likely utilize eminent domain to condemn at least six buildings. Others complain that the giant project will never fit into the neighborhood. In a press release, the Brooklyn group Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn said, “"The new design unveiled by Gehry and Ratner today is 16 skyscrapers worth of window-dressing. It puts a Gehry sheen on top of repudiated 1960's style urban renewal.”

But Stuckey says his team has already met with many local groups. Public review of the project is now scheduled for the end of June, and completion of an environmental impact statement is set for the end of July, he says. He adds that the team has now procured 90 percent of the land it needs for the project, and hopes it will not have to resort to eminent domain to get the rest.

Sam Lubell

© 2006 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

[Kris]

Time to catch the wave
JUSTIN DAVIDSON
May 22, 2006

New York City is getting Gehrified. Protesters have pitted their movie stars against Frank Gehry, the world's most famous architect, in an attempt to stop him from remaking a large swath of Brooklyn. But he has tenacity, talent and a knack for winding up on the side of people with money. His buildings make Gehryless cities jealous, and envy is a powerful motivator in urban development.

The first traces of his presence are already visible in West Chelsea, where the headquarters he designed for Barry Diller's InterActiveCorp is taking shape on West Street. There's theater in its birth. The listing columns, curving floorplates, milk-white glass drapery sliding over its twisted bones - New York has never had such a creature. If the ghostly building flapping in the wind converses at all with its context, it is with the tall-masted schooners of Herman Melville's Hudson. Gehry has little to say to the grim tan warehouse next door or the dour entertainment megalith of Chelsea Piers across the street.

He has also been hired to design a performing arts center at Ground Zero and a new home in Brooklyn for the company Theater for a New Audience. In a city that for so long seemed to have no room in its grid for an architect of his exuberance, the 77-year-old architect is now designing for culture, living and commerce.

The most grandiose and controversial of his projects is the 21-acre, 16-building proposed citadel-within-a-borough known as Atlantic Yards, located at a crucial Brooklyn node. The developer Bruce Ratner wants to import the New Jersey Nets and erect for them a majestic yet intimate arena on the arrowhead-shaped lot where Atlantic and Flatbush avenues cross. Stretching to the west would be a high-rise Xanadu of offices, apartments, stores and restaurants, turning a dingy-chic wedge of city into a bright new campus.

Opponents took advantage of last week's unveiling of a slightly new variation on the original plan to restate their outrage. The project is out of context and out of scale, they charge. They want the project shrunk and they want it less exhibitionistic.

Gehry has not exactly endeared himself to the locals. His position is that his design represents inexorable progress, and opponents are, by definition, reactionary. "They should have been picketing Henry Ford," he scoffed at the news conference, which was another way of saying that small-minded people were objecting to a titan of creative thought.

As a matter of fact, that's exactly what he is. To wish that he would design something more self-effacing is to protest that the pyramids of Giza stand out too boldly. Gehry does not blend in. He builds blockbusters. He manufactures his own limelight.

He has done a magnificent job of transforming low-slung, unfocused sites such as the section of downtown Los Angeles where Disney Hall now sits in majesty. (He has big plans for those blocks, too: a gut renovation of the neighborhood.) The architect may see the Atlantic Yards site in Brooklyn as similarly vacant, but the Brooklynites who live there don't. Where he sees a tumbledown area sidling along train tracks, ripe for high-end architecture and the higher real-estate prices it brings, they see a complex network of mixed races and mixed incomes.

It would be a mistake, however, to write Gehry off as Ratner's corporate tool. Few architects are as sensitive to the cultural implications of steel and glass, or to the way human beings move through the spaces he molds. He is expert at accommodating a welter of conflicting agendas and making it seem like it was all his idea. Disney Hall, for instance, addresses and nearly solves an impossible conundrum: how to create an environment for symphonic music that combines democracy and luxe.

The most dismaying aspect of the project is neither the sore-thumbness of the design or even the traffic the complex might create. It's the fact that government has outsourced the building of public space to private developers. Gehry's plans call for an ungated community, enclosed but accessible and sumptuously landscaped by Laurie Olin.

Disney Hall suggests that he has a sense of how to manufacture such enclaves. The garden that nestles into one of the folds in the building's cladding is the rare urban oasis that feels as though it belongs, not as though it had been shoehorned in to satisfy a contractual requirement.

Gehry remains radical even in hippest Brooklyn because he proposes to bring a flamboyant, baroque sensibility to a foursquare town. Even the parts of the borough that have been most shockingly gentrified by people with sudden, preposterous fortunes have retained an air of stodgy tranquility.

When William Styron wanted to house the protagonist of "Sophie's Choice" in a shabby but extravagant Brooklyn palazzo, he described an ordinary house that "would have faded into the homely homogeneity of other large nondescript dwellings that bordered on Prospect Park had it not been for its striking - its overwhelming - pinkness." That bit of whimsy is an ineffectual rebellion against the borough's dominant palette of brownstone, gray stone, gray asphalt and brown brick.

Along comes Gehry, the Venice Beach maverick who has risen to celebrity by spangling the globe with curvaceous glitter, and proposes to interpret Brooklyn by transforming it. All those mud colors, all the weighty Victorians and mile upon square mile of squat brick boxes will do nicely as a monochrome backdrop to his star turn.

He rode around the borough searching for inspiration and came across not a neighborhood or a civic structure, but a bride, a slow-motion vision out of a movie. Gehry, the auteur of place, had found the protagonist for his fantasy. He called her Miss Brooklyn, and gave the name to the complex's centerpiece, a kinetic, billowing tower gowned in virgin-white glass.

In Brooklyn, as in Los Angeles, Gehry is designing a fair-sized chunk of city. Neither the architect nor the developer can afford to commit simplicity. The Atlantic Yards ganglion would tie together quiet residential streets, frenzied traffic arteries, a Long Island Rail Road station, a subway node, dilapidated post-industrial blocks, stately vistas, an indoor shopping mall, stretches of fast-food wasteland, recent office buildings, the cultural quarter around the Brooklyn Academy of Music, historic streets. Almost the full urban spectrum clusters around the space where Ratner dreams.

The protesters are technically correct: Atlantic Yards, Miss Brooklyn and the arena all violate the spirit of Brooklyn architecture. But if neighbors succeed in defeating this project, they may eventually regret it. They could get acres of more "sensitive" and "contextual" plain brown wrapping, a development slightly less massive but also far less nuanced than Gehry's. This alternative might look rather like Ratner's last project, Atlantic Center Mall, the architect Hugh Hardy's egregious attempt to tuck a hulk among brownstones and hope it would blend in.

But if Gehry's preferred facades of wavy glass and shiny metal have nothing to do with Brooklyn, his hubris and imagination sure do. He and Ratner are not Manhattanizing Brooklyn, as his opponents claim. Rather they are selling the borough on a new boast. Manhattan may get a building or two, but only Brooklyn will have a whole New Jerusalem, signed Frank Gehry.

Copyright 2006 Newsday Inc.

[ablarc]

^ A really good article.

[Clarknt67]

My solution to the traffic "problem"
People who live in an apartment over one of the biggest transit hubs in North America and insist on driving a car absolutely, unequivocally deserve to rot in traffic. They can use that time to plan their move to an area that accomodates and encourages their preferrred lifestyle: Long Island or Los Angeles.

[elfgam]

"The protesters are technically correct: Atlantic Yards, Miss Brooklyn and the arena all violate the spirit of Brooklyn architecture. But if neighbors succeed in defeating this project, they may eventually regret it. They could get acres of more "sensitive" and "contextual" plain brown wrapping, a development slightly less massive but also far less nuanced than Gehry's. This alternative might look rather like Ratner's last project, Atlantic Center Mall, the architect Hugh Hardy's egregious attempt to tuck a hulk among brownstones and hope it would blend in."

I think that paragraph right there sums it up.

No matter what the protestors think (even if they are completely right, which I don't think they are, but who knows) they are not getting brooklyn brownstones circa 1830. If it's not Ratner the site will either sit vacant collecting dust and debris (human and otherwise) or else it will end up being filled up with cheap kostas kondylis knock-offs. They will still cause all the same problems of gentrification, traffic, etc. without any of the potential benefits of this project.

[ablarc]

elfgam, I totally agree.

[BPC]

"The protesters are technically correct: Atlantic Yards, Miss Brooklyn and the arena all violate the spirit of Brooklyn architecture. But if neighbors succeed in defeating this project, they may eventually regret it. They could get acres of more "sensitive" and "contextual" plain brown wrapping, a development slightly less massive but also far less nuanced than Gehry's. This alternative might look rather like Ratner's last project, Atlantic Center Mall, the architect Hugh Hardy's egregious attempt to tuck a hulk among brownstones and hope it would blend in."

Just shows that the Modernists will say absolutely anything to advance their cause of remaking the world in their image. The Atlantic Center Mall is the very opposite of contextualist/post-modern architecture. A closer proximity of it would be the shopping centers which Frank Gehry himself designed earlier in this career, before he became a genius.

[ZippyTheChimp]

I don't believe he was stating that the Atlantic Center mall is contextualist, but an attempt to hide the fact that it isn't.

The context of the Atlantic yards is the transit hub. Anything that is built there will be out of context with the surrounding neighborhoods. No developer is going to incur the high cost of building something that stitches in with brownstones for a small ROI. Eventually, the city/state would heavily subsidize to get anything built, construction costs would be pared and the project dumbed-down, and a decade later, we would all bemoan the projects at Atlantic Yards.

[ablarc]

...the project dumbed-down, and a decade later, we would all bemoan the projects at Atlantic Yards.
Already headed this way:

Some of the buildings are shorter and less bulky than those that were previously presented...and others will not be built so closely together [projects?]...their designs are generally much less unorthodox than the models presented last July. For instance many buildings that had been tilting in various directions in the prior models are now standing straight up.

[lofter1]

It would be interesting to see a rendering showing how Miss Brooklyn & the Gehry/Ratner Beekman tower will appear together ... say when viewed from the top of the ESB or Top of the Rock.

It seems Gehry has designed two end-posts calling out to each other from across the East River.

[Citytect]

Having seen that old design for Beekman St., I've come to like Miss/Ms. Brooklyn a lot more. Ms. Brooklyn is really dynamic. The sluggish curves of Beekman make me appreciate the messiness of Ms. Brooklyn. Strangely, that Beekman design looks like something Gehry would design under community pressure to be contextual. It's really boring. How did that happen? It's still hard to judge the rest of the Atlantic Yards project though. My feelings are still mixed about the whole plan. I'm just glad Brooklyn will have one really great Gehry building.

[kliq6]

i dont think there is a realistic chance that the community can stop this project completly as mentioned in an above post, but i assume theywill keep fighting and fighting and push the date back to screw things up as much as possible. As a native of brooklyn, im not for this project ill admit but realistically they cant stop it

[BPC]

I don't believe he was stating that the Atlantic Center mall is contextualist, but an attempt to hide the fact that it isn't.

The context of the Atlantic yards is the transit hub. Anything that is built there will be out of context with the surrounding neighborhoods. No developer is going to incur the high cost of building something that stitches in with brownstones for a small ROI. Eventually, the city/state would heavily subsidize to get anything built, construction costs would be pared and the project dumbed-down, and a decade later, we would all bemoan the projects at Atlantic Yards.

I didn't really take that from the article, but in any event, it is a false dichotomy to say that its either Brownstones or Gehry. There is a world of more sensible alternatives between those two extremes, alternatives which would be more in keeping with Brooklyn's character. Ratner should have Gehry build the arena, a building that is supposed to be flashy, but farm off the balance of the project to real architects, not celebrity ones with Brad Pitt hanging out in their offices.

[ablarc]

Brad Pitt hangs out in Gehry's office?

[MidtownGuy]

alternatives which would be more in keeping with Brooklyn's character

I hear this over and over again, ad nauseum, and I'm still not sure what this even means. Brooklyn has a lot of "character", that's certain. I'm not sure I could nail it down to any one style, though. There are so many kinds of architecture in Brooklyn (and people for that matter). They represent many periods and styles. So why are we not supposed to erect anything to reflect our own time, the 21st century? Must doing so always mean slavishly following context? New buildings can reflect the people who live in a place NOW instead of just reflecting the already existing buildings.

Yes, Brooklyn can be flashy. You'll see it in some platinum "bling", hear it in a hip-hop song, perhaps even see it in the flamboyant wedding dress of an exuberant bride, as did Gehry.

Brooklyn is just shy of 71 SQ. MILES in land area. Lets see, there are brownstones (though these certainly do not comprise the majority), project towers, mulitfamily houses, detached single-family houses, warehouses, shopping malls, hotels, large office buildings, etc. The neighborhoods range from wealthy to welfare. What then, shall we say, is the "Character Of Brooklyn"?

I say it is dynamic, if anything, and will be enriched by this project. I am not saying the designs are perfect, but none of my objections pertain to height, size, or lack of contextuality. I'm ecstatic that Brooklyn is getting a project designed by a brilliant and world-renowned architect, that will add gobs of "character" to the borough, not take any away.

[ablarc]

^ Hear, hear!

[antinimby]

Hear, hear, hear!

[BPC]

Brad Pitt hangs out in Gehry's office?

What, he doesn't hang out in yours?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/collective/A2501407

[BPC]

I hear this over and over again, ad nauseum, and I'm still not sure what this even means. Brooklyn has a lot of "character", that's certain. I'm not sure I could nail it down to any one style, though. There are so many kinds of architecture in Brooklyn (and people for that matter). They represent many periods and styles.

Yes, but none of those styles are Manhattan, or LA, let alone that unsightly amalgam of the two that Frank Gehry is proposing for that part of the borough.

[MidtownGuy]

A challenge: I would like your coherent definition of a "Manhattan style" of architecture, please.

[BPC]

A challenge: I would like your coherent definition of a "Manhattan style" of architecture, please.

Needing to await a semiannual "solstice" in order to enjoy a little daylight:
http://204.157.1.201/~edward/forum/showthread.php?t=9401

[MidtownGuy]

Clever, but you know what I was getting at. THERE IS NO SUCH THING.

[BrooklynRider]

Resigning myself to the fact that this will get built and that something should be built. The primary concern I now have about the development itself is that lower income housing will be isolated in the back creating a segregated community as opposed to having a true mix of income ranges throughout the development. The other problem is that the community agreements that keep getting referred to were not developed or created with input from the community boards, but rather by front groups for Ratner. Therefore, reduction or changes in the community amenities leaves the communities with no recourse.

[Kris]

May 31, 2006
An Appeals Court Setback for Critics of Atlantic Yards
By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE

A state appeals court dealt a setback to opponents of the proposed Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn yesterday, reversing the disqualification of a lawyer who had advised both the complex's developer and the state agency that is conducting an environmental review of the project.

A five-judge panel of the State Supreme Court's Appellate Division found that Justice Carol Edmead, who disqualified the lawyer, David Paget, in February, "misapprehended material facts and misapplied the applicable law" when she ruled that Mr. Paget's work for the Empire State Development Corporation was on its face a conflict of interest because he had also been a consultant to the developer, Forest City Ratner.

In the same unanimous and strongly worded ruling, the court found that Justice Edmead, a Supreme Court judge in Manhattan, had acted correctly when she refused to block the demolition of six buildings on the 22-acre site where Atlantic Yards would be built. That decision had been appealed by opponents of the development.

In a statement, Candace Carponter, a lawyer and a member of the leading group opposing the project, Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn, said that the group was disappointed by the ruling and would explore other legal challenges to the project.

"We believe in the moral correctness of our case, and are confident that this decision will inspire the public's vigilance and scrutiny to grow even stronger," she said.

Opponents of the 8.7-million-square-foot project may yet get a chance to challenge Mr. Paget's work with the development corporation, if they can show that his ties to Forest City Ratner have actually — rather than theoretically — biased the environmental review.

Forest City Ratner is the development partner in building a new Midtown headquarters for The New York Times Company.

Forest City Ratner retained Mr. Paget, a leading environmental lawyer, in December 2003 to consult on the Atlantic Yards project, a proposed residential, commercial and arena development near Downtown Brooklyn. He formally relinquished that role in September 2005, when the development corporation started the environmental review, for which he was hired as outside counsel. The appeals court said that Justice Edmead, in finding that Mr. Paget had advised both parties simultaneously, had misread a February 2004 agreement by Forest City to pay for legal costs incurred by the development corporation during the environmental review, as private developers are required to do.

In a statement, Jessica Copen, a spokeswoman for the development corporation, said Mr. Paget would continue to serve as outside counsel for the agency's review of Atlantic Yards. "E.S.D.C., like any other entity, is entitled to be represented by the lawyer of its choice," she said.

The 26-page opinion, written by Justice Milton L. Williams, also undercut opponents' argument that Mr. Paget's involvement tainted the agency's December 2005 decision to allow Forest City Ratner to demolish the six buildings. State law generally prohibits a developer from altering the site of a project that, like Atlantic Yards, has not been approved.

But last December, after touring the site and reviewing a Forest City report that said the buildings were at risk of collapse, development corporation officials invoked a provision that allows such demolitions where public safety is at risk. As outside counsel to the agency, Mr. Paget concurred with its decision.

The appellate panel ruled that because Mr. Paget's work for the development corporation was not improper, neither was his involvement in the demolition approval.

Opponents also argued that the development corporation acted wrongly by not doing an independent review of the buildings' condition. Justice Williams said it was not required by law to conduct such a review.

Bruce Bender, executive vice president at Forest City Ratner, said the company was happy with the court's ruling. "As we have said all along, we undertook the demolition of specific buildings because they posed a public safety risk," he said.

Ms. Carponter said her group might try to appeal the ruling on Mr. Paget. But the decision on the demolitions is in some respects moot. Four of the six buildings have been partly or wholly dismantled, and demolition of the other two began yesterday.

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

[BigMac]

NY Observer
May 31, 2006

Speaker Quinn Still Mum On Atlantic Yards Arena

By Matthew Schuerman

http://www.observer.com/data/articleimages/photoimages/060506_article_schuerman.jpg
City Council Speaker Christine Quinn has opposed stadium projects before; but then, she wasn’t Speaker.

Last week, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn asked Letitia James, who represents the Prospect Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn on the Council, to bring in a few of her angry constituents.

They’re angry about developer Forest City Ratner’s plans to build a 22-acre complex, centered on a new arena for the New Jersey Nets, in the middle of their neighborhood.

It’s the kind of issue in which Ms. Quinn has significant expertise.

Just a year ago, she was at the head of the successful effort to quash plans to build out the West Side rail yards as a large commercial development centered on a stadium for the New York Jets.

It was one of several meetings Ms. James has had with Ms. Quinn’s staff, and still, the new Speaker is reluctant to side with the neighborhood against the project.

Her reluctance surprises some.

“This is more egregious, and worse,” said Daniel Goldstein, comparing the Nets arena plan to the Jets plan. He is Forest City Ratner’s most vocal critic in Prospect Heights. “It would not be a principled position for her to support it as it is currently proposed,” he said.

Ms. James refused to characterize the discussions, saying only, “We’re still negotiating with the Speaker’s office.” But added: “She definitely remembers that I was there for Hudson Yards.”

Mr. Goldstein and other opponents have lately been scurrying to sway Ms. Quinn’s opinion before the Council exerts what little muscle it has over what is largely a state-regulated project. Sometime before June 30, the Council is supposed to vote on next year’s budget, which includes $50 million of the $200 million direct subsidy that the city and state together are spending on the project. (Indirect subsidies are estimated to total $1 billion or more.)

But Ms. Quinn is in a new position now.

The first woman to serve as Council Speaker, she is also the first openly gay Speaker. And lately, though she so recently helped to quash Mr. Bloomberg’s beloved Jets stadium, her relationship with the Mayor has been downright warm. Ms. Quinn recently supported the Yankee Stadium deal, another Bloomberg project that attracted complaints from neighborhood activists. And the two have joined together to undertake a more transparent budget process, and to pass tougher ethics regulations for lobbyists.

Her relationship with the Mayor’s office has drawn contrasts with that of her predecessor, Gifford Miller, at least at the end of his term. Certainly, in part, Mr. Miller and the Mayor butted heads because Mr. Miller was running an election campaign to take Mr. Bloomberg’s place. Ms. Quinn, however, is not—yet.

A supporter of Atlantic Yards with ties to the City Council said that Ms. Quinn would gain nothing politically by opposing the project.

“Ostensibly, she would want to distinguishh herself from the Mayor because she will want to run for Mayor one day herself,” the supporter said. “By 2009, they want to be playing games in there by that point. All of this will be forgotten.”

And now, as Speaker, she has an increasingly contentious borough to keep together under her leadership.

Ms. James said that Ms. Quinn wouldn’t be betraying any principle if she, on the one hand, opposed the stadium and, on the other, supported Atlantic Yards.

“She has different responsibilities,” Ms. James told The Observer. “She has to look at it from a citywide perspective. It has torn the delegation. There is dissension in the delegation about Atlantic Yards, and she has to view it from that perspective.”

All of which goes to show how the relationship of the Speaker to the Mayor has evolved since the position was created in 1990.

Two years ago, Ms. Quinn showed some sympathy for the Atlantic Yards cause. Then just a rank-and-file City Council member, she stood on City Hall’s steps alongside a dozen project opponents, including Ms. James and Charles Barron, another Brooklyn Council member against the project.

She said Forest City Ratner had not provided enough details. And she criticized the fact that the project would skirt the city’s painstaking planning review process.

“When you have a good project that benefits the city, you stand out in public and scream and cheer,” she reportedly said. “So why aren’t these details out in the light of day? Because they are not good.”

The following February, Ms. Quinn spoke at a panel on “Democracy and Development in Brooklyn,” in which, according to Mr. Goldstein, “Her main message was that you should keep fighting. The community should have a say in what was going on.”

Ms. Quinn, in Buffalo for the state Democratic convention, was not available for an interview.

Spokeswoman Maria Alvarado would not detail her position except to say that Ms. Quinn believed the project should voluntarily undergo a city-led land-use review (known incorrigibly in planning circles as ULURP), even though it is a state-sponsored plan.

“She very strongly believes that they should voluntarily submit to the ULURP process,” Ms. Alvarado said. “It allows for neighborhood residents, business owners, local elected officials and planning commissioners to give their input and determine whether it is the best plan possible for the community, and she believes it is important that you involve these parties together.”

But it hasn’t just been neighborhood activists visiting City Hall.

While Joe DePlasco, a spokesman for Forest City Ratner, would not comment on the developer’s efforts to enlist Ms. Quinn’s support, records filed with the City Clerk’s office show that Forest City executive Bruce Bender, a former aide to Democrats Ed Koch and Peter Vallone, met with Ms. Quinn’s predecessor last June. The former Speaker, Gifford Miller, eventually supported the Atlantic Yards proposal.

The report on Forest City’s lobbying activities for the first quarter of this year has not been filed, although it was due April 15.

The 22-acre Atlantic Yards project, which would include a basketball arena for the Nets and 6,860 apartments, could get state approval by the fall. The whole process has been conducted with far less fanfare than the Jets stadium plan, which would also have served as the cornerstone of the Mayor’s beloved 2012 Olympics plan. Atlantic Yards is in Brooklyn rather than Manhattan, and it has no big-money adversary like Madison Square Garden to pay for television ads denouncing it.

Its supporters say that any comparison between a 20,000-seat arena with a 75,000-seat stadium is unfair—although basketball events would take place much more frequently than the eight games a year the Jets were planning. Just as important, Forest City has put together a much more politically palatable package than the Jets and their main patron, Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff, ever did.

One the one hand, Atlantic Yards would impose 16 towers—one 650 feet high—on the edge of a rapidly gentrifying brownstone neighborhood. On the other hand, those towers include 2,250 apartments with rents affordable to lower- and middle-class households at a time when opposing affordable housing, or even questioning why it must be built here, on top of a $150 million platform over a rail yard, is politically risky.

Most of all, while a number of elected officials representing the site or adjoining districts—Ms. James, a State Senator, two State Assembly members and the Congressman—have come out against the project, and while neighborhood residents have been divided over it, the anti–Atlantic Yards movement does not have the uniformity that the stadium foes enjoyed, in which it was hard to find a politician on Manhattan’s West Side to say a good word about Jets owner Woody Johnson.

“They are very different,” Brooklyn Council member Bill de Blasio said of the two projects. “I feel very comfortable with the fact that she has experienced something in her own community like this that must make her more sensitive to the concerns of the residents. There are specifics about the arena complex that make it far superior.

“The concept from Day 1 involved a real commitment to the community in terms of affordable housing and job development and making sure the housing and job targets were really met,” Mr. de Blasio said. “The stadium revolved around the stadium. It wasn’t so clear what the social impacts were.”

Opponents would dispute how much good Atlantic Yards will do for Brooklyn, but one thing is sure: It is not going to hurt the West Side.

Copyright © 2006 The New York Observer, L.P.

[MidtownGuy]

said Daniel Goldstein, comparing the Nets arena plan to the Jets plan. He is Forest City Ratner’s most vocal critic in Prospect Heights.

Great, now I know the person after whom I should fashion my first voodoo doll.

[Clarknt67]

said Daniel Goldstein, comparing the Nets arena plan to the Jets plan. He is Forest City Ratner’s most vocal critic in Prospect Heights.
Great, now I know the person after whom I should fashion my first voodoo doll.
He never shuts up, he's everywhere. (I'll admit I hold a grudge against this whiner because he bought his Prospect Heights loft for peanuts and will sell it for a fortune.)

[ablarc]

He never shuts up, he's everywhere. (I'll admit I hold a grudge against this whiner because he bought his Prospect Heights loft for peanuts and will sell it for a fortune.)
Give him a unit in the new Gehry building.

[Kris]

June 4, 2006
Skyline for Sale
By NICOLAI OUROUSSOFF

Slide Show: Architects, Developers, Influence (http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2006/05/31/arts/20060604_OURO_SLIDESHOW_1.html)

If Bruce Ratner's recent embrace of high-end architecture has some New Yorkers rolling their eyes, he can't be all that surprised. Not so long ago this developer's most visible cultural contribution to the city was a few kitschy theaters on 42nd Street. In Brooklyn he is known mainly as the creator of Metrotech, a complex of overblown yet banal office towers that seem to crush the life out of the city around it.

And even Mr. Ratner admits that, as a Brooklyn-based commercial builder, he once ranked at the bottom of the city's architectural food chain.

But in recent years he has sought vigorously to polish that image. His conversion began six years ago, when he joined The New York Times Company in selecting Renzo Piano — an architect known for the refinement of his buildings — to design a new Times headquarters in Midtown Manhattan. And it gained traction when Mr. Ratner handed Frank Gehry — whose celebrity has reached the point where he now has a signature jewelry line at Tiffany — the commissions for Atlantic Yards, a 22-acre project involving a basketball arena, hotel, and housing and retail spaces in Brooklyn, and Beekman Street Tower, a 75-story apartment building in Lower Manhattan. Their partnership may soon be one of the most visible on the New York skyline.

But if the Gehry-Ratner lovefest has raised an expectation of innovative design, it has also stirred unease. Few would question Mr. Gehry's talent. The question is whether he has allowed his experimental ethos to be harnessed for the sake of maximizing a developer's profits. It's also fair to ask whether Mr. Gehry and other gifted architects have made a pact with the Devil, compromising their values for the sake of ever bigger commissions. Beyond that, their collaboration points up a major change in the way cities are being built. There was a time when government took an interest in big urban planning projects. Mr. Ratner and Mr. Gehry are operating under a model by which the government plays only a marginal role. Bigger social concerns, like housing for mixed incomes, equal access to parks and transit, and vibrant communal spaces, which were once the public's purview, now increasingly fall to developers to address or not, as they see fit.

The collaboration, along with Mr. Ratner's other high-profile projects, also shows how limited the architect's role remains in such arrangements. Not so long ago American architects complained that they were shut out of the public dialogue. Today they work in a climate in which building is booming, and architecture is revered, but as an aesthetic, not a social, force.

I'm not one of those purists who argue that Mr. Gehry or Mr. Piano should snub commercial developers altogether and limit himself to hammering out projects for, say, art museums or libraries. It is at the intersection between fantasy and practicality that architects are best able to express our civilization's values. But architects will be defined by the clients they choose.

As a young architect working in Los Angeles in the 1960's and 70's, Mr. Gehry has said, he felt imprisoned by his developer clients. "I was constantly pushed around by these guys," he said in an interview. "They had a formula that you had to follow. So you couldn't do things." He found his creative voice in smaller, offbeat projects, like the Danziger Studio (1965) or the Ron Davis House in Malibu, Calif. (1972), for artists whom he knew and liked.

But by 1979 that split — between the projects that paid the bills and those that gave satisfaction — had become a torture. Working on Santa Monica Place, a low-budget mall for the Maryland-based Rouse Company, Mr. Gehry could only tweak the conventional formulas. Not that far away, he had begun tearing apart and piecing together a plain pink bungalow, remaking it as a violent collage of chain link, corrugated metal and plywood: the house that would announce that he had finally broken free.

The experience led him to lay off most of his firm. From then on he swore he would only work for clients that shared his architectural values.

Some 25 years after Santa Monica Place, Mr. Gehry says his recent decision to embrace big developers does not signal any sort of about-face. He argues that his status puts him in an entirely different position.

"They have to meet me as an equal," Mr. Gehry said simply.

New York has changed too. After trailing their counterparts in Paris and Tokyo for 20 years, the city's cultural institutions have caught on to an international trend in experimental architecture. The result is a flurry of major expansions, from Mr. Piano's addition to the Whitney Museum of American Art to Sanaa's new New Museum of Contemporary Art on the Bowery. Lately commercial developers have been scrambling to find their own star architects. Yet the most visionary designers have tended to focus on personal psychic terrain rather than large-scale development and planning debates. (In Europe, conversely, architects take the lead, from the Barcelona waterfront to housing developments across the Netherlands.)

Few New York residents may remember that Mr. Ratner, 61, began his career as a lawyer in Mayor John V. Lindsay's administration, working in a short-lived Model Cities program and later as commissioner of consumer affairs in the Koch administration.

He started as a developer with commissions like Metrotech, a 6.4- million-square-foot complex that testifies to just how low New York's architecture and urban planning had sunk by the 1980's and 90's. Arranged around amorphous plazas, its monstrous buildings sit on clumsy bases that only draw attention to their scale.

Then there was the Hilton Times Square and the mammoth AMC theater complex on the south side of 42nd Street, which are less about architecture than testing how much visual advertising a human being can tolerate. Not to mention Mr. Ratner's Ridge Hill Village Center in Yonkers (groundbreaking is planned this summer), a crass outdoor mall that functions neither as a Main Street nor as an honest expression of suburban culture.

For the Times tower he selected Mr. Piano's design over more predictable proposals by Cesar Pelli and Norman Foster. (Mr. Gehry withdrew from the competition toward the end.) A soaring glass structure clad in a pattern of delicate ceramic rods, the Times project suggests that the old order that dominated development in New York for so long is finally passing, and with it the argument that only big corporate firms — not "dreamers" or "creative types" — could get things done.

But Mr. Piano has lost crucial battles along the way. To cut costs Mr. Ratner had him eliminate an elegant rooftop garden that would have been framed by extensions of the building's glass curtain wall. Also abandoned were some of the cantilevered staircases that would have offered a fluid connection between office floors.

More interesting, Mr. Piano had proposed an open, loftlike floor plan, placing elevators along the length of one side of the building rather than arranging them within a central elevator core. That was also jettisoned. Clearly, in a building whose upper floors are being marketed to law firms, he had violated a vital marketing formula: Don't mess with executive offices.

In 2003 Mr. Ratner took another giant step, hiring Mr. Gehry to design Beekman, his first luxury residential tower. Beekman has been an education for Mr. Ratner. Mr. Gehry begins every project by asking questions. Why, for example, do all the apartments have to follow a standard cookie-cutter formula? Do walls have to be flat? Then he churns out dozens of variations on a design before he settles on a final form. Mr. Ratner's team evaluated each one for cost before Mr. Gehry returned to the drawing board. The back-and-forth went on for more than two years and 70-plus versions.

Until recently a developer like Mr. Ratner might have hired a corporate firm like Skidmore, Owings & Merrill to design the exterior but relied on an in-house architect for the interiors. Mr. Gehry argued that he should mold the inside, too, creating a seamless relationship with the exterior and — not incidentally — branding the interiors with the Gehry name.

The result is an unusually tough design. The tower rests on a base housing a public elementary school. A series of setbacks give the tower a palpable weight, like building blocks set on top of one another; a narrow vertical slot rises on the main facade, lending the building visual depth.

The massing is a response to the bulky McKim, Mead & White municipal building to the north and the 1913 Woolworth Building, its nearest competitor. In its scale and proportions, it also calls to mind Moscow's so-called wedding cake skyscrapers, a legacy of the Stalinist 1950's. But the titanium cladding will be rippled, as though etched by rivulets of water. As the light moves across the surface, the waves will seem to change form, giving the impression that the tower is quivering. Inside the apartments, those curves will be repeated, giving many of the each apartments distinct identities.

Mr. Gehry obviously focused most of his energy on shaping the tower. Sadly, the elementary school — the only truly public-spirited component — is a simple rectangular box with a few interior flourishes.

Neither the Beekman nor the Times tower can be considered revolutionary work for Mr. Gehry or Mr. Piano. But they do send a message that serious design can emerge from collaborations with mainstream developers. The Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn, Mr. Ratner's bid to join the company of the Rockefellers as a major architectural patron, has proved a far trickier proposition than the Beekman building. It is two distinct projects: the proposed arena for the Nets and a cluster of surrounding towers extending from the intersection of Atlantic and Flatbush Avenues, and the 13.6-acre residential development just beyond it in Prospect Heights.

For both men the territory is relatively uncharted. Neither Mr. Gehry nor Mr. Ratner has built an arena before, and the advantage of breaking with conventional design may not be immediately obvious, or profitable.

When Mr. Ratner approached Mr. Gehry, he told him he wanted an arena with the intimacy of the architect's Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, whose concave and convex panels give the performance space a womblike intimacy.

In Brooklyn Mr. Gehry's breakthrough was to nestle the arena in a forest of undulating towers, preventing the surrounding area from being overtaken by urban blight. Between the towers' stocky forms, views will open straight through the ground-level concourse to the scoreboard and screaming fans. A soaring public hall with a cafe, hotel lobby and subway entrance projects out toward the intersection of Atlantic and Flatbush Avenues like the prow of a ship. The hall's cantilevered floors seem to draw energy from the bustling street level below.

The scale of the towers has sowed fear of a creeping Manhattanism that could destroy Brooklyn's human scale. Some residents have complained that the main tower, called Miss Brooklyn by Mr. Gehry, will dwarf the nearby Williamsburg Savings Bank, which at 34 stories remains the most visible marker in the borough's skyline. But the placement and scale make sense: the skyline's focus shifts to one of the borough's most important intersections.

Alas, Mr. Ratner and the city could not come to an agreement on a proposal to build a public garden on the roof of the arena. Such a space, seemingly floating in the skyline, might have evolved into one of New York's most original public spaces, but it was considered too costly to maintain or secure. Instead the developer decided that the roof would serve as a private garden and a running track for residents of the nearby hotel and apartment towers.

Such decisions could well determine whether Atlantic Yards will feel like a privileged enclave or belong to the community as a whole. One imagines what might have been possible if the city had the resources or the will to support such a vision.

Playing to the architect's strengths, Mr. Ratner has been more than happy to let Mr. Gehry toy with the residential buildings' forms. To relate them to the Brooklyn skyline, the architect creates a hierarchy of scales, with the larger, more sculptural towers anchored by smaller blocky buildings.

He likes to call the latter his "dumb boxes," a backdrop for the wilder, more exuberant forms of the taller buildings. The towers, meanwhile, take their cues from existing buildings in the neighborhood, locking the composition into its context. Heeding local protests, Mr. Ratner has lopped several stories off the biggest towers in negotiations with the city, and their scale could probably be reduced still more.

But the vital question is the experience of the architecture on the ground. The apartment buildings will frame a series of internal courtyard gardens strung out along the length of the residential development, on what is now Pacific Street. Extensions of the surrounding street grid will cut across this main axis, encouraging pedestrians to flow through the site.

The gardens, designed with the landscape architect Laurie Olin, will be open to the public, one of the project's big selling points. But they are surprisingly conservative. Crisscrossed by meandering pedestrian pathways, they feel more like private enclaves than an extension of the city that surrounds them. One problem could be that Mr. Gehry, 76, renowned for his idiosyncratic buildings, came of age professionally during the urban planning debates of the 1970's, when architects were dismantling the planning formulas of late Modernism in favor of patterns of dense urban villages.

Since then, a growing number of architects, mostly European, have challenged that approach. Rather than splitting sprawling developments into more intimate spaces, they deliberately focus on the collision between the two: between the heroic scale of urban infrastructure and the fine-grained texture of the home. Such an architect might have chosen, for example, to create a dialogue between the public zones at ground level and the railroad tracks that run beneath part of the site.

The problem is not that Mr. Gehry's layout won't work, and it is a notch above the conventional. But given the clout he has, he had the opportunity to propose a far bolder design. I still hope he will revise the master plan, which is, after all, in the earliest stages.

For Brooklyn residents who oppose Atlantic Yards, the Gehry-Ratner partnership is a natural target. But much of their anger should focus on the city and federal governments, which are apparently delighted to give developers responsibility for building and maintaining parks and pedestrian thoroughfares. That decision has changed the character of our cities as much as any single event in the past half century. Once commercial forces rule, such spaces are no longer really public.

And local activists will have to keep a close eye on the project's promised balance of low-, moderate- and market-rate housing, as the example of Battery Park City, where such promises were never fulfilled, now prove.

Whatever Mr. Ratner's ambitions, a mainstream developer is not about to promote radical changes in local housing policy. And Mr. Gehry is an architect, not a politician. But he has a public responsibility to put his formidable talents to full use.

If he succeeds, a measure of joy may well return to the New York cityscape. But success can be elusive in a world where so much of the public realm is blatantly for sale.

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

[ablarc]

Heeding local protests, Mr. Ratner has lopped several stories off the biggest towers in negotiations with the city, and their scale could probably be reduced still more.
The perennial red herring swims in once more. With much that's important, the insight-challenged public and its representatives trot out this old and irrelevant chestnut. When will this hoary cliche be laid to rest in favor of more relevant considerations?

Height: pshaw! When people start talking about lowering building height as the embodiment of design virtue, that's when I know they have no insight to contribute. They need to shut up, go home and watch television.

Even Ouroussoff mistakenly thinks scale is a linear function of height; evidence of that is that he uses the words interchangeably, thus reinforcing the misconception. A single-story mall that covers an entire block is out of scale in any urban setting; height has nothing to do with it. Blank walls, vast footprints, repetitive articulation, banality and (yes) too much green space are the real foes of pedestrian scale.

Let's get these buildings back up to a decent height so we can admire graceful proportions and benefit from the uses and economic benefits that come with more square footage. Boston's Back Bay proves the aesthetic delights of juxtaposing areas of skyscrapers with zones of rowhouses. Nobody thinks it's anything but delightful. But then even there, when it comes time to add a high rise, that ol' chestnut of building height gets trotted out once more. Drive a stake through its lying heart.

.

[lofter1]

Let's get these buildings back up to a decent height so we can admire graceful proportions and benefit from the uses and economic benefits that come with more square footage ...
Graceful proportions do seem to be in short supply here:

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2006/06/04/arts/04oouro_yard.jpg

Scale models of the sprawling Atlantic Yards development, designed by Mr. Gehry and to be built by Bruce Ratner
in downtown Brooklyn. It will comprise a basketball arena, hotel and retail and housing spaces.

[lofter1]

I understand that refinements are still to come, but that building at the left ^ is incredibly awkward as now shown.

And dang it if Miss Brooklyn don't got herself lots o' junk in the trunk, eh?

[ablarc]

No problems here that twenty or thirty stories of additional height wouldn't solve.

[ablarc]

*@#% ignorant NIMBYs!

[Kris]

**** the system that allows them to have so much influence. The question is how to change it.

[BPC]

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2006/06/04/arts/04oouro_yard.jpg

Poor Brooklyn. They can teach us what it must have been like to be alive in the 1950s and have one of the brilliant modern architects of their day redesign their community for them in the latest architectural fashion. Gehry is just Le Courbousier with a computer.

[krulltime]

*@#% ignorant NIMBYs!

I can't help but to agree. :(

[Citytect]

And dang it if Miss Brooklyn don't got herself lots o' junk in the trunk, eh?

And image looking up at this building from the sidewalk... Perspective is going to make that narrow little tower on top of the wiiiiide middle seem rediculous. The wide part will look wider and the narrow top will appear even narrower.

[Kris]

Poor Brooklyn. They can teach us what it must have been like to be alive in the 1950s and have one of the brilliant modern architects of their day redesign their community for them in the latest architectural fashion. Gehry is just Le Courbousier with a computer.
The tabula rasa urbanism atop the railyards is especially disturbing.

[ablarc]

The tabula rasa urbanism atop the railyards is especially disturbing.
Isn't that what a railyard is: a tabula rasa? Park Avenue was another. Turned out OK.

[Kris]

I was joking.

[ablarc]

I was joking.
Aha! Zippy is right. Irony is hard to identify on the Internet.

My apologies.

[BPC]

The tabula rasa urbanism atop the railyards is especially disturbing.

Alas, these railyards don't reside on an island, but in the midst of a thriving community that is finally enjoying a rebirth all its own. The starchitects follow, and leach off, that progress, they don't create it. In this case, I cannot imagine a more hideous set of designs. As I said, poor Brooklyn.

[ablarc]

Alas, these railyards don't reside on an island, but in the midst of a thriving community that is finally enjoying a rebirth all its own. The starchitects follow, and leach off, that progress, they don't create it. In this case, I cannot imagine a more hideous set of designs. As I said, poor Brooklyn.
Nonsense.

[kurokevin]

I still do not see the relationship between Gehry's Atlantic yards project and those of 1950's modernist towers in a park. From the renderings and plans shown the buildings adhere to the street wall, and could perhaps create a very pedestrian friendly feeling with shops and restaurant a plenty. It seems to interact with the surrounding neighborhoods, inviting exploration, not separating itself from the community.

I see this excuse as an easy copout intended to dismiss its benefits and propel unnecessary fears of change. In fact, I think this is the antithesis of those destructive Stalinist/Modernist ideas.

[MidtownGuy]

Poor Brooklyn. They can teach us what it must have been like to be alive in the 1950s and have one of the brilliant modern architects of their day redesign their community for them in the latest architectural fashion. Gehry is just Le Courbousier with a computer.

baloney!

[BPC]

I understand that Mr. Gehry is the architectural taste of the times, and thus critics of his designs are bound to be dismissed as Philistines. But I also suspect that future generations will look back upon this tacky project and think that we had all lost our minds.

[kurokevin]

..and that's excatly what makes him such a succesful artist. We WILL be talking about his works decades from now- whether we hate them or love them.

[ablarc]

And generally when that happens we ultimately settle into love. That's what happened with the Eiffel Tower, which was roundly hated for some years after it was built. Some people react negatively to the unfamiliar; most NIMBYs do that every time.

[MidtownGuy]

Some people react negatively to the unfamiliar

Mental weaklings.

[Citytect]

From the renderings and plans shown the buildings adhere to the street wall, and could perhaps create a very pedestrian friendly feeling with shops and restaurant a plenty.

There is no street wall to adhere to on the eastern half of the plan. One needs to be created, but it doesn't look like that will happen. None of the residential towers on the eastern side will abut one another to create a wall. Instead, the plan shows singular, stand alone buildings separated by green space.

In offering some criticism to this plan, I don't want to seem like I am opposing it. I'm not. But the proposal is far from perfect. I hope the criticism isn't brushed off as a lack of vision or fear of change. A distintion should be made between those who are looking for flaws in the project in an attempt to kill it and those who are looking for flaws in attempt to improve it.

[infoshare]

And generally when that happens we ultimately settle into love. That's what happened with the Eiffel Tower, which was roundly hated for some years after it was built. Some people react negatively to the unfamiliar; most NIMBYs do that every time.

This comment reminds me of what happened to the 'Urban Glass House' on Spring Street.

http://www.upimages.net/upload/b636ded0.jpg The good news is that this project is almost completed (http://www.wirednewyork.com/forum/showpost.php?p=80344&postcount=38).

The brick building pictured below is the design that was regected due to community opposition: one reason being that the building was to "tall for the neighborhood"

http://www.upimages.net/upload/b8ce2c50.jpg

What we ended up here with is a good architectural design; but not the a great design it was originally. I hope this same thing does not happpen on the Atlantic Yards project.

[czsz]

And generally when that happens we ultimately settle into love.

Penn Station? Boston City Hall? Most of what brutalism produced is still quite abhorred. I guess the real criterion is weathering sea changes in taste and surviving demolition for more than 30 or 40 years; it's also what saved most Victorian architecture. Doubtless Gehry will be reviled a few decades from now, and what remains of his work embraced a few more down the road- for its quaintness.

[TonyO]

^ The analogies you use are beyond insane. This is no Penn Station. The anti-Ratner rhetoric is not in reality anymore. This is exactly why this project should be built. Doubtless Gehry will be reviled? Honestly. Not in LA, nor Chicago, nor Bilbao, and not NY either.

[kurokevin]

This comment reminds me of what happened to the 'Urban Glass House' on Spring Street.

http://www.upimages.net/upload/b636ded0.jpg The good news is that this project is almost completed (http://www.wirednewyork.com/forum/showpost.php?p=80344&postcount=38).

Before and After : the 'community' review process.

http://www.upimages.net/upload/b8ce2c50.jpg

What we ended up here with is a good architectural design; but not the a great design it was originally. I hope this same thing does not happpen on the Atlantic Yards project.

Call me a Nimby, but give me the Urban Glass House any day of the week. That's just cheesy in a Disney sorta way.

[BPC]

It's funny that this was chosen as an example, because the "after" design seems Gehry-inspired, for better or for worse. The "before" is a glass box like 1000 others in this city, maybe a little stumpier but otherwise unexceptional. The new Fulton Street station should satisfy anyone's desire for that.

[MidtownGuy]

I guess the before and after are reversed- the glass box is what is almost finished.

[infoshare]

Call me a Nimby, but give me the Urban Glass House any day of the week. That's just cheesy in a Disney sorta way.

I see your point: to say its great design is a bit of an exageration. My main concern is that the atlantic yards does not get 'watered-down' too much do to community opposition. :(

[BPC]

I guess the before and after are reversed- the glass box is what is almost finished.

Oh, well then the point is well-taken. The brick one is a much more interesting design.

[BPC]

And generally when that happens we ultimately settle into love. That's what happened with the Eiffel Tower, which was roundly hated for some years after it was built. Some people react negatively to the unfamiliar; most NIMBYs do that every time.

Maybe, but sometimes the more creative architects are loved in smaller doses. Would we all love Barcelona so much if Gaudi had designed a large swath of that city, as opposed to just a building here and there? I kind of think this project will work better if Gehry designs the arena complex -- which should be dramatic and striking and different -- and allows Ratner to assign the rest of the project to more conventional / pedestrial architects. I think that will make the Gehry arena complex stand out even more, while imposing a less drastic change on Brooklyn as a whole.

[czsz]

The analogies you use are beyond insane. This is no Penn Station.

We'll see when the novelty wears off. This applies for all the shiny new projects in New York. The Times Tower seems, to be, practically insta-blight. Others may take longer to become roundly despised.

[infoshare]

Oh, well then the point is well-taken. The brick one is a much more interesting design.

Sorry about the reverse order. The glass house turned out o.K. , but yes...the brick design IMO is better. :)

[lofter1]

The Times Tower seems, to be, practically insta-blight...

Do you need new glasses?

[czsz]

Sorry, it's easy to squint and try and like the density of the rods and the intervening slit-like windows, but when we're not all so overawed by its shiny newness and presence on the skyline, celebratory accolades for the tower will be much fewer and far between.

[antinimby]

Call me a Nimby, but give me the Urban Glass House any day of the week. That's just cheesy in a Disney sorta way.kk, you need to see it through NIMBY eyes. It had nothing to do with the design. Flip the designs and their heights around and they would've been against the glass house instead. With them, it's all about the HEIGHT, first and foremost. ;)

[ablarc]

Height devours children. Height oppresses the soul. Height degrades lilttle old buildings and little old ladies. Height causes drug wars. Height makes money for the developer. Height reduces the area of God's sunshine. Height can be seen from a distance. Height is everything that is wrong with New York. Height is hated by card-carrying socialists, God-fearing Christians and everyone in between. Anyone with his head screwed on can see that it's the source of all our problems.

[TonyO]

^ :) . That isn't all that far off from some of the whiners and complainers on here and from DDDB.

[TonyO]

NY Observer

"Wealthy White Masters"

Atlantic Yards ur-opponent Daniel Goldstein got quoted in Ben Smith's Daily News column today, but it might be the type of publicity he would rather not have. The African-Americans who support arena-and-housing complex, Smith quotes Goldstein as writing in an e-mail, were tools of "wealthy white masters."

There has been a racial undertone throughout this debate, but this comment, we think, opens another front. Black leaders in favor of the project, including the Rev. Al Sharpton and ACORN's Bertha Lewis, sent out a press release this afternoon calling on Goldstein's group, Develop--Don't Destroy Brooklyn, to apologize, and for their chief political supporter, Council Member Letitia James, to denounce the comment as well.

Smith put the quote in context on his blog.

We are waiting to hear from Goldstein. Meanwhile, the full release is after the jump.

-Matthew Schuerman

For Immediate Release: June 5, 2006

Contact: Jonathan Rosen (646) XXX-XXXX

AFRICAN-AMERICAN ELECTED OFFICIALS AND LEADERS CALL ON ATLANTIC YARD OPPONENTS TO DENOUNCE DEVELOP DON'T DESTROY'S USE OF RACIAL LANGUAGE

Demand Develop Don't Destroy Spokesperson to Apologize for describing African-American Supporters as Tools of "Their Wealthy White Masters"

Brooklyn -- A group of African-American elected officials and community leaders who support the proposed Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn today demanded an apology from Develop Don't Destroy, the group opposing the project, after the Daily News reported that the group's spokesperson, Daniel Goldstein, described African-American supporters of the project as tools of "their wealthy white masters."

The group also called on Councilmember Leticia James, who has publicly supported Develop Don't Destroy, and who accompanied its members to a meeting with Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, according to the News article, to denounce the statement and to ask other opponents to refrain from "racial" attacks.

Reverend Al Sharpton said, "I'm not sure where Mr. Goldstein is from or the environment in which he grew up, but the people of Brooklyn find this kind of mindless and racist language insulting. How dare this young man invoke the language of slavery to insult African-Americans who support a project that will provide jobs and affordable housing?"

Reverend Herbert Daughtry said, "And just when I thought that our city had overcome the kind of language and hatred that for too long could be found in some parts of our town and too many other places around the country, Mr. Goldstein has reminded me that hatred and racism are still there if you scratch a bit below the surface. Fortunately, those of us who have fought this type of bigotry for decades know how to stamp it out when it emerges. You must speak out loud and clear in order to silence the deafening sounds of racism."

Assemblyman Roger Green said, "Mr. Goldstein has spent the last three years saying that he speaks on behalf of the people of Brooklyn. Well, the people of Brooklyn do not throw around racist insults. It's not who we are as a people, a borough or City. He should apologize and the organization he represents should immediately denounce these statements and his actions."

State Senator Carl Andrews said, "Mr. Goldstein has a tendency to attack personally anyone he disagrees with. But this comment goes even beyond his normal name-calling. It's a broad racist attack against a large group of people. He should apologize immediately.

Bertha Lewis, executive director of New York ACORN, which developed the affordable and low-income housing component of the project with Forest City Ratner, said, "Sometimes one statement tells you all you need to know about a person. I cannot imagine that Mr. Goldstein has any credibility left, assuming he had any before, after saying what he said."

30-30-30

[ablarc]

Good news. Add ten stories to every Gehry building.

[pianoman11686]

June 15, 2006

Developer of Atlantic Yards Is Cited for Failing to Stop Demolition Work

By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE

The city's Buildings Department issued a violation yesterday to Forest City Ratner Companies, the developer of the proposed Atlantic Yards project near Downtown Brooklyn, on the ground it failed to stop demolition work on a building on the project site.

The stop-work order was issued on Saturday, after inspectors responding to a complaint about the demolition work found several building code violations, including a defective safety fence at the demolition site, formerly home to small auto garages at 622 and 620 Pacific Street.

Though Forest City Ratner contractors fixed the fence after getting the stop-work order and resolved other problems, they did not seek a required reinspection to lift the order, said Jennifer Givner, a Department of Buildings spokeswoman.

The violation issued yesterday — fines run from zero to $2,500, as determined by an administrative judge — was the latest step in a running battle between Forest City and the residents of 624 Pacific, a building adjacent to the demolition site and also owned by the developer.

Forest City Ratner is the development partner in building a new Midtown headquarters for The New York Times Company.

Opponents of the Atlantic Yards project, an 8.7-million-square-foot residential, office, and arena development, have been stymied in their attempts to stop the demolition of 624 Pacific and several other properties. A resident of 624 Pacific, Leigh Anderson, was among the plaintiffs in that lawsuit, and is also a member of Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn, a group opposed to the project.

Contractors began tearing down the vacant Pacific Street buildings with hand tools — as required by the Buildings Department — on May 30. A backhoe was brought to the site on June 7 to help clear debris and level the ground, company officials said.

But Ms. Anderson and other residents say the backhoe was also used to demolish the exterior walls of the two lots, violating the building code and endangering residents living in 624 Pacific. They filed complaints last week with the city and took pictures of the backhoe at work.

Their tenant lawyer, George Locker, complained to officials at Forest City Ratner and at the Empire State Development Corporation, which is reviewing the project's environmental impact and approved the demolitions late last year.

"My clients are being assaulted by a huge piece of mechanical equipment," Mr. Locker said on Tuesday, adding that Ms. Anderson and others had refused earlier settlements offered by Forest City in exchange for moving out of 624 Pacific. He said the demolition work was intended to intimidate them.

No one was injured by the demolitions. Forest City officials said that the infractions cited by the Buildings Department were minor and that 624 Pacific, which the company owns, suffered no structural damage.

Norman Oder, the author of a blog devoted to the Atlantic Yards, posted some of the pictures on Tuesday, along with a report on the demolition.

The pictures taken by Ms. Anderson and another resident, David Gochfeld, appeared to show the backhoe pulling down first-story sections of the buildings' exterior walls. But Ms. Givner said that inspectors visiting the site on several occasions did not see the backhoe being used unlawfully.

In a letter sent to the Empire State Development Corporation in response to Mr. Locker's complaints, Jeffrey L. Braun, a Forest City lawyer, said the company was looking into whether contractors had disregarded instructions not to use the backhoe to demolish walls. If that was done, he said, the company would "take appropriate action."

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

[lofter1]

Developer of Atlantic Yards Is Cited for Failing to Stop Demolition Work

... Norman Oder, the author of a blog devoted to the Atlantic Yards, posted some of the pictures on Tuesday, along with a report on the demolition.

The pictures taken by Ms. Anderson and another resident, David Gochfeld, appeared to show the backhoe pulling down first-story sections of the buildings' exterior walls. But Ms. Givner said that inspectors visiting the site on several occasions did not see the backhoe being used unlawfully.

Oder's BLOG (http://atlanticyardsreport.blogspot.com/)

The DEMO (http://atlanticyardsreport.blogspot.com/2006/06/rude-awakening-violations-issued-for.html) page with photos.

A**Hole contractors starting Demo work at 6:15 AM -- Hate that :mad:

[antinimby]

Group Calls for Major Changes in Atlantic Yards Plan

By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/nicholas_confessore/index.html?inline=nyt-per)
Published: June 16, 2006 (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/16/nyregion/16yards.html)

A leading architectural and design association called yesterday for significant changes to the proposed Atlantic Yards project near Downtown Brooklyn, saying that the current plan would overwhelm the surrounding neighborhoods and burden the area with more traffic.

Members of the Municipal Art Society (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/m/municipal_art_society/index.html?inline=nyt-org), an association of architects, designers and planners founded in 1893, leveled the criticisms during a presentation last night at a church in Fort Greene, not far from where the developer Forest City Ratner Companies wants to build an 8.7 million-square-foot residential, arena, and office project.

"Does this project work for Brooklyn?" asked Kent Barwick, the society's president. "As it currently stands, we don't think it does."
Mr. Barwick laid out five principles for improving the plan, including changes to avoid eliminating city streets — which the current plan would do — and making the development's park space more accessible and inviting to residents of adjacent neighborhoods.

James P. Stuckey, the Forest City executive in charge of Atlantic Yards, was lukewarm on the presentation, saying that it was "a nice thing to say that we're going to come up with five design principles but ignore the fact that there's a billion dollars of cost in infrastructure and land acquisition" associated with the project.

Forest City Ratner is the development partner of The New York Times Company in its new headquarters building on Eighth Avenue in Manhattan, and the developer has made charitable donations to the art society in the past.

The presentation, which drew about 300 people, focused strictly on design and planning, and Mr. Barwick acknowledged that there were "other issues" in play. He also conceded that the society had not considered how changing the project's design might affect its costs.

Because Forest City has not yet released financial projections for Atlantic Yards, however, only the company itself knows precisely how the project's costs are driving its scale.

The society often convenes panels of architects and planners to review significant development proposals in the city. Last night's presentation came after weeks of negotiations between the society and about a dozen local politicians and neighborhood associations, which agreed to sponsor it.

But the sponsors were careful not to endorse the society's principles, which conspicuously eschewed any discussion of eminent domain or housing, two issues that have driven debate over the project in the past. Several of the sponsoring organizations and individuals, including the Fort Greene Association and the Park Slope Civic Council, are also aligned with Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn, an umbrella organization that has taken a much harder line against the project.

Mr. Barwick said that the sponsors had had some influence on the society's decision to steer clear of issues beyond design and planning. "The community groups felt there had been enough discussion of those issues, and they wanted to have a mature discussion on the design issues," he said.

Details of the presentation had apparently circulated among members of the umbrella group in recent weeks. On Sunday, the group sent an e-mail message to supporters charging that the arts society planned to endorse the arena, the use of eminent domain and a 20 percent reduction in the project's size, positions the e-mail message described as "unacceptable." (No such endorsements were included in last night's presentation, however.) The e-mail message urged members to turn out and provided a script of questions to ask after the presentation.

In a statement issued yesterday, the Brooklyn group said it hoped the society would "respect" a more stringent and far-reaching set of development principles, including opposition to eminent domain, negotiated among a number of neighborhood groups last year.

Daniel Goldstein, the group's spokesman, said yesterday, "We don't think that because Forest City has proposed something that that should be the framework for starting a conversation about what's best for the area as far as development."

Copyright 2006 (http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/copyright.html)The New York Times Company (http://www.nytco.com/)

[BPC]

Brooklyn's Trojan Horse
What's wrong with the buildings Frank Gehry wants to put in my neighborhood?

By Jonathan Lethem
Posted Monday, June 19, 2006, at 12:14 PM ET


Dear Frank Gehry,

We've never met, but last month I sent you a letter. You didn't answer, so I'm trying again. I'm a novelist who grew up in the Boerum Hill neighborhood of Brooklyn, and who lives there now (I've also lived in Oakland, Toronto, and in rural Maine, in case you find my perspective suspiciously parochial). The subject of my letter is the ill-conceived and out-of-scale flotilla of skyscrapers you propose to build on a series of sites between Atlantic Avenue and Dean Street in Brooklyn, in your partnership with a developer named Bruce Ratner and his firm, Forest City Ratner Companies.

Most people, if they've heard of this proposal at all, believe you've been hired to design a sports arena, to house the New Jersey Nets, a team owned by Mr. Ratner. Anyone who's glimpsed the drawings and models, however, knows that other, larger plans have overtaken the notion of a mere arena. The proposal currently on the table is a gang of 16 towers that would be the biggest project ever built by a single developer in the history of New York City. In fact, the proposed arena, like the surrounding neighborhoods, stands to be utterly dwarfed by these ponderous skyscrapers and superblocks. It's a nightmare for Brooklyn, one that, if built, would cause irreparable damage to the quality of our lives and, I'd think, to your legacy. Your reputation, in this case, is the Trojan horse in a war to bring a commercially ambitious, but aesthetically—and socially—disastrous new development to Brooklyn. Your presence is intended to appease cultural tastemakers who might otherwise, correctly, recognize this atrocious plan for what it is, just as the notion of a basketball arena itself is a Trojan horse for the real plan: building a skyline suitable to some Sunbelt boomtown. I've been struggling to understand how someone of your sensibilities can have drifted into such an unfortunate alliance, with such potentially disastrous results. And so, I'd like to address you as one artist to another. Really, as one citizen to another. Here are some things I'd hope you'll consider before this project advances any further.

http://img.slate.com/media/1/123125/123050/2133481/2142763/2143834/060616_CB_3_5th-ave-2.jpg
A projected view of the proposal's impact on the neighborhood

1) Brooklyn-based architect Jonathan Cohn's rallying cry: "It's the scale, stupid." The primary objection to your project always was, and always will be, its outlandish disproportion to the neighborhoods around it. None of the array of low-scale, largely residential communities directly adjacent to this proposed "neighborhood from scratch" (your words) want or need such an intrusion. Residents have been enticed with goodies: major-league sports in Brooklyn, housing at a variety of income levels, an influx of jobs. Yet in this case, none of the carrots that have been dangled are worth it—or, necessarily, realistic. Let me quote Cohn from his superb article: "The ambitiously scaled projects of the 1960s failed … because interventions, at that scale, in existing fabric, were extremely traumatic to the urban morphology. This project (now 8.66 million square feet) would be like locating the former World Trade Center towers (only 7.6 million square feet combined) plus Madison Square Garden, somewhere near the West 4th Street transit hub because of all the trains there." With all due respect to your accomplishments, you've not made your career as an urban planner; your emphasis, rather, is sculpted steel and glass. The scale of this project was one of Ratner's company's preconditions for the site; it's not something that originates in your aesthetic. Guess what? It's a huge mistake—emphasis on the huge.

2) Your partner's manipulative dishonesty. Let me begin with the now-legendary brochure that Brooklynites found in their mailboxes two months ago; evidence of bad faith couldn't be more vivid. The brochure purported to outline Ratner's plans, but the towers he and you propose building were hidden behind corny images of racial harmony and the sunny sidewalks and low-scale buildings—precisely the stuff soon to be thrown into shadow at the foot of your epic pylons. The arena rooftop—a private parkland fantasia, well above ground-level—is palmed off as an open meadow, as though accessible to the public. The brochure is a piece of mendacious flimflam. It suggests embarrassment on the part of the company who hired you: Where are the towers? Obviously, someone thought they would seem unpalatable to the community that is to be persuaded to live with them. How can an artist of your standing be willing to sneak in Brooklyn's back door?

The appalling brochure is, of course, just an example. The deeper deceit is in Ratner's shadow-show negotiations, in lieu of forging any genuine consensus among the affected communities. Of the eight community groups supporting his project (as opposed to this long list of organizations standing for a reconsideration of the project), six were formed after the project was announced, and seven of the eight receive funding from Ratner. At least one seems to have been wholly conceived in Ratner's PR office. In other words, while claiming a mandate from community groups, Ratner has essentially negotiated with himself.

The worst falsehood is also the most basic: Ratner's company has fudged its unwillingness to conduct open public meetings with the community. In its PR world, such a meeting is always on the verge of taking place. Yet it never does. The public has zero access to this planning process—in every real sense the project is being foisted upon them as a fait accompli. In the spirit of calling a liar a liar, let me be absolutely clear: Your partners have been lying to Brooklyn.

http://img.slate.com/media/1/123125/123050/2133481/2142763/2143782/060619_CB_atlantic-center.jpg
Ratner's Atlantic Center mall*

3) Ratner's abhorrent track record. Have you had a close look at what he has already inflicted on Brooklyn? First came Metrotech, as blandly Orwellian as its name. Then the shameful failed mall, the Atlantic Center, dubbed by architectural historian Francis Morrone as "the ugliest building in Brooklyn." Offered as a supposed benefit to the local economy, its forbidding design was explained by Ratner to the New York Times thusly: "Look, you're in an urban area, you're next to projects, you've got tough kids." It was behind those chilly facades that you recently unveiled your latest models, at a tightly managed press conference that squelched any risk of dissent. How can it have felt for you to stand in such a horrid structure making your case for your proposed collaboration with its builder—while shutting out the possibility of true debate? After all, it's these dim, soul-crushing buildings that created such distrust in Brooklynites in the first place.

4) The divisive zero-sum politics. In a sop to tabloid-level discourse, Ratner's PR stance suggests that to stand against this specific proposal is to stand generally against bringing jobs, housing, and sports to Brooklyn. Sen. Chuck Schumer even implied that to criticize this development was to stand against the forces of life itself. He recently dismissed the opposition as "this culture of inertia, this small group of self-appointed people … " and ominously warned his listeners, "If we don't grow, we die."

You ought to be reluctant to lend your voice to this crude tactic. Yet we heard you at the latest press conference suggesting that critics of the proposal "should've been picketing Henry Ford. People aren't riding around on horseback anymore." Let me be clear: The vast majority of opponents of the present proposal are—shockingly!—in favor of creating jobs and housing, and in favor of progress generally. Many might like to find a way to bring a major sports team to Brooklyn (and we recall the appealing Coney Island proposal for a sports arena). We're simply dead-set against the present calamity-in-progress to which you've mortgaged your credibility.

When local politicians speak of the need for growth and renovation in the partly desolate areas encompassed within Ratner's footprint, they're not wrong. Those of us who have long lived in range of the Atlantic and Flatbush intersection do connect that area with the vanishing of the Dodgers and other symbols of Brooklyn's disappointment and thwarted potential. It's precisely that legacy of long expectation that dictates we not accept a pre-emptive engulfment by a single private corporation—especially one so imperiously allergic to genuine dialogue and meaningful compromise, and with such a bad track record.

Plans for the area ought to originate in a conversation among a broad range of stakeholders. We might want more than housing and jobs and sports—we might want schools for the extra kids who'd live in the housing (we're already underschooled). We might want a plan to solve the traffic crisis that already exists at the intersection of Flatbush and Atlantic, let alone the new crisis that would radiate outward from this development (currently there is no plan). Ratner hasn't met openly with Brooklynites. Have you?

When I begin conversations about the Ratner development with local friends and neighbors, I find a pervasive mood of resignation. Despite their disgust at the project, they fear engaging in a hopeless struggle. What's saddest is how this lousy proposal exploits Brooklyn's residual low self-esteem, its hangover of inferiority. Does anyone doubt that in Manhattan such a thing would be shot down in a hot minute?

5) The principle of eminent domain. Actually, the seizure of private property, ostensibly for the public good, doesn't have an entirely pernicious history, at least in New York City; the creation of Central Park, for instance, depended on it. But compare that project with this one: on the one hand, the permanent establishment of a munificent jewel of the commonwealth. On the other hand, exclusive benefit and control for a wholly private corporation. In fact, in the present scheme, publicly owned resources—i.e., the demapped streets and an active rail yard—are here being converted into private property: commonwealth in reverse.

6) A moment's respect, please, for the Williamsburg Savings Bank Tower. This homely, absurd totem, with a clock on each of its four faces, has grown into a symbolic authority. By sight of this lone 34-story tower, visible for miles, a Brooklynite arriving home from the airport measures the infinitesimal rate of his cab's progress home along the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. Your proposal would both dwarf and block sight of the tower, the rough equivalent of erecting a new World Trade Center within a block or two of the Chrysler Building. Adding insult to injury, the Williamsburg Savings Bank Tower is being enlisted into the argument for your wall of towers—its anomalous height somehow becoming justification for your scale.

http://img.slate.com/media/1/123125/123050/2133481/2142763/2143834/060616_CB_11_gehry5.jpg
Gehry's "Miss Brooklyn"

7) The drawings themselves. Any chance you want to take a harder look at your plans? When unveiling the latest, you explained the appearance of the spearhead tower, which you've named "Miss Brooklyn" (spurring the inevitable quip, We'll miss it, all right). You explained: "When we were studying Brooklyn, we happened upon a wedding, a real Brooklyn wedding. And we decided that 'Miss Brooklyn' was a bride. She's a bride with her flowing bridal veil—I really overdid it. If you had seen the bride, you would—I fell in love with her." Pardon me, but bleeechh. I don't know whether many great buildings have been founded on notions at once so metaphorically impoverished and so slickly patronizing. But somehow I doubt that any have.

You were also quoted as calling her—Miss Brooklyn, I mean—"my ego trip." Fair enough. It may be the case that every great artist deserves one work so willful and outlandish that the public's taste be damned. Melville's epic poem Clarel comes to mind, or Bob Dylan's Renaldo and Clara. The difference, of course, is that no one was ever forced to read Clarel or sit through Renaldo and Clara. An architect infilling an existing cityscape at such Titanic scale becomes, by definition, an urban planner, yet something makes me think that you haven't done that kind of homework here. Anyway, is Miss Brooklyn really good enough—as opposed to merely big enough—to be your ego trip? To my unschooled eye, these buildings have emerged pre-botched by compromise, swollen with expediency and profit-seeking. (Don't forget the compromises still to come, as we fight you tooth and nail.)

Your signature buildings elsewhere suggested that Brooklyn might be beneficiary of a single rippling arena, a kind of Guggenheim of basketball. I know that's very much what I was expecting, with great curiosity and good cheer, when your name was announced in connection with this project. I suspect that many locals, not having seen or heard descriptions of the towers, still believe that's what they're getting. Imagine their horrified surprise when they wake up one day to find a phalanx of towers instead. My suspicion is that persisting with this work means you'll be remembered in New York City for a scarring struggle, resulting (I hope) in failure—or, if you build, a legacy of vituperation and regret. Your prestigious presence in this mercenary partnership reminds me of Colin Powell giving cover to the Cheney-Rumsfeld doctrine: If he's on board, we're meant to think, it can't be as bad as it looks.

At a public presentation at the American Institute of Architects last November, you found yourself faced by surprise questions from an audience including Brooklynites who, denied any proper public venue by the Ratner process, wanted to know how you felt about resistance to the project. The tone of your remark that day suggests you were weighing the question honestly: "If I think it got out of whack with my own principles, I'd walk away." I can only hope that what was once perhaps just a seed has grown. For I'm positive that is exactly what you should do, Mr. Gehry. Walk away.

Sincerely yours,

Jonathan Lethem


http://www.slate.com/id/2143634/

[JMGarcia]

The author obviously thinks Brooklyn is incapable of change or working with anything new at all but he does obviously does still want his personal quality of life upgraded at someone elses expense.

The author knows what he likes and what he likes is what he knows.

[MidtownGuy]

The above article is so full of crap I don't know where to begin.
How about here
This project (now 8.66 million square feet) would be like locating the former World Trade Center towers (only 7.6 million square feet combined) plus Madison Square Garden, somewhere near the West 4th Street transit hub because of all the trains there.

Totally false analogy for obvious reasons.
West Village=scuzzy train yard where wild dogs roam free.

I don't think so.

the real plan: building a skyline suitable to some Sunbelt boomtown.

Give me a royal break. What does that nonsense statement even mean. This writer is a mental midget.

[BPC]

Take a trip to Dallas or Houston sometime, and then you will understand the concern.

[JMGarcia]

This development has no analogy I can think of between developments in Houston or Dallas. I've been to both repeatedly.

That whole "sun belt" thing is meant to trigger primal negative emotions in people much the way the term "manhattanization" is used to scare people in San Francisco.

[kurokevin]

These arguments are going on 2 years old. I read the whole article thinking something fresh would ammount, but nada, zip. It's like a parrot with these folks. They just repeat endlessly what they've been told, and all it still manages to ammount to is F-E-A-R. There are a lot of reasons suggested, but not one is backed by a concrete answer.

"Quality of life" will suffer? Yes, magically Brookyn will turn into Haiti...give me a break

[BPC]

This development has no analogy I can think of between developments in Houston or Dallas. I've been to both repeatedly.

That whole "sun belt" thing is meant to trigger primal negative emotions in people much the way the term "manhattanization" is used to scare people in San Francisco.


I think the term is meant to describe strings of inhumanly scaled, oddly-shaped glass towers meant to look striking from your car window on the highway (although I'm not sure the Gehry towers even do that), but icky to experience from up-close.

[lofter1]

The author also knows what he doesn't like and Gehry's mish-mash of gargantuism fits that bill.

Gehry has become Ratner's whore -- both here and at Beekman.

Just look at the way he has compromised his designs ...

[TonyO]

Give the hyperbole a rest. Gehry is an architect and they get paid for their work last time I checked. Of course he cheers on his own design. AY is not better fit for the "sunbelt" either...just because you don't like it. That's an opinion, nothing more. I've been to Dallas and Houston and there is no basis for that statement.

[JMGarcia]

I think the term is meant to describe strings of inhumanly scaled, oddly-shaped glass towers meant to look striking from your car window on the highway (although I'm not sure the Gehry towers even do that), but icky to experience from up-close.

I do not find the towers inhumanly scaled at all. They are rather small all in all. The development will look far better from a pedestrian standpoint than driving down Atlantic Ave.

Some people just don't like Gehry. Some people just don't like the odd shapes of art-deco either. Oh well.

[JMGarcia]

The author also knows what he doesn't like and Gehry's mish-mash of gargantuism fits that bill.

Gehry has become Ratner's whore -- both here and at Beekman.

Just look at the way he has compromised his designs ...

Gargantuism? From a 600 foot tower and some midrises? There are bigger buidlings in and abutting Brooklyn Heights. They've hardly ruined the neighborhood.

[BPC]

What struck me about the Slate piece was less the article than the accompanying slide show, and this "before and after" presentation in particular:

BEFORE:
http://img.slate.com/media/1/123125/123050/2133481/2142763/2143834/060616_CB_2_5th-ave.jpg

AND AFTER:
http://img.slate.com/media/1/123125/123050/2133481/2142763/2143834/060616_CB_3_5th-ave-2.jpg



Now, you may love these buildings or hate them, but to deny that they will effect a radical transformation on the community is just silly.

[ablarc]

Radical transformation can be wonderful. It's the very stuff of hope.

[MidtownGuy]

Take a trip to Dallas or Houston sometime, and then you will understand the concern.

Umm, I have already. My brother lives in Dallas and I was there for Christmas. The developments I saw there have nothing in common with this project.

[MidtownGuy]

oddly-shaped glass towers

Please,PLEASE give us some odd shapes. What do you want, rectangles until eternity?

[TREPYE]

Please,PLEASE give us some odd shapes. What do you want, rectangles until eternity?

I second that. Ill take those curves and asymmetrical shapes over something like the trump world tower or the TWC any day. I'm sick and tired of rectangles!

And to all of those who actually say that this project is bad for Brooklyn please gimme a freaking break OK. In that section of Brooklyn there is absolutely nothing to do, nothing. You get out of the Atlantic Avenue Station and all you have is that stupid asinine waste of space of a mall.

At least give Gerhy credit for being original in his designs (too bad he didn't show this much originality in Beekman) which is something NYC SORELY needs nowadays. They may not be everyone's cup of tea but at least they are made by a renowned artist. If these unique towers get built people may just come to the area to get an up close and personal view of sculptures that are the size of buildings (in addition to what the arena would bring), which is much better than what is currently there or what another typical NYC developer would put there.

[antinimby]

I'm sick and tired of rectangles!Hehe. Then more rectangles and squares you shall get, young man. :D

[BPC]

Radical transformation can be wonderful. It's the very stuff of hope.

One needs hope if one is filled with despair. But the Brooklynites I know are not despairing of their borough; rather, they love its low-rise sensibility. Personally, I don't see it, but I respect that the community that is struggling to preserve its character in the face of a Robert Moses style mega-development. Ultimately, Ratner will win and Brooklyn will lose, because money talks in this City, but they are right to fight. If only my fellow Downtowners would rise against our own Gehry eyesore-in-the-making down here.

[ablarc]

One needs hope if one is filled with despair.
You need it even if you're not. Everyone needs to believe the future will be better than the present. Instead of fearing change we can embrace it. Some changes are hard to embrace, but often it's an attitudinal thing; one person's disaster is another's opportunity. No question about which person will prosper and be happy.

But the Brooklynites I know are not despairing of their borough; rather, they love its low-rise sensibility. Personally, I don't see it...
That's because you're not deluded by the received pieties of conventional wisdom. People are often wrong. Many folks wrongly enthused about the "winner" of the last two presidential elections. Received wisdom. Received from preachers. There are plenty of urban design preachers in Brooklyn; they are no more right about city planning than Tennessee fundamentalists are right about evolution. Wrongness is especially prevalent in aesthetic matters, where everyone has an opinion and few have genuine insight. The public at first thought the Eiffel Tower monstrous.

but I respect that the community that is struggling to preserve its character in the face of a Robert Moses style mega-development.
It's not Robert Moses style, but nearly the diametric opposite. With Robert Moses, absence of style was everything; dreary uniformity is what makes his projects awful, combined with Corbu's faulty planning theory of towers in a park. Dreary uniformity is not what Gehry does, and Atlantic Yards turns out to be parks surrounded by streetwall buildings: Washington Square, not Co-Op City. The mere fact that folks are raising this canard shows they're deluded. Objectively, the analysis doesn't fit, and so conclusions they draw from it are likely to be invalid. I'm also not interested in their opinions on the Creation.

Ultimately, Ratner will win and Brooklyn will lose, because money talks in this City.
More accurately: Ultimately, Ratner and Brooklyn will both win, because common sense combined with money can overcome mistaken loudmouths in this city.

If only my fellow Downtowners would rise against our own Gehry eyesore-in-the-making down here.
Are you just talking about whether you like a building's appearance? Do you like the Morgan Building? How about some of the buildings on Water Street? New York Plaza?

Do you live in a brownstone? If you did, would the towers of Lower Manhattan and Battery Park City bother you?


.

[lofter1]

Instead of fearing change we can embrace it.

Fear mongering -- Please stop!!

The "all or nothing" / "take it or leave it" / "live or die" type arguments are simple minded.

Many people find the aesthetics of the Gehry's design to be troubling. IMO it's awkward and in many ways just plain ugly.

Couple the visual impact with the overall huge size of this project (8.66 million square feet) -- then throw in some of the questionable politics that have allowed this project to move forward -- and you have the perfect recipe for a classic NYC battle.


Atlantic Yards turns out to be parks surrounded by streetwall buildings: Washington Square, not Co-Op City.

Totally bogus comparison. Washington Square is surrounded by streets with buildings on the OPPOSITE side of the street from the park -- not a park contained by buildings such as Gehry / Ratner have proposed.

[ablarc]

Totally bogus comparison. Washington Square is surrounded by streets with buildings on the OPPOSITE side of the street from the park -- not a park contained by buildings such as Gehry / Ratner have proposed.
I meant spatially, as you'd see in a figure-ground drawing. Would you be satisfied if the roadways around the park were closed?

Or feel free to substitute Rockefeller Plaza for Washington Square. Or Audubon Terrace. Or Columbia University...

[lofter1]

Rockefeller Center is basically ALL buildings with streets running through -- except for the (comparatively) very small plaza / esplanade -- all of which face onto commercial spaces. No true PARK space there at all.

[ablarc]

Oh, lofter, you need to learn to be less of a nit-picker. The substance of a discussion is unaltered by irrelevant technicalities of the example you pick at.

Or pick your own example. Here, I'll make it easy for you: Palais Royal.

And if no example were provided, the point would still be valid. Here's an example: "George Bush is a bad president." That's true with or without examples to illustrate.

[BPC]

Do you live in a brownstone?

I wish. A teeny-tiny apartment.

[ablarc]

In your teeny-tiny apartment, are you oppressed by tall, ugly buildings? ;)