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

Kris

December 11th, 2003, 07:19 AM

December 11, 2003

A Grand Plan in Brooklyn for the Nets' Arena Complex

By CHARLES V. BAGLI

Slide Show: An Arena for the Nets in Brooklyn (http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2003/12/10/nyregion/20031211_AREN_slideshow_1.html)

The developer Bruce Ratner unveiled his plans yesterday to build a Frank Gehry-designed arena for the Nets basketball team near Downtown Brooklyn. He detailed his ambitious $2.5 billion commercial and residential project at a theatrical presentation attended by the mayor, a former basketball star and a best-selling rapper.

Whatever political juice and street credibility he gained — from Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, the former Nets and Knicks legend Bernard King and the performer Jay-Z — Mr. Ratner's presentation at Brooklyn Borough Hall was aimed mainly at the owners of the New Jersey Nets, who are selling the two-time Eastern Conference championship franchise.

A group led by Mr. Ratner of Forest City Ratner Companies has the highest bid, $275 million. But the sale of the National Basketball Association team has gone through many twists over the last six months, and another round of bidding is in the offing. The news conference was also a response to rivals who questioned whether Mr. Ratner could deliver on his promises.

Showing how pitched the battle will be, Gov. James E. McGreevey of New Jersey upped the ante after the Brooklyn news conference yesterday by saying that his state had secured $150 million to build a rail line to Continental Arena at the Meadowlands, the Nets' current home.

Mr. Ratner has a track record with such projects, having built, among other things, the seven-million-square-foot MetroTech Center complex nearby in Downtown Brooklyn. For the Nets project, he has assembled a group of well-heeled investors with Brooklyn roots, including Vincent Viola, chairman of the New York Mercantile Exchange, and Jay-Z. (Forest City Ratner is The New York Times Company's partner in developing the new Times headquarters on Eighth Avenue in Manhattan.)

Speaking of the Brooklyn project, Mr. Ratner said: "We are real. This is going to happen." He added, "If we don't get the team there will not be a project."

Mr. Bloomberg lent City Hall's support to the project, saying, "We're rooting hard" for it to succeed.

Outside the news conference, about two dozen residents distributed cookies in the shape of turkeys, an edible reference to their view of Mr. Ratner's proposal for the arena, office towers and apartment buildings. But the Brooklyn Borough president, Marty Markowitz, said the project would fill the hole left when the Brooklyn Dodgers moved to Los Angeles after the 1957 season, a moment that he said still reduces him to tears.

"Brooklyn is a world-class city, and it deserves a world-class team in a world-class arena designed by a world-class architect," he said. "This plan goes even further, creating thousands of apartments affordable to Brooklynites of every income and producing thousands of jobs."

Mr. Ratner said his effort began after Mr. Markowitz called urging him to buy the Nets and move the team to Brooklyn. The 21-acre project centers on the Long Island Rail Road yards at the intersection of Atlantic and Flatbush Avenues. Under the proposal, the tracks for the train storage yard would be moved to the east, allowing the developer to build the $435 million, 19,000-seat arena for basketball, topped by a park with a running track that could be converted to an ice rink in the winter.

The arena, which will be linked to the Atlantic Terminal subway and train lines, would be embraced by four tall office towers totaling 2.1 million square feet, with up to 4,500 apartments in buildings to the east.

Rather than walling itself off from the community, Mr. Ratner and Mr. Gehry said, the arena would be sheathed in glass, allowing patrons a view of Brooklyn night life and passers-by a look at the interior.

"This started with basketball, a Brooklyn sport," Mr. Ratner said. "This was always the site. But it became clear it was not economically viable without a real estate component. And Frank Gehry was the perfect architect for this site."

Mr. Gehry, who designed the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, and the Mighty Ducks hockey training facility in Anaheim, Calif., said he had never had an opportunity "to build a neighborhood from scratch in an urban setting."

He said the renderings and models on display yesterday were merely the first steps in the designs. "Don't worry about these funny shapes at this point," Mr. Gehry said. "These are just blocks, and we'll make something out of it."

Even some sports economists who have been critical of stadium and arena projects elsewhere are intrigued by Mr. Ratner's plans.

"It has all the ingredients to be successful," said Prof. Mark S. Rosentraub, a sports economist and the dean of Urban Affairs at Cleveland State University in Ohio. "It's a very attractive market. Add in the kind of housing that's being talked about and the retail opportunities, you have something that could work."

Mr. Ratner said that the project "will be almost exclusively privately financed," although taxes derived from elements of the project will be diverted to help pay for it. The developer also wants the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to turn over some of its land and the state to condemn the rest of it. Only one block, he said, had apartment buildings, with about 100 residents.

Mr. Ratner must also survive a grueling environmental review and community opposition.

Despite the developer's pledge to conduct a public review, Patti Hagan, a member of the Prospect Heights Action Coalition, said she was "appalled by the secrecy surrounding the project." She questioned why the city was intent on giving Mr. Ratner exclusive rights to public property without a review.

AN APPRAISAL

Courtside Seats to an Urban Garden

By HERBERT MUSCHAMP

A Garden of Eden grows in Brooklyn. This one will have its own basketball team. Also, an arena surrounded by office towers; apartment buildings and shops; excellent public transportation; and, above all, a terrific skyline, with six acres of new parkland at its feet. Almost everything the well-equipped urban paradise must have, in fact.

Designed for the Brooklyn developers Forest City Ratner Companies by Frank Gehry with the landscape architect Laurie Olin, Brooklyn Atlantic Yards is the most important piece of urban design New York has seen since the Battery Park City master plan was produced in 1979. The plan is contingent on financing, and on Forest City's acquisition of the Nets, the National Basketball Association team, to occupy the new arena.

So what isn't contingent in Eden? Or in New York? I would say that the city's future needs urbanism of this caliber at least as much as this example of it requires the support of New York. Those who have been wondering whether it will ever be possible to create another Rockefeller Center can stop waiting for the answer. Here it is.

The six-block site is adjacent to Atlantic Terminal, where the Long Island Rail Road and nine subway lines converge. It is now an open railyard. When decked over, the site will form an east-west corridor three city blocks long. The western end, terminating in a V at the intersection of Flatbush and Atlantic Avenues, points toward Lower Manhattan.

And, I might add, toward the future. Individual buildings can be useful barometers for measuring a changing cultural climate. But a large-scale urban development offers a different opportunity. Critical mass enables planners to rethink how communities want to live.

Mr. Gehry has always said that his intention is to recapture traditional comforts and values, adjusting familiar forms and materials into unfamiliar relationships.

It has been almost a quarter-century since Battery Park City was planned. In 1979, New York was still reeling from the fiscal crisis. The city's architects sought to recapture a sense of stability that they associated with the past.

That outlook has by no means vanished. It is kept alive by local community boards for whom retro design signifies a means of preventing development from disrupting their lives. Yet this stagnant approach disturbs the continuity that results when succeeding generations accept responsibility for interpreting their relationship to changing time.

Brooklyn Atlantic Yards reflects a city that has regained its faith in the future and no longer regrets its place in the present. Part of Mr. Gehry's genius is to synthesize and reimagine familiar elements of the existing cityscape. He has a sculptor's eye for the shapes of the skyline. He draws freely on the traditions of perimeter block building and of the garden city model.

Because of triumphal landmarks like the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, and the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, Mr. Gehry's name has become virtually synonymous with the Wow Factor. The Brooklyn project will not disappoint wow-seekers. Most of the exclamation marks are packed at the western edge of the site. The design's most exceptional feature is the configuration of office towers surrounding the arena. This is dramatic urban theater, and a reminder that Wows were at the heart of Baroque urbanism.

Instead of sitting isolated in a parking lot, the stadium will be tucked into the urban fabric, just as buildings surround a Baroque square. The arena becomes a stage, with the towers around extending the bleachers to the sky. Here, the stage will be activated by a running track around the perimeter of the arena's roof. In winter, the track becomes a skating rink. Other areas of the roof will be set aside for passive recreation. Restaurants for the surrounding towers are planned at the arena's roof level.

There is also an "urban room," a soaring Piranesian space, which provides access to the stadium and a grand lobby for the tallest of the office towers.

Mr. Gehry looked at many prototypes, in cities around the world, before sitting down to design. The goal here is warmth and intimacy: an ambition not easily reached in a room with a seating capacity of up to 20,000 souls.

The massing models of the residential buildings will remind some observers of pre-Bilbao Gehry, when his vocabulary owed more to cubes than to curves.

I hope we haven't seen the last of those big cube buildings. As I think the models show, they have a toughness that looks right for New York at this uncertain moment in time. And they work wonderfully well with the garden setting Mr. Olin has devised for them.

The richness and generosity of the outdoor spaces he envisions are the urban equivalent of the fanciest flower arrangement a city could give to itself.

We're worth it.

Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

ZippyTheChimp

December 11th, 2003, 09:59 AM

Thanks for the photos.

Instead of sitting isolated in a parking lot, the stadium will be tucked into the urban fabric, just as buildings surround a Baroque square.
http://galleries.soaringtowers.org/albums/Derek2k3/Brooklyn_Nets_Stadium_2_BrooklynHoops_Frank_Gehry. sized.jpg

NYguy

December 11th, 2003, 10:10 AM

I actually went to the press release and took some pictures. Many more photos here: http://galleries.soaringtowers.org/gallery/albums.php

http://galleries.soaringtowers.org/albums/Derek2k3/DSCN0851.sized.jpg

I'm speechless!

NYguy

December 11th, 2003, 10:11 AM

NY POST...

GAME PLAN FOR NEW DOWNTOWN

By PATRICK GALLAHUE and GERSH KUNTZMAN

December 11, 2003 -- Developer Bruce Ratner upped the ante on his bid to own the New Jersey Nets yesterday - unveiling a Frank Gehry-designed basketball arena that would remake the heart of downtown Brooklyn.

The 20,000-seat arena is part of a controversial $2.5 billion development that also includes Manhattan-sized office and residential towers that would dwarf existing buildings and, critics contend, overwhelm the low-rise communities of Fort Greene and Prospect Heights.

Mayor Bloomberg, on hand to unveil the project yesterday at Brooklyn Borough Hall, admitted that Ratner's $275 million bid for the Nets was "not a slam dunk" over a $267.5 million offer by Sen. Jon Corzine and developer Charles Kushner.

"But this is the place for a professional basketball team," the mayor said, referring to Corzine and Kushner's plans to keep the team at the Meadowlands, where it draws small crowds.

"We will be successful," Ratner added, pounding the podium at Borough Hall for effect. "We are going to get the Nets to Brooklyn if it's the last thing I do."

Kushner and Corzine declined to comment.

Ratner said the project would not require direct city funding, but the developer said he would borrow against future taxes generated by ticket sales, a common funding scheme.

"I think that's appropriate," Bloomberg said. "This city does not have enough classrooms. But that doesn't mean we can't help with financing [the deal]."

Unlike fellow billionaire Corzine, Bloomberg said he would only be putting his political weight behind the project.

"I cannot make any investment because it would be a conflict of interest," he said.

Rapper Jay-Z also showed up yesterday and claimed he was an investor in the project.

The Gehry-designed stadium would be an oval, 800,000-square-foot structure with a rooftop "beer garden" and running track for public use that would be frozen over in the winter for skating.

The signature feature of the structure would be its open feel, with the sides of the arena covered in glass.

The arena's appearance is a departure from the wavy, metal-clad design Gehry has popularized in recent years. But other parts of the complex probably will follow the now-familiar theme.

At the corner of Atlantic and Flatbush avenues, a cafe would hover above the street in a glass box.

The arena would be surrounded on all sides by office towers, one of which would rise to 630-feet - dwarfing the Williamsburg Bank Building, currently the tallest building in Brooklyn.

The eastern half of the Ratner project - which would mostly be built over a rail yard - includes 4.4 million square feet of residential buildings, comprising 4,500 units.

Gehry made a rare appearance in New York to show off the still-unfinished architectural models himself.

"These are just blocks," he said, pointing to the oddly shaped mock-up for the office towers surrounding the arena. "But don't worry, we'll make something nice out of it."

Outside Borough Hall, a lot of people were indeed worried that Ratner and Gehry's vision for tall office towers and an arena could never be "something nice."

"They'd be condemning land to hand it over to a rich developer," said Patti Hagan of the Prospect Heights Action Coalition. "Eminent domain is supposed to be reserved for vital public purposes. This is the Manhattanization of Brooklyn."

Several nearby residential and commercial buildings would be condemned to make room for the arena - including two recently renovated luxury buildings.

Of course, none of Ratner's vision will become reality if his bid for the Nets falls through. The team's current ownership is expected to make a decision within two months.

"If we don't get the team, there will be no project," Ratner said.

http://www.nypost.com/photos/news12110309.jpg

HOOP DREAMS: Designer Frank Gehry's concept for a downtown Brooklyn arena includes a roof garden that could be frozen over in winter to create an ice-skating rink.

NYguy

December 11th, 2003, 10:17 AM

NY POST...

GET ON THE BALL, MAKE THE STEAL AND GET HOOPSTERS HERE

By ANDREA PEYSER

December 11, 2003 -- I HAVE three words for the just-unveiled plan to build a stadium in downtown Brooklyn, the proposed new home for the basketball-playing Nets - a team now serving hard time amid the mind-numbing swamps of New Jersey:

Bring it on!

The scheme to build a Nets complex in Brooklyn is at once breathtakingly grand, and ridiculously obvious. A no-brainer, as my fellow Brooklynites might say.

Here, in the center of New York's most populous borough - a thriving, culturally complex, city-within-a-city that hasn't housed a major-league sports franchise since before I was born - sits a vast, forlorn stretch of open railroad yard. On most days, it resembles a sewer punctuated by wind-blown trash.

This eyesore-amid-prosperity is a sign of everything that's wrong with Brooklyn, where large pockets of inexcusable neglect are allowed - encouraged - to exist alongside thriving neighborhoods.

It is atop this yard that developer Bruce Ratner, whose previous Brooklyn projects have met equal numbers of raves and sneers, envisions a sports complex, with affordable housing, parks and office space as well.

Brooklyn simply cannot afford to squander this opportunity.

And the Nets, who currently enjoy such cultural advantages as easy access to the Taco Bell drive-thru window, would likewise benefit.

A win-win, as my neighbors might say.

Yesterday's unveiling of plans even drew a giddy Mayor Bloomberg across the Brooklyn Bridge to praise it. And from what I observed, this plan may be the ticket. Ratner appears to have got religion on this one.

For the project, he's hired not some hack architect - like whoever designed Ratner's atrocious Atlantic Center mall - but Frank Gehry, whose greatest hits include the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain.

Gehry, who's barely laid a foot in Brooklyn since his family left it for Canada in 1930, was self-effacing and chest-thumpingly proud when I asked how Ratner picked him.

"Bruce Ratner has decided in his dotage to up the ante - he wants to go for a different level of architecture," Gehry told me.

And what is your architectural vision for the stadium?

"Very nice," he said, smiling.

Yet, Gehry's drawings were admittedly rough. In fact, the wavy-edged, metallic walls around the complex brought to mind nothing more appetizing than slate gray Jell-O.

"It's early in the game," Gehry said, almost apologetically. "I design from the inside-out." As he refines his designs, he said he'll take into account such details as the buildings' "relationship to the community."

"This is just the beginning," said Gehry.

Let's hope it's not the end.

Some anti-development types, who'd stand for nothing taller than farm animals in their midst, complain that the complex would turn Brooklyn into Manhattan. From where I sit, failing to do so would be the crime.

Brooklyn has been neglected for far too long.

It's time to bring the Nets home to the big time.

finnman69

December 11th, 2003, 11:14 AM

Im not a Gehry fan at all, but it will likely be very good for Brooklyn and NYC. The early massing block models Gehry makes are how he starts projects. He uses their areas to calculate square footage and to create base compositions. Then he starts trimming and sculpting the masses some more. His method has a madness and sanity to it and it's why his buildings all look the same these days.

Potentially the apartment blocks could be pretty good and hopefully not end up looking like bizarre public housing. Much more appropriate for Brooklyn than for Manhattan IMO. Potentially it could be far superior to Metrotech.

billyblancoNYC

December 11th, 2003, 11:22 AM

So far, not too many ney-sayers about the Nets or the development... thank God!

NYguy

December 11th, 2003, 11:26 AM

Newsday...(condensed)

Group unveils plan for arena and housing

By Glenn Thrush
December 11, 2003

If only Nets home games were as well-attended, star-studded or boisterous as Brooklyn's bid to woo the team from the swamps of New Jersey to the corner of Flatbush and Atlantic avenues.

At an event that was part planning session and part pep rally, developers yesterday unveiled a $2.5-billion proposal to build an arena and housing complex above the Atlantic Avenue rail hub in Fort Greene.

Superstar architect Frank Gehry joined Brooklyn-bred rapper Jay-Z, who is part of the project's investment group, ex-Knick and Net Bernard King and Mayor Michael Bloomberg to sell the Nets on relocating to Brooklyn.

"I'm in love with the whole thing," said Jay-Z, who wouldn't disclose how much he'll invest. "Let's get the Nets."

So far, Ratner has outbid a New Jersey-based partnership that includes developer Charles Kushner and Sen. Jon Corzine (D-N.J.).

Gehry's preliminary plans for a 19,000-seat arena would not require public financing, city officials said. Instead, the project would be funded by Ratner, his investors and tax revenue from 4,500 residential units and more than 2 million square feet of commercial and retail space.

jaybojohn

December 11th, 2003, 12:05 PM

I'm all for the Nets in my borough. But NOT at the proposed site, no way. It would be a total nightmare for the community, for the subway, and for Brooklyn in general.

Have you ever been to that intersection? It's a joke. They've been doing construction there for the past 5 years at least. You can't cross that intersection by car or foot without having to wait -- there are always traffic jams as it is.

Have you been in the Atlantic Ave subway station? It's been a total mess for the past 3 years at least. It's already an overcrowded maze of rerouted trains, confused construction workers, and pissed-off commuters. It smells awful, is full of asbestos, and there are literally hand-scrawled signs directing train riders to the wrong platforms because of all of the service changes.

A construction project of this magnitude will cripple that intersection for years to come. Neither Flatbush nor Atlantic Aves can support more car traffic, and the Atlantic ave train hub can't support any more passenger traffic.

Plus, where are all of the people coming to games going to park? People don't take public transportation to Knick games, and if Jay-Z is a co-owner, you know everyone's going to want to represent by driving their leased Hummers to the Nets games. Where are they going to park?

You want the Nets in Brooklyn? Great, me too. But put 'em in a waterfront arena in DUMBO or Red Hook or Coney Island. DUMBO is perfect -- close to Manhattan, full of empty Warehouse spaces, accessible by freeway if they build a new exit off the BQE.

This proposal is an ill-advised attempt to out-Manhattan Manhattan. Downtown Brooklyn doesn't need a giant skyline and 20,000 extra people a night overtaxing it's already neglected transportation system.

If this thing goes through, it will take at least twice as long as planned to build, will go over budget by at least 2x, and in time, will mark the beginning of the end of Brooklyn as we know it.

Don't believe me? Just look at what a waste MetroTech is. Then try taking the subway from Manhattan to Park Slope, Flatbush, or Bensonhurst on a weekend.

It's a joke, dude. A total joke and a total disservice to the people who live in these neighborhoods now.

ZippyTheChimp

December 11th, 2003, 12:40 PM

1. Mass transit: You are right about the condition of the subway station, but don't you agree that its renovation will be part of the overall project?

2."People don't take mass transportation to Knick games." Are you kidding? If not, please provide the data.

3."DUMBO is perfect -- close to Manhattan, full of empty Warehouse spaces, accessible by freeway if they build a new exit off the BQE.
You worry about traffic on Atlantic and Flatbush, but it's ok to further clog the BQE. Also, it's not a matter of just plunking down an arena in an available spot. What about the viability of the overall project that must fund it?

4. "Downtown Brooklyn doesn't need a giant skyline and 20,000 extra people a night overtaxing it's already neglected transportation system.
." This is not about getting a skyline in Brooklyn. The city must look beyond Manhattan to stop job loss to the rest of the region. Business loss in Manhattan affects the entire city's revenue base, and it's ability to improve mass transit in Brooklyn.

NYatKNIGHT

December 11th, 2003, 12:56 PM

You gotta love the beer garden - the city needs more of these, IMO.
...with a rooftop "beer garden" and running track...
Hmmmm...should I run or drink beer? Run or drink beer, run or drink beer....... :?

ZippyTheChimp

December 11th, 2003, 01:05 PM

Both. Run first though.

Clarknt67

December 11th, 2003, 01:26 PM

Derek's images aren't loading for me, but being familiar with the area, I can say, this proposal is a BIG improvement. That intersection has been an embarrassing eyesore for the 11 years I've lived in Brooklyn.

It's great to see the city council and development community have finally been awakened to the potential of the downtown/fort greene area.

Clarknt67

December 11th, 2003, 02:17 PM

Jaybojohn: I disagree with you on so many points.

Regarding the construction above and below ground, you are correct it's a mess. But they're capable of handling more traffic, and the development will spur both the budgets and the will to correct the problems that exist. MTA responds when the circumstances merit, they run extra trains to accomodate traffic to Shea & Yankee stadium. There's no reason to believe they won't on "Brooklyn Nets" nights.

And I disagree that people don't take public transportation to the games. And if they drive, they deserve to sit in a traffic jam, it's a stupid american aversion to public transporation that that the public needs to get over.

I think the area is perfect for a stadium (as much as ANY place in the city would be). Atlantic and Flatbush are major avenues capable of handling alot of traffic. And the Alantic Avenue station is a major hub, with long island RR connections and almost all the major subway lines converge there. And it's always been a noisy, crowded, high-traffic area, it's not like the change will be a huge change for residents, they didn't move near there expecting a quiet night.

Dumbo? Dumbo? Have you ever been there? If so I can't imagine how you think would be a good place for it. The streets are tiny, there are no major thoroughfares, and bringing all that traffic to the overcrowded Brooklyn Bridge and BQE interchanges there. and only ONE small subway stop for the F train. This would be a disaster for both the Nets and the residential neighborhood that exists there. Many young families have choosen Dumbo specifically because it's tucked away and quiet doesn't invite the sort of foot and car traffic and drunken carousing a stadium would bring.

Red Hook has little public transportation. Coney Island isn't a bad idea, but I think it's a bit remote to draw the crowds. Too far from Manhattan, hell, it takes an hour to get there from Brooklyn Heights. It's equally inconvenient for Long Island, and would require driving. the entire NJ fan base will abandon the team, which granted, may be inevitable anyway.

jaybojohn

December 11th, 2003, 03:00 PM

I used to live about three blocks from the rail yards that the arena would be built over -- I moved to another part of Brooklyn earlier this year. The surrounding neighborhoods of Ft Greene, Prospect Hts, and Park Slope are residential neighborhoods. SUre, they're bordered by dowtown Brooklyn, but they're not part of it -- Flatbush and Atlantic Aves are what they are, but you go a block or two in most any direction away from them and you're in nice residential neighborhoods (save for the immediate Fulton St mall).

Low-income housing ownership projects -- projects in which low-to-middle income families are able to buy their own homes -- have sprung up along Atlantic Ave. on the edge of Ft Greene in the past two years, and they're wonderful for the community. On the other side of Atlantic, right next to the rail yards, old warehouse buildings (the News building being one of them) have been turned into fancy condo co-ops. Prospect Hts is a great residential area, as is Ft Greene, even if the rents are getting a little out of control (but, hey, that's New York).

People who live in these areas will suffer from the construction and added stress on the subway station -- they use these trains and roads to get to and from work, school, and the rest of their lives. Homes and local businesses will be displaced in the name of creating more jobs.

The area around MSG isn't a residential neighborhood. So while DUMBO or Red Hook aren't necessarily the best areas right now, at least your not going to displace as many families and small business owners by tearing up the neighborhood to make way for an arena. We're not talking about simply building a big building in the middle of a residential area, either -- we're talking about dropping a 4.4 million sq ft mini-city on top of a rail yard. It's a joke, man. Enough middle-class families have been gentrified out of Prospect Hts in the past 10 years due to Manhattan overflowing -- what do you think is going to happen to the remaining folks? It's like paving paradise to put up a parking lot.

I mean, I guess on the one hand if you don't want urban progress don't live in New York City. But on the other hand, I wanted brownstones and local flavors on the real, not skyscrapers and pretense, so I live in the 718 and not Manhattan. Just put the arena somewhere where it won't disrupt neighborhoods, is all I ask.

As for your point about the stupid American aversion to public transportation, I'll make you a deal -- you get the federal government to put some money behind cleaning up auto emissions and supporting alternative fuel cars, and I'll support an arena by Atlantic Center.

Speaking of which ... why not just knock down Atlantic Center and that giant Telecommunications building on Atlantic and Vanderbilt and put the arena in one of those spaces? It's not like Old Navy, Pathmark, and Circuit City need all of that space, and those are the only establishments in either of those buildings that see any action.

The beer garden skytrack idea I love ... But why not just install a bar at the Skytrack in Cobble Hill ... or better yet, spend some money getting police to patrol Prospect Park and maybe that dude in central Park with the blender in his backpack will come make frozen margaritas in BK once in awhile?

billyblancoNYC

December 11th, 2003, 03:09 PM

They're going to pave a train parking lot to put up something a lot close to being paradise than what's there now.

If people don't want to be "disrupted" or have everything around them never change, then they shouldn't live in a dynamic place like NYC. There is change all the time and it's part of life in a place that people want to live in, work in, play in, and invest in. It's a fact of life.

No one is saying you can't move to, say, Bay Ridge, if this will make the area such a horror.

NoyokA

December 11th, 2003, 04:10 PM

http://galleries.soaringtowers.org/albums/Derek2k3/DSCN0876.sized.jpg

The building on the far left is both stunning and etheral. Most promising is that it's the furthest along.

Clarknt67

December 11th, 2003, 04:29 PM

The area around MSG isn't a residential neighborhood. So while DUMBO or Red Hook aren't necessarily the best areas right now, at least your not going to displace as many families and small business owners by tearing up the neighborhood to make way for an arena.

I'm assumming you haven't been to Dumbo for a few years. There are almost no buildings there that aren't housing artists lofts, businesses or haven't been converted to luxury condos. Many many people would have to be displaced to make room for a big stadium. In fact, the major stadium would take up more than 1/2 the footprint of the neighborhood. :roll: It's not a big area. And it's developing very nicely, a stadium would be totally o out of charactor with the hood.

And there's already a constant bottleneck of traffic between the BQE, the Brooklyn Bridge and the exit ramps from the BQE. Builiding another exit ramp wouldn't help, where would it come down? There's no space ther.

Yes, there are the empire stores on the waterfront, which are mostly empty. But there are plans to convert them into cultural, educational and retail stores as part of the Brooklyn Bridge Park. (The plan is detail elsewhere on these boards.) And tearing those gorgeous buildings down would be a travesty.

Maybe you mean vinegar hill or the brooklyn navy yard area? Still, the streets couldn't handle the traffic, they're only 3 or so lanes wide, and there's no subways at all.

You may find empty space in Red Hook, and like Vinegar Hill and Brooklyn Navy Yard, there's no subway at all. No investor would pay to build a stadium where no one will be able come. Even real estate developers aren't that dumb.

Clarknt67

December 11th, 2003, 04:30 PM

If people don't want to be "disrupted" or have everything around them never change, then they shouldn't live in a dynamic place like NYC. There is change all the time and it's part of life in a place that people want to live in, work in, play in, and invest in. It's a fact of life.

What he said! What he said!

NoyokA

December 11th, 2003, 05:10 PM

Yet, Gehry's drawings were admittedly rough.

Regardless Munch face reviews the still to be designed architecture.

AN APPRAISAL
Courtside Seats to an Urban Garden
By HERBERT MUSCHAMP

Garden of Eden grows in Brooklyn. This one will have its own basketball team. Also, an arena surrounded by office towers; apartment buildings and shops; excellent public transportation; and, above all, a terrific skyline, with six acres of new parkland at its feet. Almost everything the well-equipped urban paradise must have, in fact.

Designed for the Brooklyn developers Forest City Ratner Companies by Frank Gehry with the landscape architect Laurie Olin, Brooklyn Atlantic Yards is the most important piece of urban design New York has seen since the Battery Park City master plan was produced in 1979. The plan is contingent on financing, and on Forest City's acquisition of the Nets, the National Basketball Association team, to occupy the new arena.

So what isn't contingent in Eden? Or in New York? I would say that the city's future needs urbanism of this caliber at least as much as this example of it requires the support of New York. Those who have been wondering whether it will ever be possible to create another Rockefeller Center can stop waiting for the answer. Here it is.

The six-block site is adjacent to Atlantic Terminal, where the Long Island Rail Road and nine subway lines converge. It is now an open railyard. When decked over, the site will form an east-west corridor three city blocks long. The western end, terminating in a V at the intersection of Flatbush and Atlantic Avenues, points toward Lower Manhattan.

And, I might add, toward the future. Individual buildings can be useful barometers for measuring a changing cultural climate. But a large-scale urban development offers a different opportunity. Critical mass enables planners to rethink how communities want to live.

Mr. Gehry has always said that his intention is to recapture traditional comforts and values, adjusting familiar forms and materials into unfamiliar relationships.

It has been almost a quarter-century since Battery Park City was planned. In 1979, New York was still reeling from the fiscal crisis. The city's architects sought to recapture a sense of stability that they associated with the past.

That outlook has by no means vanished. It is kept alive by local community boards for whom retro design signifies a means of preventing development from disrupting their lives. Yet this stagnant approach disturbs the continuity that results when succeeding generations accept responsibility for interpreting their relationship to changing time.

Brooklyn Atlantic Yards reflects a city that has regained its faith in the future and no longer regrets its place in the present. Part of Mr. Gehry's genius is to synthesize and reimagine familiar elements of the existing cityscape. He has a sculptor's eye for the shapes of the skyline. He draws freely on the traditions of perimeter block building and of the garden city model.

Because of triumphal landmarks like the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, and the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, Mr. Gehry's name has become virtually synonymous with the Wow Factor. The Brooklyn project will not disappoint wow-seekers. Most of the exclamation marks are packed at the western edge of the site. The design's most exceptional feature is the configuration of office towers surrounding the arena. This is dramatic urban theater, and a reminder that Wows were at the heart of Baroque urbanism.

Instead of sitting isolated in a parking lot, the stadium will be tucked into the urban fabric, just as buildings surround a Baroque square. The arena becomes a stage, with the towers around extending the bleachers to the sky. Here, the stage will be activated by a running track around the perimeter of the arena's roof. In winter, the track becomes a skating rink. Other areas of the roof will be set aside for passive recreation. Restaurants for the surrounding towers are planned at the arena's roof level.

There is also an "urban room," a soaring Piranesian space, which provides access to the stadium and a grand lobby for the tallest of the office towers.

Mr. Gehry looked at many prototypes, in cities around the world, before sitting down to design. The goal here is warmth and intimacy: an ambition not easily reached in a room with a seating capacity of up to 20,000 souls.

The massing models of the residential buildings will remind some observers of pre-Bilbao Gehry, when his vocabulary owed more to cubes than to curves.

I hope we haven't seen the last of those big cube buildings. As I think the models show, they have a toughness that looks right for New York at this uncertain moment in time. And they work wonderfully well with the garden setting Mr. Olin has devised for them.

The richness and generosity of the outdoor spaces he envisions are the urban equivalent of the fanciest flower arrangement a city could give to itself.

We're worth it.

JMGarcia

December 11th, 2003, 05:26 PM

Muschamp is still a fraud IMO (I doubt this article would be as glowing had not a name like Gehry been associate with it) but I do agree completely with this quote.

It has been almost a quarter-century since Battery Park City was planned. In 1979, New York was still reeling from the fiscal crisis. The city's architects sought to recapture a sense of stability that they associated with the past.

That outlook has by no means vanished. It is kept alive by local community boards for whom retro design signifies a means of preventing development from disrupting their lives. Yet this stagnant approach disturbs the continuity that results when succeeding generations accept responsibility for interpreting their relationship to changing time.

NYguy

December 11th, 2003, 08:14 PM

I think this says it all....by comparison, the meadowlands is no contest, no matter what fancy plans they cook up for the swamp...

Instead of sitting isolated in a parking lot, the stadium will be tucked into the urban fabric, just as buildings surround a Baroque square. The arena becomes a stage, with the towers around extending the bleachers to the sky. Here, the stage will be activated by a running track around the perimeter of the arena's roof. In winter, the track becomes a skating rink. Other areas of the roof will be set aside for passive recreation. Restaurants for the surrounding towers are planned at the arena's roof level.

I have to say, I LOVE IT!

NYguy

December 11th, 2003, 09:29 PM

NY Times...

Knicks May Need To Watch Their Turf

By SELENA ROBERTS
December 11, 2003

ONE day, in about four years, James L. Dolan may be stirred from his narcoleptic leadership as Knicks chairman by a hired jostler on retainer at Madison Square Garden.

"Excuse me, sir," General Manager Scott Layden may gently say to Dolan. "Sir, the Nets are at the door."

Over the last couple of years, Dolan could dismiss the idea of a Nets threat to the Knicks' metropolitan domain as the Nets won games in a dank arena fit for vampires, "Hollywood Squares" stars and turnpike enthusiasts.

He could watch out of the corner of his eye as the Eastern Conference champions failed to draw city fans as a result of repetitive traffic stress — or Lincoln Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. He could assess the Nets' reach into the metro area as limited, given the distance in miles and the mystique between the Garden and the Swamp.

As of yesterday, the gap closed, at least as a concept in cardboard. Unveiling his basketball fantasy at Brooklyn's Borough Hall, Bruce Ratner — hyperdeveloper and charismatic bidder for the Nets — offered his vision of a future when the Nets would play in an urban arena on Flatbush Avenue, in a cozy building surrounded by affordable housing, near multiple rail lines, with tickets that are affordable to the average fan.

To give his dream tangibility, there was an elaborate mockup of the site made of paper and plastic, with building blocks from a toy chest to simulate skyscrapers and scaled-down fans the size of picture hooks glued to the landscape.

To give his hope hip appeal, the bespectacled Ratner stood as square as a Chiclet when he introduced a new investor to his group: the rap artist Jay-Z. Given Jay-Z's Brooklyn roots, his mainstream appeal and his built-in attraction as a free-agent lure, he is a brilliant addition.

"I believe there is a real passion for basketball in Brooklyn," Jay-Z said. "I believe with the kind of passion we have, an arena here could rival the Garden."

If Ratner takes a quality Nets team to Brooklyn within four years, he would help reinvent the image of the franchise, taking it from a suburban lounge act to an urban group with edge. If the Knicks continue to top uninspired moves with mediocre ones, the Garden could morph into a graveyard where cool died years ago.

The potential for this role reversal should unnerve Dolan, not that anyone would be sympathetic.

"Who cares," said Marty Markowitz, the Brooklyn borough president, before adding that the Dolans would have to "deal with it" if the Nets moved into their backyard.

Reflective of Dolan's cable-guy tendencies, Garden officials are hard to pin down on specifics between the hours of 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. Their answers on the Nets' possible relocation to their 'hood are broad and vague. On Tuesday, Garden executives declined to comment except to reiterate their confidence in the Knicks' brand identity.

Haven't the Garden suits noticed? Brands are so yesterday. The hottest jerseys in the league are worn by a Cleveland Cavalier rookie (LeBron James) and a Denver Nugget phenom (Carmelo Anthony).

If the Knicks need more proof of how shaky their identity could become if pitted against the Nets next door, they can examine the article in The New York Times yesterday that detailed how consumers are less likely to select gifts based on brand names than they were three years ago.

Already, there are signs of the Knicks' market complacency. Almost every night, Marv Albert is turned into a carnival barker on MSG Network broadcasts, enthusiastically pitching ticket packages to fans who have abandoned what Michael Jordan once called basketball's Mecca.

The Garden is not a must-see anymore, not at the inflated ticket prices, not with a deflated product on the floor. How long before the Knicks realize their glory days are over?

Even delusions of grandeur can have an expiration date. In four years, the Nets could force Dolan into a reality check. So, there is time for the Knicks to do what they loathe (to rebuild) or make the bold moves they must (to revamp). So, there is a window for the Knicks to restore their credibility as The Team in town before the Nets swipe their turf. So, there is time for the Knicks to make themselves a worthy rival for the Nets should they cross the border.

If the Knicks can compete with the Nets, if the Nets can maintain their run on success, Ratner's vision will be even grander than his cardboard design. Imagine what a subway would do for a Knicks-Nets series that meant something.

"It would be exciting for everyone, and I think there is room for two great clubs," said Bernard King, a Brooklyn-born icon who played for the Knicks and the Nets. "There is certainly room in a borough like Brooklyn and a city like New York to accommodate two great franchises."

First things first, though. Someone has to tell Dolan that his team would not be one of those elite right now. That's Layden's job.

NoyokA

December 11th, 2003, 09:43 PM

It sounds as if the press is on board, as if they had already bought season tickets for the Brooklyn Nets. Nothing's official, but the Jersey bid is already yesterday's news.

ZippyTheChimp

December 12th, 2003, 08:36 AM

New York Newsday:

Plan for Nets Arena To Get Hard Review

By Jamie Herzlich
Staff Writer

December 11, 2003, 7:18 PM EST

The development firm looking to woo the Nets to Brooklyn has hired a top sports economist known for his skepticism about new arenas to study the impact of the project on the borough.

Andrew Zimbalist, a professor of Economics at Smith College in Massachusetts, says he was hired two weeks ago by Forest City Ratner Companies. On Wednesday, developer Bruce Ratner unveiled a $2.5 billion proposal to build an arena and housing complex above the Atlantic Avenue rail hub in Fort Greene.

Zimbalist, 55, is a noted expert on the impact of sports facilities. In 1997, he co-authored a book called "Sports, Jobs, and Taxes: The Economic Impact of Sports Teams and Stadiums." The book challenged the notion that teams and facilities benefit the local economy, and has been cited by opponents of new stadiums as an argument against public funding. Neighborhood actvists in Brooklyn are already linup up against the new arena, designed by noted architect Frank Gehry.

But Zimbalist says the Brooklyn project is different because it would incorporate both residential and commercial components, including 4,500 housing units. " This is not a stand-alone arena," said Zimbalist. "It's a real estate development project."What's more, he said, the complex would be attracting a new team and new money to the region, instead of just rebuilding an arena for an existing team.

Another difference he said is that in most stadium projects, public funding is fundamentally financing construction. Michele deMilly, spokeswoman for Forest City Ratner Companies, said this project would be "significantly financed privately." If there were any public funding, she said, it would come out of new revenues being generated by the project itself like sales and income tax revenues.

For example, Zimbalist said, the Nets have a payroll of roughly $50 million. The players have to pay income tax to the State of New Jersey. "If they came to Brooklyn they would pay $5.5 million or 11 percent of their income to New York State and New York City," he said. If the arena hypotheticallyl took $4 million of public money to fund part of the project, the state would still end up netting a profit.

That's chump change compared with the main obstacle: buying the Nets. Ratner is competing with a group led by New Jersey Sen. Jon Corzine and developer Charles Kushner, which would keep the Nets in New Jersey, and venture capitalist Stuart Feldman. Ratner's bid of $275 million leads the pack.

Copyright © 2003, Newsday, Inc.

NYguy

December 12th, 2003, 09:27 AM

(STAR LEDGER)

We don't need Nets, N.J. sports czar says
State to look at ways to lure baseball team

Friday, December 12, 2003
BY GEORGE E. JORDAN AND MATTHEW FUTTERMAN

With the threat of the Nets moving to Brooklyn growing more real by the day, New Jersey's sports czar said yesterday the state would start working on a plan to lure another basketball franchise or Major League Baseball team to the Meadowlands.

"We are going to be just fine," said George Zoffinger, the chief of the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority and Gov. James E. McGreevey's point man on professional sports. "This market is going to continue to be very attractive for hockey, basketball, even baseball."

Zoffinger then fired a shot at New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who pledged his support Tuesday for a proposed $435 million arena in downtown Brooklyn that could become the Nets' new home.

"New York can allow wealthy sport team owners to feed at the public trough if it wants to, but we are not going to do that," said Zoffinger, who has weaned the Meadowlands Sports Complex off millions in public subsidy.

Jennifer Falk, a spokeswoman for Bloomberg, said the mayor was not using public money, and that "any contribution will have to be financed with taxes generated at the development."

The trash talking came a day after the unveiling of a $2.5 billion Frank Gehry-designed arena, office and residential complex. It was the first major strike in a battle for the Nets that has become the latest skirmish between New York and New Jersey over professional sports. Wednesday afternoon, Zoffinger and Gov. James E. McGreevey unveiled their own plans for a $150 million rail link to the Meadowlands Sports Complex.

The rail link, which could be completed by 2007, is part of a $1.3 billion plan to create a family entertainment and retail complex at the Meadowlands, which is also home to the Devils. The plan would give one of the state's most recognizable landmarks its most significant face-lift in 27 years.

Zoffinger said the state would have plenty of options if the Nets leave.

Plans include installing a $1 million system to convert the 20,000-seat Continental Airlines Arena into a 6,000-seat theater for smaller acts that want an intimate setting. Zoffinger also said the arena's location and the state's offer to finance a $120 million renovation might entice a basketball team to replace the Nets.

Luring a Major League Baseball team to East Rutherford may be more daunting. Historically, MLB's relocation rules have prohibited teams from moving within 100 miles of an existing franchise unless the affected teams approve the deal. The rules were updated in 1999 to specifically name Bergen, Hudson, Essex and Union as counties where the Yankees and Mets could veto a third team.

But Zoffinger said he has been told a team can move to the Meadowlands if three-quarters of baseball's owners approve it.

"This isn't about trying to grab the Expos," he said of baseball's leading candidate for relocation. "This is about a long-term plan to make this an attractive place for baseball."

The Nets are expected to be sold within 60 days. Bruce Ratner, the man behind the Brooklyn plan, has submitted the highest bid, $275 million. New Jersey developer Charles Kushner and U.S. Sen. Jon Corzine want to keep the team at the Meadowlands and have bid $267.5 million.

On Wednesday, Ratner did not rule out raising his bid because the development hinges on acquiring the team. "We will get the team," Ratner said.

Kushner has raised his bid once, but two associates said the New Jersey group was reluctant to go above $275 million.

Ratner's investors said they can underwrite the Nets purchase price with revenue from 4,500 luxury residences and 2.1 million square feet of office space. Kushner, on the other hand, must make ends meet with conventional ticket sales, naming rights and luxury suites, his associates said.

A committee of YankeeNets investors scrutinizing the bids is expected to select a winner within two months. Any change in ownership requires the approval of 75 percent of NBA owners, who want to see a solid plan to finance an arena something New Jersey has.

NYguy

December 12th, 2003, 09:29 AM

"This isn't about trying to grab the Expos," he said of baseball's leading candidate for relocation. "This is about a long-term plan to make this an attractive place for baseball."

I hear a Steinbrenner threat in the making if the YANKEES don't get a new stadium deal worked out in the not too distant future...

Kris

December 12th, 2003, 12:50 PM

December 12, 2003

SPORTS MEDIA AND BUSINESS

Developer Wants His Project, and Buying Nets Hinges on It

By RICHARD SANDOMIR

Bruce C. Ratner is not a superfan, but he wants the Nets, covets them so much that his company will not build a $2.5 billion downtown Brooklyn project, which features a glass-sheathed arena topped by a track and an ice skating rink, without them. Talk about incentive: no Nets, no minicity.

"We're going to get the Nets in Brooklyn," Ratner vowed on Wednesday under the elegant domed ceiling of Borough Hall's old courtroom. To stress how much he needs the Nets, he banged his right fist on a lectern and said he would triumph over two rival suitors "if it's the last thing I do."

Nets owners, one day removed from agreeing to break up YankeeNets, must be reassured to hear their team regarded as an object of great desire, as real estate play. Who could have imagined that a team with the Nets' vagabond history (with stops in Teaneck, Commack, Uniondale, Piscataway and East Rutherford) and mixed record would merit being the centerpiece of a 7.7 million-square-foot community?

If we sell to Ratner, one can hear Nets owners say, we may pocket $300 million and our boys will play in an arena designed by Frank Gehry, not some standard sports architect, but a man who lived in Brooklyn briefly as a child and who designed the much-admired Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, and the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles.

Soon after the Ratner Revue wound down in Brooklyn, Gov. James E. McGreevey of New Jersey added fuel to the interstate bidding during a news conference at Continental Arena.

"I have great respect for Mr. Ratner, but he does not control the site for the arena nor the team," he said. "The Meadowlands represents arguably the premier site in the country. It's here. It exists. It's not a vision yet to be realized."

McGreevey announced that the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey would build a 1.9-mile rail link from the Meadowlands to New Jersey Transit's Pascack Valley Line, which would connect to the Secaucus Transfer Station.

This sounds like dull infrastructure talk compared with GehryVision, but it is significant. The rail link would broaden access by public transportation to a renovated Continental Arena — where the Nets would most likely play if Charles Kushner and Senator Jon S. Corzine of New Jersey buy the team — and to the proposed $1.3 billion Xanadu entertainment, retail and commercial venture.

A transportation strategy that doesn't congest highways would alter the Meadowlands, attract fans who have had no choice but to drive and perhaps lure New Yorkers who want to flee the odor of failure at Madison Square Garden.

But the Brooklyn site is much more abundantly served by rail: it is a hub for nine subway lines and the Long Island Rail Road.

The Meadowlands Makeover will happen with or without the Nets. Xanadu will be built. So will the rail spur. If they buy the Nets, Kushner and Corzine would have to pay for the renovation with revenue from new luxury suites and club seats.

And Continental Arena, with wider concourses, greater fan comforts and more revenue sources, would still look like the pedestrian structure it has always been.

The future domicile of the Nets may mean little to the owners, who have turned to Edwin H. Stier, a former federal prosecutor, to be their president and lead negotiations. As in most sales, the most important factors in choosing a buyer are the highest price and the ability to complete a deal.

Ratner is the leading bidder, at $275 million; Kushner and Corzine are next, at $267.5 million; and last is Stuart Feldman, at $257.5 million. Feldman's motives are not known, although he has a charitable motivation to buy the team, similar to that of the Nets' principal owners, Raymond Chambers and Lewis Katz.

The competition harks back to the 1980's tug of war over the Yankees (stay in the Bronx? go to the Meadowlands?) and to the departure of the Dodgers from Brooklyn to Los Angeles after the 1957 season. One difference is that on Wednesday, beside Ratner, bringing enthusiasm but carrying no bags of subsidies, stood Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg.

Nearly half a century ago, the eternally reviled Walter O'Malley could not persuade Robert Moses, the city official crucial to building a ballpark for his Dodgers in the same area as the Nets' arena would be, to stand anywhere near him.

Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

Clarknt67

December 12th, 2003, 03:32 PM

It sounds as if the press is on board, as if they had already bought season tickets for the Brooklyn Nets. Nothing's official, but the Jersey bid is already yesterday's news.

I think Pataki & Bloomberg are gonna apply pressure to make this deal go through. It seems like a great dovetail into their plans for Downtown.

TLOZ Link5

December 12th, 2003, 03:59 PM

Ratner's confidence, as well as the Star-Ledger's article, are both very heartening. These are good days for Brooklyn.

"New York can allow wealthy sport team owners to feed at the public trough if it wants to, but we are not going to do that," said Zoffinger, who has weaned the Meadowlands Sports Complex off millions in public subsidy.

"Besides, we need that money to allow wealthy corporations to feed at our public trough."

Clarknt67

December 12th, 2003, 04:07 PM

billyblancoNYC

December 13th, 2003, 03:12 AM

Within the next 60 days.

NYguy

December 17th, 2003, 06:34 PM

(Newsday)

Nets' move would give Brooklyn a new arena and buildings complex

By Justin Davidson
December 18, 2003

Art lured him to Bilbao, classical music to downtown Los Angeles, and basketball may bring Frank Gehry to Brooklyn.

The architect, known for his sinuous forms and wavy metal rhapsodies, has come up with a master plan to redevelop a narrow X-Acto blade of land at the intersection of Flatbush and Atlantic avenues into Brooklyn Atlantic Yards. A master plan is still a long way from an architectural design, but even in its rough, boxy form, it gives a powerful reason to root for developer Bruce Ratner's bid to buy the New Jersey Nets.

If the deal doesn't happen, that strip of land might remain what it is now, a no- man's-land alongside the railroad tracks, a neglected wound at the join between four neighborhoods: Fort Greene, Park Slope, Boerum Hill and Prospect Heights. If it does, Ratner would move the Nets to Brooklyn, and the basketball arena would bring with it acres of housing, greenery and much-needed glamour.

Whenever a mayor raises the possibility ofbuilding a stadium on Manhattan's West Side, residents and civic groups raise their timeless howls. But what West Siders scorn, Brooklynites would do well to welcome. Gehry, who hails from the coast where the Dodgers remain in exile, is proposing to do more than heal Brooklyn's sporting history: He is offering to knit the borough a new downtown.

This is an enormous project by metropolitan standards: 21 acres (five more than the World Trade Center site), with a lot of moving parts, a projected budget of $2.5 billion and a 10-year timeline.

Let's start with the arena, which is where the builders would begin, too. Forget about the traditional freestanding coliseum, rising amid arid plains of parking. Forget, too, about Madison Square Garden, a round, squat drum that barely registers from Seventh Avenue and, inside, provides all the romance of a slaughterhouse. Gehry's arena would be a glass palace pinched between two converging boulevards, encircled with medium-size office buildings and topped with an open garden, landscaped by Laurie Olin, the transformer of Bryant Park.

This is an arena as public forum: While office workers and neighborhood residents picnic amid arbors and enjoy views that sweep from the Brooklyn Bridge to Prospect Park and from the Empire State Building to the Statue of Liberty, restless types can take a spin around the running track. Even in winter, the roof will be peopled, since the track converts into a skating rink - not the postage-stamp kind, as at Rockefeller Center, but a quarter-mile loop.

Gehry has never designed a sports arena before. His most recent success is Disney Hall, new home of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, where he managed to create a feeling of electric communion and egalitarian intimacy in a concert hall that seats 2,200 people. Infusing those qualities into a building meant to accommodate 10 times that number will be difficult. Clearly, Gehry is not interested in producing a standard- issue stadium, but the jokes that already have begun - that he will outfit his court with elliptical hoops and undulating backboards - gloss over his genius at adapting to necessity and convention.

It is that sifting and arranging of needs - the astute assessment of the neighborhood - that makes Gehry's master plan so exciting. Forest City Ratner, Bruce Ratner's development company, already has had a hand in developing downtown Brooklyn, and the new bland, unassertive Metrotech Center, where the corporation has its offices, provides a good model for how not to go about it. Atlantic Yards, by contrast, promises a level of livability that is rare in New York City.

Atlantic Avenue will get honest-to- goodness sidewalks planted with trees, instead of the crumbling strips now petering out into weed banks.

Brooklyn will get a new skyline, not the usual clump of sun-blocking skyscrapers, but a slithery sequence of low-rises, towers and midsized apartment buildings. These new residences will mingle people of various income levels and link them along a six-block corridor of greenery. The retail spaces will be geared not to chain boutiques but to coffee shops, cleaners and grocery stores. An underground garage will accommodate 3,000 cars for those determined to drive into the heart of Brooklyn, but the beauty of the site is its neighboring knot of public transportation: Nine subway lines and the Long Island Rail Road converge at Atlantic Terminal across the street.

The apartment buildings will not all swoop and twist like Gehry's celebrated icons - even people who like spectacle architecture don't necessarily want to live in it. But the site, tapering to a prow at the corner of Flatbush and Atlantic, offers a built-in opportunity to amaze. For the triangle of land between the arena and the street, Gehry has proposed an "urban room," a sunken plaza beneath an office tower raised on stilts, with a restaurant suspended overhead.

The covered piazza is not a native New York form, much less a Brooklyn one, and the model as it stands does not guarantee that it will be more amicable than the Citicorp Plaza on Lexington Avenue, where a subway station and the office building spill into a soulless concourse. But Disney Hall, with its open lobbies and rooftop grounds, hints that besides being able to sculpt a postcard-worthy facade, Gehry also might be capable of crafting a great civic space.

Last year, he opted out of the scrum to design the new World Trade Center, and the Guggenheim Museum branch he designed for an East River site was shelved. Now, New York has a chance to grab a Gehry extravaganza. Let's hope it doesn't slip away.

http://www.nynewsday.com/media/photo/2003-12/10657106.jpg

NYguy

December 17th, 2003, 06:46 PM

A panoramic view of the site as is
http://www.bball.net/documents/jpg/site_montage.jpg

krulltime

December 17th, 2003, 09:38 PM

Good news for Brooklyn!!! I hope it gets built. Those train tracks are sure an eyesore....

Edward

December 18th, 2003, 06:51 PM

From New York Magazine
http://www.newyorkmetro.com/nymetro/arts/architecture/reviews/n_9639/

Hoopla
Frank Gehry’s plan for Atlantic Avenue centers on a graceful raised arena for the Nets

By Joseph Giovannini

For decades, New York has been constrained like Gulliver in Lilliput, a world-class giant tied down by tiny regulatory ropes and vocal community boards, unable to stand up to its true height. Long gone are the glory days of great public and private works—from Central Park to the city’s bridges and tunnels. Today, forget about the Second Avenue subway in your lifetime, or a nonstop rail line out to the airport. When the Italians built cathedrals in Pisa and Milan, they aimed for maximum splendor; somehow we’ve developed an allergy to splendor. Maybe in Italy, but not on our own dime, and not in our backyard.

That is, not until last week, when plans for the Brooklyn Atlantic Yards, a megaproject of office towers, housing, parks, and sports facilities, were unveiled. Now, right there at the improbable intersection of Flatbush and Atlantic avenues, across from where Walter O’Malley proposed a new Ebbets Field for the Dodgers about 50 years ago, Frank Gehry has designed a basketball arena for the Nets, at the head of a tree-lined boulevard of mixed-height structures that would tickle the heart of Robert Moses. After decades of urban-design near-paralysis, the city faces the equivalent of a Rockefeller Center in Brooklyn—a new skyline of building blocks set askew within six acres of parks that would stitch together a section of the city long scarred by a gash of railroad tracks.

The New Jersey Nets are up for auction, and of the three remaining bidders, a group headed by developer Forest City Ratner proposes an 800,000-square-foot, 20,000-seat arena as the centerpiece of an ambitious mixed-use development, six city blocks long. Four office towers would cluster around the arena itself, with a running track that, in the winter, converts to an ice-skating rink. A long colonnade of towers would line Atlantic Avenue, terracing down to a landscaped park bounded by low-rise residential buildings, scaled to the existing brownstone neighborhood just to the south. The towers would straddle the rail yards, like Park Avenue over its rail lines. The phased project calls for 2.1 million square feet of offices, 310,000 square feet of retail, and as many as 4,500 apartments. Bruce Ratner, the primary developer of the MetroTech Center about a mile down Flatbush, has made building in Brooklyn a specialty.

Sometimes, quantity can mean quality. The proposal represents a great affirmation of Brooklyn in the simple critical mass of a huge project at this location, Atlantic Avenue Terminal, where nine subway lines and the LIRR converge, at a cultural nexus that includes the Brooklyn Academy of Music. But the real reason Brooklyn could challenge Manhattan (and New Jersey) is the nature of the Gehry design. Developers have long engaged major-league architects to promote their projects, but often with mediocre results. Not so with Gehry: Witness his latest triumph, the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, an apparition of billowing stainless steel that has almost singlehandedly revived downtown L.A. Brooklyn has been coming back for years now, but the ensemble that Gehry and design associates Tensho Takemori and Anand DeVarajan have proposed promises a great synergistic leap forward. What Gehry unveiled last week is merely a sketch of the development that may come, but the design promises to be what urban planners call a “destination” project: the kind of place you’d want to see even if you’re not a basketball or hockey fan.

Office and apartment towers are among the most intractable building types, a product of multiplication tables. Design freedoms are limited to the lobby and façade. Gehry’s misaligned stacks, however, generate energy and defy the overcontrolled geometries that usually stifle buildings and neighborhoods; the upper reaches of his buildings suggest the haphazard quality of medieval towns. There may be a tree-lined civic promenade—Ã la Park Avenue—but mid-block, the project gives way to paths of discovery in a sequence of interlocking parks designed by Philadelphia landscape architect Laurie Olin. Uniquely angled façades face episodic enclaves of green.

At the entrance to the project—the arena—Gehry lifts the mass on columns, as though the buildings were on pointe, to create a generous urban space. He elaborates the façades here with flowing curvilinear shapes that wrap the volumes like an Issey Miyake cape.

Of course, Gehry’s sketch represents only an embryonic stage, and anything could happen to its good design intentions. But the DNA is in place, and if built as proposed, the ensemble could add a provocative, unexpected edge to Brooklyn’s skyline and huge momentum to the borough’s ongoing roll.

TLOZ Link5

December 18th, 2003, 08:00 PM

Oh, may this come to pass.

BrooklynRider

December 19th, 2003, 10:42 AM

I love this development design and feel that it has all the inspiration lacking at the WTC. However, I have to admit that some of the more level-headed, articulate and eloquent community activists are making strong and persuasive arguments as to why the designated site for this project is inappropriate. I read a series of lengthy "letters to the editor" in this week's edition of Brooklyn Papers and, I must say, the arguments against this are compelling.

ZippyTheChimp

December 19th, 2003, 10:52 AM

You're not going to leave us hanging, are you?

BrooklynRider

December 19th, 2003, 10:54 AM

Heres the link to the PDF. It is under the title "RESIDENTS SLAM NETS PLAN" on page 8. Just magnify the page using Adobe Acrobat.

http://www.brooklynpapers.com/html/issues/_vol26/26_51/26_51bp.pdf

I find the last letter particularly compelling with the exception of the demands for employment guarantees based on skin color.

ZippyTheChimp

December 19th, 2003, 11:32 AM

Thanks Brooklyn Rider. The effort is appreciated.

ZippyTheChimp

December 19th, 2003, 01:37 PM

Letter to the editor published in Brooklyn Papers

Prove arena will work

To the editor:

Let me state initially that I am a lifelong Prospect Heights/Crown Heights resident with strong ties to Park Slope, Boerum Hill, Clinton Hill and Fort Greene — all of which surround the proposed Brooklyn Atlantic Yards. I am also the father of two young boys, one of whom attends public school in the vicinity of the proposed arena.

I have been a community activist for many years, including six years of service on the school board of former Community School District 13 — whose catchment area includes the proposed Brooklyn Atlantic Yards.

Since the arena concept was first aired, I have been opposed to it for a number of reasons. Before setting these reasons forth, however, I must specifically note that Borough President Marty Markowitz consistently told those of us who expressed concerns to him that we should “wait and see” if we get a team and then there would be time to discuss any plans. He said this directly to me on multiple occasions.

The fact that this grand plan has now been presented to the world without any community discussion or input is an outrage and, furthermore, does nothing to convince the arena’s opponents that there is good faith at work
here. It would, however, be even worse to find out that some people
actually WERE “in the room” regarding this proposal and behaved as surrogates for grassroots input.

I greatly admire Mr. Markowitz in many ways and I have personally dealt with him for about 15 years. In my capacity as president of the Weeksville Society’s Board of Trustees, I have been and remain grateful for his heartfelt support of one of Brooklyn’s jewels. So, in that context, I am particularly disappointed in his approach to this project. I don’t know Mr. Ratner, so I won’t comment on his ways of doing business at this time.

But allow me to present my concerns.

Despite the praise of some architects, the big picture of New York’s future — not simply Brooklyn’s — has been overlooked. Brooklyn is attractive because it provides accessible relief from Manhattan — the city’s
core. We have smaller buildings, different types of beautiful buildings
(and some ugly ones), smaller businesses and large hospitals, open space (even a beach), cultural diversity, family entertainment and a sense of history. There is an intangible value to this urban phenomenon that should not be lost, lest the sense of the “modern city” go with it.

In sum, Brooklyn is a collection of “neighborhoods” and, frankly, a huge part of the American Dream is to live within a thriving neighborhood. We understand the barren nature of suburbia; that’s why we are here and
not there. We appreciate Manhattan as a center of finance, industry, real estate and technology, but we want to live an equally rich life on the periphery of that center. A project like Brooklyn Atlantic Yards starts to change the essence of what Brooklyn is and must be pursued very carefully, if at all.

The borough president says that the proposed arena will eliminate all reasons for anyone to leave Brooklyn. Not so. Great public schools — including world-class school buildings and sports facilities — will do more for Brooklyn than any arena can ever do, and do it in every eighborhood. Brooklyn needs a lot of work.

Real access to affordable, quality health care will do more for Brooklyn than a more congestion-laden and air pollutiongenerating intersection of the borough’s two major thoroughfares could ever do.

Quality, affordable housing throughout the borough will do more for Brooklyn than any single mixed-income housing development located next to an arena can ever do.

If the borough president’s predictions come true, my neighborhood and the others surrounding this project will become even less affordable for most of us than it is now — particularly for people of color. And for some of those who are displaced, financial compensation cannot fully address what has been lost.

How will all of this really be handled?

Business regulations that support small businesses rather than stifle them will do far more for Brooklyn than a chain-dominated arena and mini-malls can ever do. What is in this package that really benefits small business owners?

The architect relishes the idea of building a neighborhood “from scratch.” That’s part of the problem. We are IMPOSING a distinct social phenomenon, not developing one. One small example, more classroom space will be needed to accommodate school children. Where will it come from? Where would a new elementary school go? Where would a new middle school be placed?

Tourism will not necessarily be helped by this move. Make sure it is. Visitation to Brooklyn’s many cultural institutions (combined) will probably exceed the census of arena attendees from the start. But each of these institutions could do even better with real support from the city — and these institutions are truly world-class. (Every big city has some kind of
arena; it’s not special.)

We will also need a more vibrant bed and breakfast industry and possibly more hotels located in Brooklyn itself. How is this addressed?

Municipal services — particularly police and sanitation — will become even more downtownloaded, creating additional competition with other neighborhoods. Does Harlem feel that it is serviced the same way as midtown Manhattan? I don’t THINK so!

So with all of these concerns, how can Borough President Markowitz “buy me off”? (After all, that is the name of the game here and will be for many of the players.)

•Address the concerns outlined above.

•Prove with numbers that this project is different from the economic
and cultural disasters that have taken place in other cities ...and there HAVE been disasters.

•Create a Community Development Corporation with a representative,
volunteer Board of Directors responsible for the operations of the project and the fulfillment of all obligations — including community input and
involvement with meaningful planning and project performance
evaluation.

•Make all of this happen with NO public money AND with New York State getting the full value for the land it surrenders. Put those land transfer proceeds in a trust governed by the CDC and the communities impacted
by this project.

•Provide a community usage plan for the arena. In fact, this proposal should be considered only in the context of a greater articulated vision for all of Brooklyn. Even with all of the rhetoric, a more specific vision for the borough and this city has yet to emerge.

•Present a ticket-pricing plan for Nets games that is affordable and sustainable for all residents of Brooklyn — including for the playoffs and championship series.

•Present a plan for ensuring that at least 80 percent of all employees
(principals, contractor and subcontractor for construction and for operations) related to this project will be residents of Brooklyn, no less than 80 percent of the employed Brooklyn residents are people of color and that no less than 60 percent of those people of color are of African descent. No excuses.

•Mr. Ratner and his firm receive no compensation for their involvement with this project. (After all, this is about Brooklyn, right?)

If Borough President Markowitz, Mayor Bloomberg and Bruce Ratner can create this covenant with us, then I’m willing to talk about an arena.

— Chris Owens, Prospect Heights
Chris Owens, the son of Rep. Major Owens, has been active in local politics and school board affairs.

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

On page one, the first paragraphs of the article "Bulldozed."

Developer Bruce Ratner’s grand plan for a Downtown Brooklyn basketball arena will not have to pass through the city’s rigorous land use review
process, which provides the public with opportunities to weigh in on a project before the community board, borough president, City Planning Commission and City Council.

Instead, most of the public review will be conducted at the state level, according to Ratner spokeswoman Joyce Baumgarten.

The Brooklyn Atlantic Yards would be developed as a project of the Empire State Development Corporation and would therefore be subject only to environmental review under the State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQRA), a much less involved process than the city’s Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP).

billyblancoNYC

December 19th, 2003, 03:39 PM

Gulcrapek

December 19th, 2003, 04:28 PM

I don't understand why 80 percent of the workers need to be black, and 80 percent of those of African descent. There's absolutely no point to that. We do support equal opportunity, no?

dbhstockton

December 19th, 2003, 04:59 PM

Yeah, he went off the deep end with that one.

BrooklynRider

December 19th, 2003, 05:03 PM

Some good points, but it's missing the point and it's NIMBYism glares.

What amazes me the most is that people really seem to think that b/c they live in an area and have a certain viewpoint, that that view can be imposed on others and that they have the right to have final say on things that they, other than living in the area, have nothing to do with.

Crazy.

I think it takes on the oft stated reasoning that it is somehow "good" for us. It makes one pause and wonder: who is the "us" they are referring to. I won't reiterate what was said, but I think the questions are relavant. Personally, the project seems to be to be an insulated creation. It eats up parts of neighborhoods without a nod to them. There's no integration. They are proposing to just plop a huge mega-development into an area that has been bereft of substantial development for decades. I love the design - I object to the process and the insinuation that, ifthe sale goes through, this is development is going to be steam rolled.

Keep in mind, the two renovations that created new "luxury" loft buildings in the proposed location of this project were, until this proposal, considered great signs that Brooklyn was rebounding. Now they want to condemn them? It sends mixed messages and, if this project stalls, can negatively impact the willingness of people to invest in these communities.

The rail yards themselves are huge. Alter the proposal to contain it within the parameters of the open site. As with the New York Times Tower - I am opposed to the use of eminent domain for the benefit of developers who should be paying market price (through the nose if necessary) to assemble sites in "prime" locations. This is Ratner's second project that as part of its strategy calls upon the use of eminent domain to avoid paying market rates. It's a bad trend.

This project is not in my neighborhood, but I want to be protected when the march of "progress" ends up on my doorstep. Stealing property MUST STOP!

ZippyTheChimp

December 19th, 2003, 09:07 PM

The other published letters were anecdotal, and while I am sympathetic to people being displaced from their homes, it is inevitable that this will occur from time to time.

I hope that those displaced are treated fairly, but what is important is that the larger surrounding area is not ruined in the process. The problem with the Cross Bronx Expressway was not only that it displaced people, but also that it left the area shattered.

Curiously, the letter seems to have two tones. At first it exhibits a provincial character – this is Brooklyn, and we don’t need any Manhattan type development.

Further down, the author’s bullet-points could have been prefaced with…I accept the arena on these conditions. I agree that his point about the percentage of minority workers lessens the credibility of his argument, but other than that, it is reasonable.

In my opinion, the importance of this project for the city is not the acquisition of the Nets, but the creation of office space, an alternative for businesses leaving Manhattan. However, this should not happen while destroying the neighborhood.

billyblancoNYC

December 20th, 2003, 01:10 AM

Why would this destroy the neighborhood, though? It will only enhance the neighborhood... create mixed income residences, park space, great views and amenities, more retail and street life, more jobs for the city.

It's being so "isolated" should be viewed as a good thing to those that don't want to see the good areas around it change. Sure, they'll be more traffic, but it's not like there's none now. This is NYC.

This is really like a continuation of the Downtown area, which needs to be developed.

It's taking nothing, literally, and making a huge asset for the city.

ZippyTheChimp

December 20th, 2003, 01:43 AM

I was commenting on the letter in general terms, not the specifics of the project. The local community should have a forum to discuss neighborhood issues, and the bypassing of ULURP is a little disturbing.

The neighborhood could be destroyed by gentrifying it well beyond the project location. While this may seem good for the entire city, in the long run that may not be the case. The current trend in city housing is creating a socially unhealthy situation.

Clarknt67

December 21st, 2003, 10:39 PM

Couldn't those displaced be put at the top of the list for affordable housing? I would think a brand new affordable apartment would be comfort enough.

As for ruining a neighborhood, who moves to Brooklyn--the largest borough in the largest city in the world, then moves to the busiest intersection of the two largest thoroughfares (Atlantic & Flatbush) and can claim a reasonable expectation of peace & quiet?

Earth to grumpy NIMBY!

NYguy

December 22nd, 2003, 08:39 AM

Unfortunately, in a project of this size, there is bound to be a displacement of some sort. Like it or not, its a part of the process in NYC. The development in Brooklyn is large enough to set aside a small amount for the people who are being displaced. That would give the NIMBYS, who are using this as an issue, no legs to stand on....

(NEWSDAY)

Neighborhood Activists Protest Brooklyn Arena Plan

By Joshua Robin
December 21, 2003

A coalition of Brooklyn residents opposed to a proposed Nets stadium in the borough said Sunday that arena developers low-balled the number of families that would be displaced in the construction.

Instead of 100 people being relocated, about 1,000 would see their homes razed, coalition members said in asking city officials to scrap support for the $2.5 billion complex.

"We have done a census," said City Councilwoman Letitia James (D-Fort Greene), flanked by about 100 people at a City Hall news conference. "These are the children whose lives will be drastically affected by the abuse of eminent domain."

The rally comes as developer Bruce Ratner seeks to buy the New Jersey franchise and relocate it to a facility occupying the corner of Flatbush and Atlantic avenues, as well as residential side streets.

"My home and our diverse and proud block will be demolished if the arena project, as currently proposed, is realized," said Karla Rothstein of Dean Street, who teaches architecture at Columbia University and is one of the affected residents.

Bruce Bender, vice-president for government and community affairs at Ratner's firm, Forest City Ratner, said in a statement: "Brooklyn Atlantic Yards will be built with help and input from the community. In fact, the entire project has been designed to complement the surrounding communities."

A Ratner representative could not be reached for comment on specific questions.

Earlier this month, a Ratner spokeswoman told The Brooklyn Papers that the company's initial projection that 100 residents would be displaced has been a "guesstimate." The arena plans include a proposal for the building of 4,500 affordable residential units, covering 4.4 million square feet.

Officials said the complex would not require public financing, but tax revenues could be pumped back into the arena.

Critics have argued that local residents wouldn't see the proceeds.

A growing number of elected officials are joining the battle against the arena proposal. Yesterday, the son of U.S. Rep. Major Owens (D-Brooklyn), indicated that his father also opposes the plan.

Ratner's proposal is backed by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, City Council Speaker Gifford Miller and Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz.

http://www.nynewsday.com/media/photo/2003-12/10709879.jpg

Councilwoman Letitia James, middle bottom, joined by Brooklyn residents, speaked at the rally protesting the plant to build a stadium on Atlantic Ave. at the City Hall steps Sunday, December 21, 2003.

Derek2k3

December 22nd, 2003, 01:24 PM

(Newsday)
http://www.nynewsday.com/media/photo/2003-12/10657106.jpg

That's my friend from Pratt who came with me in the background.

OKoranjes

December 24th, 2003, 11:49 AM

I love this development for the area. Those NIMBYs can cry over something else.

Kris

December 24th, 2003, 01:45 PM

Brooklyn's Proposed Stadium: Not Such a Bad Idea (http://www.metropolismag.com/html/urbanjournal_1203/brooklynstadium.html)

TLOZ Link5

December 25th, 2003, 12:38 AM

Is this a part of the overall rezoning plan for Downtown Brooklyn?

billyblancoNYC

December 25th, 2003, 01:45 AM

Nope, a wonderful little bonus, I believe.

JMC

December 25th, 2003, 02:46 AM

Are those the "MOLE PEOPLE" protesting their displacement from the LIRR tracks?! What a bunch of lamers.

NYguy

December 25th, 2003, 06:18 AM

NY POST...

BROOKLYN AHEAD OF THE GAME IN BID FOR NETS

By FRED KERBER and MICHAEL MORRISSEY

December 25, 2003 -- A real-estate developer who wants to move the New Jersey Nets to Brooklyn has reportedly become the favorite to win the struggling franchise.

Developer Bruce Ratner has upped his leading bid to $300 million, from $275 million, the Bergen Record said yesterday. Team executives told The Newark Star-Ledger that Ratner would likely be chosen over rival Charles Kushner, who would keep the team in New Jersey.

Kushner and billionaire Sen. Jon Corzine have offered $267.5 million.

Ratner's proposal for a Frank Gehry-designed arena and residential complex in Brooklyn is contingent on his winning the team.

Ratner's group includes Brooklyn-born rap megastar Jay-Z, who told reporters at a Net game this week that he would be the NBA's "coolest" owner.

"I've been pretty successful as a recording artist," said the rapper, whose real name is Shawn Carter. "Hopefully, I can be even more successful in all of my business ventures."

He sidestepped questions about how much cash he's putting up.

The sale is expected to be finalized within the next couple of weeks.

ZippyTheChimp

December 25th, 2003, 11:07 AM

Is this a part of the overall rezoning plan for Downtown Brooklyn?
The triangle part of the site where the arena would be is within the Downtown Brooklyn Plan boundary.

Map from Dept of City Planning

http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/gif/dwnbklyn2/dcp-2a.jpg

BrooklynRider

December 27th, 2003, 11:48 AM

Was in Clevelad over the holidays. Ratner's plan is getting coverage in the Plain Dealer newspaper. Forest City got started in Cleveland. The papers savaged the whole Brooklyn plan and took apart the proposal. What he delivers with regard to "economics" never seems to match what his proposal numbers indicated. The basic message - take whatever pricetag he is quoting and double it. Where ever he says "privately funded", laugh out loud.

NYguy

January 4th, 2004, 11:05 AM

NYguy

January 4th, 2004, 11:06 AM

Newsday...

Nets Here, Greenbacks There

By Luis Perez
January 3, 2004

Before the Nets come to Brooklyn, the green would have to go to Jersey.

The purchase of the team is one of three requirements needed to make developer Bruce Ratner's $2.5 billion Brooklyn Arena a reality.

Twenty-two of 29 team members members must approve the sale. Ratner also must obtain air rights to build his $500 million stadium over the Long Island Rail Road yard at Flatbush and Atlantic Avenues.

Ratner is reportedly the front-runner in the bidding to buy the East Rutherford-based New Jersey Nets. While his bid is reported to be close to $300 million, a rival group interested in keeping the arena in New Jersey, led by developer Charles Kushner and including U.S. Sen. Jon Corzine (D-N.J.), has bid $267.5 million.

Prospective buyers of an NBA franchise also are subject to a background financial check, and must obtain the consent of the league's Board of Governors and three-quarters of the other 28 owners.

Under the plan, construction of the arena would begin next year. The completed arena would welcome the 2006 basketball season, and the team's lease in New Jersey expires in three years.

Tom Kelly, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which owns the train yard, said Ratner has yet to submit a formal proposal outlining his intentions.

Once that happens, Kelly said, the project would be put up for review both by the agency and by the state Economic Development Corporation, which can use eminent domain to move out tenants.

Ratner has said that the proposal would not require public funds, but officials have said that tax revenue could be pumped back into it.

.................................................. .................................................. .

B'klyn Arena Plan Drawing Fire

By Luis Perez
January 3, 2004

The carolers were angry.

And the jeers that were their carols, to the tune of "The 12 days of Christmas," said it all:

"On the first day of Christmas Bruce Ratner took from me: A home for my fa-mi-ly."

Accompanied by accordion and guitar, the protesters wound their way up and down Dean and Pacific streets in Brooklyn, marching past Vanderbilt and Flatbush avenues around a dark train yard — the site of a failed late-1950s bid to keep Ebbets Field and the Dodgers in the heart of Brooklyn.

If developer Bruce Ratner has his way, six mixed-use blocks around this Long Island Rail Road site would be razed by right of eminent domain. Above the yard and over a few of the leveled streets would rise a $2.5-billion basketball arena complex housing the Nets. Seventeen buildings ranging from 20 to 60 stories each, with commercial, residential and shopping space, would rise from the westernmost end of the arena down to Vanderbilt Avenue.

All 21 acres of the site would be the work of noted architect Frank Gehry.

Gone would be what opponents insist amounts to about 1,000 homes and scores of businesses. Hence the heavy-worded caroling, which, before concluding in the warmth of Freddy's Bar, at Sixth Avenue and Dean Street and also facing certain doom, went on to cite as other losses two thoroughfares, four neighborhoods, eight unclogged subways, nine cultures mixing and DE-MO-CRA-CY!

"The whole thing is nuts. It's insane," said Patti Hagan, the leader of the Prospect Heights Action Coalition, a band of homeowners, renters and businesses formed last year to combat the plan.

Hagan, who purchased a brownstone a few blocks from the site 25 years ago, asked: "Where in the U.S. Constitution does it say that anyone can do that?"

The plan has put a spotlight on a neighborhood already feeling tension between those who see more development as progress, and those who say it's merely further "Manhattanization" of Brooklyn. Other nearby Ratner projects, including Metrotech Center and the Atlantic Center Mall, though touted by the city, have left many in the area skeptical.

Ratner and his supporters, Mayor Michael Bloomberg among them, have said his plans would pump much needed tax revenue into the city, and help to boost the economy of the Brooklyn neighborhood. Ratner initially projected that only 100 tenants would be displaced. A spokesman for the developer later said that the figure was only an estimate and that the full impact would not be known until the project is under way.

Still, opponents are not convinced. Hagan said she has received 4,000 signatures against the plan, from residents of Boerum Hill, Fort Greene, Park Slope and Prospect Heights. They would like to see more than the 4,500 units of housing Ratner has proposed, and fear that a 20,000-seat stadium will rob the area of its residential character.

Though Ratner's plan hinges on his securing the purchase of the New Jersey Nets, Borough President Marty Markowitz has publicly praised it, and the project dovetails with several multimillion-dollar development projects in the area, including the city's Downtown Brooklyn Plan and the nearby Brooklyn Academy of Music Cultural District Plan. All are slated for completion within the next 10 years.

By then, Ratner says his stadium will bring more than 10,000 permanent jobs, as well as 15,000 construction jobs in between.

"Adding a professional sports team and a world class arena, in addition to the housing and all the jobs it would create, would be a tremendous economic shot in the arm to Downtown Brooklyn," said Ed Skyler, the mayor's press secretary.

Asked about those who would lose their homes, Skyler added: "Sometimes great things require sacrifice. And it would be the government's job to make sure that everybody is made whole again."

Among the opposition is Neil deMause, a journalist who lives in Brooklyn and is the author of "Field of Schemes" (Common Ground Press), about the impact of big stadiums in cities across the country.

"Sports facilities are typically among the worst bang for the buck in terms of job creation," said deMause, noting that the Nets' Jason Kidd and company were the exception. "The only thing we can be sure of is that it will move 12 jobs from New Jersey."

The plan, by all accounts, is bold. Of four towers surrounding the arena, the first to rise, on the corner of Atlantic and Flatbush avenues, would hover at 620 feet — eclipsing Brooklyn's current tallest structure, the Williamsburg Savings Bank, a 1929 landmark.

"If this happens, I'm going to lose a quarter million, easy," said Emanuel Volcy, 32, who just opened an auto-body business at the foot of the proposed 620-foot tower. "They are going to pay the owner and they are going to tell me to beat it."

But the real pain, opponents say, is for those who will be losing homes. While gentrification has brought many upper-middle class residents to the area, many who live there say they would be hard put to move — and likely pay higher rents.

Among them is Victoria Harmon, 85, who moved into a second-floor cold flat at 810 Pacific Street in 1942 and remembers the failed bid to bring the Dodgers to the site.

"A lot of people are going to be relocated," said Harmon, a retired school cafeteria worker whose rent is $178 monthly and whose sole income is social security. "I don't know if I can do that. My rent is stabilized. I don't know if I can pay it if it goes too high."

"It may be good for the neighborhood and all that," she added, "but it's the people like myself. It's going to be hard."

Like Volcy, Emily Schmitt, an art director who lives in a warehouse on Pacific Street renovated for luxury apartments, was giving in as well. A sign in the lobby read: "Don't destroy our homes."

"We're sitting on center court right now," said Schmitt, 34, the hum of the train yard behind her.

On Vanderbilt Avenue, where the residential buildings would go up, Atlas Auto Service owner David Sarnow also feels impending doom.

"I'm not ready to retire yet. But if they take the building, where am I going to go?" said Sarnow, 43, who with his brother Blaise, 49, inherited the shop from his father 15 years ago.

"Ten, fifteen years ago, this was rough stuff," said Blaise Sarnow, motioning to Vanderbilt Avenue. "We lived through that. You look now, you have all restaurants up the strip, and people moving in. It's coming back."

Hagan, who has vowed to fight the eminent domain question in court, says the open space over the train yard is "Big Sky" and would like to see a park there.

Traffic is another issue. Daily traffic on any one of the nearby thoroughfares is bad already, say opponents, who doubt that 13 subway lines and the LIRR running past the development will do much to alleviate that.

Joyce Baumgarten, a spokeswoman for Forrest City Ratner, declined to comment for this article pending the sale of the Nets other than to say that Ratner has "always gone to the community" for feedback and would do so again.

Contrary to the residents' fears, the developer also insists that the complex will have 24-hour, round-the-calendar activities for the public, from jogging to rock concerts and landscaped rooftops.

For Peter Ighodaro, however, skepticism remains.

"He who has the sugar, brings the ants," said Ighodaro, a city social worker of Nigerian descent who purchased a townhouse a few blocks from the train yard a few years ago.

Ighodaro's previous home was a few blocks from Yankee Stadium, where, he said, he saw firsthand how giant arenas attract a bad element.

"It may increase the value of my property, but can you compare that to one drop of blood from my children? The whole nature of this neighborhood now is so quiet and so nice. I can imagine what it would turn to. There's no question."

Gulcrapek

January 4th, 2004, 11:57 AM

I don't like the idea of the entire thing being designed by Gehry... the peek at his 620ft office tower design phase from one of Derek's pictures already gave me a little nausea.

NoyokA

January 4th, 2004, 01:52 PM

What gives you nausea, is for others euphoria. The stadium is great, grand, a modern Roman Coliseum and a type of public project that NYC has not yet seen. Whereas I liken the stadiums architecture as a reincarnation of Penn Station, the towers architecture will be ground breaking, from what I’ve seen they are very etheral. The fact that the towers will be raised above the stadium only enhances there gravity defying act.

Gulcrapek

January 4th, 2004, 03:46 PM

I like (very much) the arena and the way the towers are positioned and massed, but I don't really know about the true forms and facades of the towers themselves. I just don't want them to be... typical Gehryish. I may learn to love them, so this is just a preliminary opinion (moreso because I haven't seen the finished design of that tower, just the design evolution).

NYguy

January 4th, 2004, 09:17 PM

I don't like the idea of the entire thing being designed by Gehry... the peek at his 620ft office tower design phase from one of Derek's pictures already gave me a little nausea.

I'm not familiar with any of Gehry's office or residential buildings. It could be something great - the entire development - something additional to define Brooklyn along with Coney Island, Prospect Park, Brooklyn Bridge, etc....I just hope it doesn't look like a cheap housing development...

TLOZ Link5

January 4th, 2004, 09:59 PM

There's already a lot of momentum behind this project, and things seem to be lining up nicely for Ratner.

Derek2k3

January 4th, 2004, 11:43 PM

After reading all the articles and what not, this project seems unreal. Still can't believe this is going up just a couple blocks away from me...

billyblancoNYC

January 5th, 2004, 04:03 AM

NYguy

January 5th, 2004, 05:37 PM

http://www.theslatinreport.com/27_dean_street_sketch.jpg

http://www.theslatinreport.com/26_atlantic_avenue_sketch.jpg

yanni111

January 5th, 2004, 05:56 PM

dbhstockton

January 5th, 2004, 06:01 PM

It's a railyard, not individual homesteads, they're dealing with here:

http://www.theslatinreport.com/02_existing.jpg

Gulcrapek

January 5th, 2004, 06:16 PM

Are those Gehry sketches?

ZippyTheChimp

January 5th, 2004, 06:33 PM

i dont understand how eminent domain applies here. In the case of the NYTimes building that block was considered to be "blighted" but this area clearly is not. So what are the legal reasons to be used for basically taking over the properties for this project? Is it basically creation of new jobs and more affortable housing? Is that enough to legally justify forcibly buying someone's house even when they dont want to sell?
The site being "blighted" is not neccessarily a condition for Eminent Domain. The key requirement is that the land is needed for a public purpose. For example, a swath of homes were cleared through Brooklyn for an expressway to the new Verrazano Narrows bridge. These homes were not blighted, but the action was justified by the need for the bridge.

Blight is the condition when eminent domain is used for urban renewal. That was the criteria that was used at the NYTimes site (a stretch in my opinion).

I don't know what the legal argument will be in Brooklyn. You could argue that the development is a public work, but it will be privately owned, not as clear-cut an argument as a bridge that is owned by the city.

Derek2k3

January 5th, 2004, 06:49 PM

How could reading anything about this project seem unreal? Ratner seems to be in the lead for the Nets, he's pushing, Bloomberg's pushing, the MTA would give the development rights to him pretty easily, and that would not require community approval, etc.

I think if he gets the Nets, it's got a great chance of happening, for a number of reasons.

I didn't mean unreal as in it's a distant pipedream, I meant unreal as in something so amazing that I can't believe it's going to be built.

NYguy

January 5th, 2004, 07:01 PM

Are those Gehry sketches?

They are from landscape architect Laurie Olin....

Gulcrapek

January 5th, 2004, 08:47 PM

Oh. I guess and hope the building facades are just placeholders then.

JMGarcia

January 5th, 2004, 10:15 PM

They are "don't scare the nimbys"-holders. ;)

billyblancoNYC

January 6th, 2004, 02:54 AM

NYguy

January 11th, 2004, 03:12 PM

Star Ledger

Ratner's bid for Nets will exceed $300M

January 08, 2004
BY MATTHEW FUTTERMAN AND GEORGE E. JORDAN

The stakes in the auction of the Nets are on the way up again.

As of yesterday, New York developer Bruce Ratner, who wants to move the Nets to Brooklyn, had told the team's owners he was prepared to offer as much as $310 million, according to three executives involved with the sale.

Ratner's bid would take the price for the two-time NBA Eastern Conference champions to an important plateau: It is twice the amount a group of New Jersey businessmen paid for the team five years ago.

His offer also puts pressure on New Jersey developer Charles Kushner to raise his own bid, drop out of the auction or take the chance that his pledge to keep the Nets at their current home in the Meadowlands will be enough to prevail.

His spokesman said last night Kushner and his partner, U.S. Sen. Jon Corzine (D-NJ), have not changed their offer of $267.5 million. But the executives involved in the sale said the Kushner-Corzine partners indicated they would raise their offer to as high as $290 million -- about $10 to $15 million less than Ratner.

New York financier Stuart Feldman, who bid $257.5 million, is no longer a contender for the team, the executives involved in the sale disclosed. Feldman never stated publicly his plans for the Nets.

The recent moves -- which would be some of the highest bids ever made for an NBA franchise -- further complicate the four-month auction. A new owner of the Nets could be named within the next 10 days.

"I'm trying to bring about a sale as quickly as possible," said Ed Stier, the chief executive of Community Youth Organizations, the non-profit group led by Raymond Chambers and Lewis Katz that controls the Nets. "We are trying to evaluate the offers with regard to price and certainty that a deal can close."

This isn't just about the highest bid, though. Executives with CYO also must consider which buyer is most likely to gain NBA approval.

NBA commissioner David Stern has made it clear the league would prefer an owner with concrete financing and a construction plan in place for a new or renovated arena for the Nets.

Prospective owners must also be able to show the financial means to fund losses from the franchise that are projected at $25-40 million the next two years.

Ratner, who previously bid $275 million, and Kushner-Corzine, have been in extensive informal discussion with two Wall Street firms advising CYO and YankeeNets, the sports company that owns a major stake in the basketball franchise.

Executives involved with the sale say Ratner is all but certain to be the high bidder. His plan, however, to build a Frank Gehry-designed arena above the rail yards at Atlantic and Flatbush Avenues in downtown Brooklyn remains far from a done deal.

Ratner has received verbal support for the proposed $2.5 billion arena, office and residential complex from New York's most powerful officials, including Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Gov. George Pataki.

However, he must acquire the land and air rights from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and displace private property owners. He faces a potentially long, and nasty fight with thousands of Brooklyn residents opposed to the project. As the fight unfolds, the Nets would likely have to play in the Continental Airlines Arena in front of New jersey fans who know the team is trying to abandon them for New York of all places.

Through a spokesman, Ratner declined to comment.

Kushner and Corzine have reached an agreement with the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority for a $120 million renovation of the Continental Airlines arena. The arena would be part of a $1 billion makeover of the Sports Complex by Mack Cali Realty and the Mills Corp.

"We are still actively pursuing the purchase of the Nets and intend on keeping the team in New Jersey," Richard Stadtmauer, a managing partner at Kushner Cos., a Florham Park-based home and office developer.

However, Kushner also faces an intensifying federal probe into his fundraising efforts on behalf of Gov. James E. McGreevey and other Democrats.

NYguy

January 15th, 2004, 09:27 AM

DAILY NEWS...

Say Nets deal near
But builder's rivals set for fight to death

By OHM YOUNGMISUK and LEO STANDORA

A city real estate developer is "extremely close" to buying the New Jersey Nets, sources said last night - but his dream of bringing the team to Brooklyn is still far from a slam dunk.
Builder Bruce Ratner is expected to soon ink a deal in which he would shell out about $300 million for the basketball franchise, sources familiar with the negotiations said.

"No papers have been signed yet, but it should be very soon, possibly within a few days," said a source close to Ratner. "The money is about right, but they're extremely close to a deal."

Another source said Ratner already has told government officials he's getting the team.

Both Ratner and Nets owner Lewis Katz declined to talk about the negotiations.

"If somebody is going to make a comment, it is not going to be me," said Katz, who has been seen with Ratner more and more in recent days.

Ratner upped his offer for the Nets from $275 million to $300 million last month after rap impresario Jay-Z joined forces with him. Two other groups are vying for the team, including one led by Sen. Jon Corzine (D-N.J.), who wants to keep the team in Jersey.

If the Ratner deal comes off, Brooklyn will have its first big league sports team since the Dodgers left in 1957. The Brooklyn Nets could be a reality by the 2006-07 season.

But Ratner's interest in the team is directly hinged to building an arena in downtown Brooklyn - a project that faces a number of hurdles:

Ratner can't write a check until 21 of the 28 other NBA owners approve the sale and the move from the Meadowlands to Brooklyn. There have been rumblings that the Knicks may lobby hard against the plan.

The city also would have to give Ratner the okay to build the proposed 20,000-seat arena. The Frank Gehry-designed stadium is part of a controversial $2.5 billion development that also includes Manhattan-sized office and residential towers.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority must grant Ratner air rights to build the arena over the Long Island Rail Road yard at Flatbush and Atlantic Aves.
If everything comes together, Ratner has said, construction on the stadium would begin next year.

Last month, Mayor Bloomberg hailed the plans as a way to revitalize Brooklyn, saying, "This is the place for a professional basketball team."

But critics contend the arena complex would overwhelm the low-rise communities of Fort Greene and Prospect Heights.

And while Ratner has estimated 100 people would be displaced under his plan, foes put the number at 1,000, and say more than 400 small-business jobs would be lost.

"Ratner doesn't give a damn about the neighborhood," said Patti Hagan of the Prospect Heights Action Coalition. "He's never walked around this community to find out who would be affected."

NoyokA

January 15th, 2004, 09:51 AM

The deal's drawn out, now let's get it done.

ZippyTheChimp

January 15th, 2004, 09:58 AM

Stern, I think the Daily News article belongs in the Nets thread (http://forums.wirednewyork.com/viewtopic.php?t=337&start=180).

Kris

January 21st, 2004, 12:06 AM

http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/2004/01/21/sports/21ARAT-xlg.jpg

matt3303

January 21st, 2004, 09:32 PM

I can't decide if I like this design or not. On one hand, it could be a unique "pioneering" new stadium design or a piece of trash conjured up a day before the press confrence. I'd like to see more details when they come out.

ASchwarz

January 21st, 2004, 10:12 PM

NY Times.

Brooklyn Developer Reaches Deal to Buy New Jersey Nets

By RICHARD SANDOMIR and CHARLES V. BAGLI

Bruce C. Ratner, the New York real estate developer who wants to move the New Jersey Nets to an arena in downtown Brooklyn, reached a tentative agreement to acquire the team for $300 million, defeating a similar offer by Charles Kushner and Senator Jon S. Corzine of New Jersey, the Nets' ownership group confirmed tonight.

``We're in the final stages of negotiating an agreement with Bruce Ratner,'' said Edwin Stier, president of Community Youth Organization, the Nets' ownership group. ``The contract terms have been finalized and we're putting the paperwork together.''

Several days of intense negotiations led to the agreement with Mr. Ratner, who raised his bid to $300 million a month ago. Mr. Kushner stuck to his $267.5 million offer for two months and only raised it to $300 million today. But it apparently came too late for serious consideration.

A spokesman for Mr. Kushner, a Florham Park, N.J., real estate developer, said, ``Charlie Kushner bid $300 million in cash today to keep this team in New Jersey and is disappointed in the result.''

The Community Youth Organization's board agreed to the terms of the deal and the contract now requires the approval of YankeeNets, the holding company for the Nets and Yankees, which is on the verge of being dissolved.

Mr. Ratner's victory means the potential return of a major league team to Brooklyn for the first time since 1957 when the Brooklyn Dodgers left for Los Angeles. In the Nets, he has an exciting team that would provide a stiff intra-city challenge to the Knicks if he navigates the hurdles he must leap to build the $2.5 billion project that would feature the Nets' arena as its centerpiece.

Still, Mr. Ratner faces major hurdles before he can fulfill his vision of making the proposed arena the centerpiece of his planned $2.5 billion commercial and residential complex in downtown Brooklyn.

The arena would be built at the intersection of Flatbush and Atlantic Avenues, where Walter O'Malley was rebuffed nearly half a century ago in his efforts to build a new stadium for the Brooklyn Dodgers.

Mr. Ratner needs the state to condemn 21 acres on which he would build the arena, four office towers and 4,500 apartments, which are being designed by the architect Frank Gehry.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority would have to move 11 tracks that criss-cross the Long Island Rail Road's three-block long Vanderbilt yard where Mr. Ratner plans to erect the arena.

The project would have to go through public hearings and stringent environmental reviews. Mr. Ratner has also talked to state and city officials about their doing $150 million in roadwork, sewers and utilities, and moving tracks currently at the rail yard. The developer has also asked the state and city to commit to using about $28 million a year in sales and income taxes generated by the project to help pay down the bonds for the arena.

Mr. Ratner's bid for the Nets is double what the current owners, led by Raymond Chambers and Lewis Katz, paid for the team in 1998 before merging into YankeeNets. But at $300 million, it is ranks behind the record $360 million paid in 2002 for the Boston Celtics.

The sale to Mr. Ratner culminates a turgid, four-month process. First there were three bidders, Mr. Ratner, who started at $275 million, and the Kushner group, which opened at $250 million and vowed to keep the team in New Jersey, and Charles B. Wang, the co-owner of the Islanders, who bid $265 million. They were later joined by Stuart Feldman, a venture capitalist who never discussed his $257.5 million offer or his intentions publicly. Mr. Wang dropped out in frustration with the process and Mr. Feldman was never a serious competitor.

The Ratner group has been trying to craft a proposal that would encounter limited resistance from government officials and opponents in the community. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has been an enthusiastic supporter of the project, but the administration of Gov. George Pataki has been been relatively quiet. A top state official said the governor did not want to be accused of poaching on New Jersey assets and was concerned about the growing list of sports teams seeking hundreds of millions of dollars in state subsidies for new arenas and stadiums, including the Jets, the Yankees, Mets, Knicks and Rangers.

Mr. Ratner's project in downtown Brooklyn has been embraced by many Brooklyn politicians as the antidote to the loss of the Dodgers and the crystalization of the borough's economic comeback.

But Mr. Ratner already faces opposition to the project from local residents, who have starting hanging banners from their buildings protesting the Ratner project.

Patti Hagan, a leader of the Prospect Park Heights Coalition, said Mr. Ratner's project would require the demolition of homes for 864 people and 237 jobs. ``This is an example of developer imperialism,'' Ms. Hagan said. ``The emperor has decided to take over 10 acres of private property and abolish all the jobs and homes that exist here. Mr. Ratner should know he has a fight on his hands. We will not give up or go away.''

The effort to sell the Nets, which began before YankeeNets formally put them up for sale last September, has been marked by bitter recriminations between Yankee and Nets owners, as well as among the Nets owners themselves. In recent weeks, according to a Nets shareholder and New Jersey officials, Lewis Katz and Alan Landis, two Nets owners who have promoted the deal with Mr. Ratner, came to be regarded as traitors to New Jersey, the state in which they both live.

The Community Youth Organization initially bought the Nets in 1998 with the idea of moving the team to Newark to revive that city's economy. Mr. Katz and Mr. Chambers pledged to pour the profits into a newly formed charity. But the team lost tens of millions of dollars and failed to complete a deal for an arena in Newark, leading to a split between Mr. Chambers and Mr. Katz, and ultimately the decision to sell.

Earlier this week, as the Nets seemed to be slipping away, George Zoffinger, president of the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority, the owner of the Continental Airlines Arena, complained and vowed to block the new owner from taking the Nets name to Brooklyn.

Kris

January 22nd, 2004, 04:07 AM

http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/2004/01/22/sports/0122_spt_NETS_stadium.gif

Kris

January 23rd, 2004, 05:54 AM

January 23, 2004

Bid for a Brooklyn Sports Complex Faces Challenges From All Sides

By CHARLES V. BAGLI

http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/2004/01/23/nyregion/brooklyn.large.jpg
Karla Rothstein and her daughter, Skye, who live in a converted factory building at 475 Dean Street in Brooklyn that would be razed in plans for a new basketball arena.

Marty Markowitz, Brooklyn's head cheerleader, was still riding a wave of euphoria, one day after the developer Bruce C. Ratner had won the bidding for the New Jersey Nets with plans to install them in a new home near downtown Brooklyn.

"It's exciting," said Mr. Markowitz, the borough president. "It puts Brooklyn back in the big leagues."

But the hard questions are just beginning to emerge about the feasibility and financial viability of Mr. Ratner's proposal to build a $485 million arena designed by Frank Gehry as the centerpiece of an enormous $2.5 billion residential and commercial development.

For example, can this project survive the kind of political minefields, environmental reviews, community opposition and lawsuits that have delayed or scuttled sports complexes elsewhere? Can Mr. Ratner and his partners counter familiar arguments that sports complexes are poor economic engines by combining the arena with housing, stores and office space? Will the developer be able to obtain private financing for the office towers? And finally, will he be able to keep down costs and minimize the need for public subsidies?

In a remarkably short time, the arena project has gained the enthusiastic support of Mr. Markowitz, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and many of Brooklyn's elected officials. This has happened even when sports complexes have become political dynamite, scaring many politicians aware of a public grown weary of subsidizing extraordinarily wealthy team owners and players.

Mr. Ratner, Mayor Bloomberg and the project's supporters say that the development will be more than a mere sports complex. The glass-walled arena, combined with four office towers and 4,500 apartments, will be a transformative project. It would establish Brooklyn as a destination again and accelerate a revival already taking place in nearby neighborhoods like Dumbo, Fort Greene and the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

Experts say Mr. Ratner may have something else going for him. It is a lot easier to make a 19,000-seat arena work economically than a 78,000-seat stadium that is used only 10 times a year. Mark S. Rosentraub, a sports economist and the author of "Major League Losers: The Real Cost of Sports and Who's Paying For It," estimates that an arena needs to book about 200 events a year to make money. While the Nets have been unable to sell out at their current home at the Meadowlands, he said that Mr. Ratner and his partners should have no trouble filling the seats given that there are 6.3 million people in Brooklyn, Queens and Nassau County, a larger and wealthier market than in N.B.A. cities like Charlotte, New Orleans, Indianapolis and Cleveland.

"The numbers work," said Mr. Rosentraub, a frequent critic of public investments in sports complexes. "You'll have the best arena in the country to service a market of more than 6.3 million people."

Marc Ganis, president of Sportscorp, a sports economic consulting company based in Chicago, said, "It will generate the largest naming-rights fee in the history of professional sports, because it is in New York City and the only other arena, Madison Square Garden, can't change its brand name without losing a lot of cachet."

But much about the project is unknown, including how much public money will be needed to make it work. Some officials said they expected Mr. Ratner's preliminary cost estimates to swell quickly. Mr. Ratner has tried to fashion an aerodynamic plan that he hopes will encounter little resistance from government officials or local residents.

Mr. Ratner and Mayor Bloomberg declined requests for comment yesterday, saying they were awaiting an official announcement by the current owners of the Nets. But at a Dec. 10 pep rally for the project in Brooklyn, Mr. Bloomberg made his sentiments clear: "We're prepared to team up with Forest City Ratner Companies and with elected officials and people of this borough to bring the Nets to Brooklyn."

In contrast, the Pataki administration has been more reserved, partly out of a concern that the Jets, Mets, Yankees, Rangers and Knicks also want public money for new complexes. "It's exciting," said Charles A. Gargano, chairman of the Empire State Development Corporation, "but we'll see what he brings to us for final approval."

Neither the city nor the state has committed funds for Mr. Ratner's project and, one official said, they are "months away from agreeing on what they'll do for him."

The arena would sit on what is now the Long Island Rail Road's Vanderbilt storage yard. Mr. Ratner needs the railroad to move the 11 tracks crisscrossing the nine-acre site to the east.

He also needs the state to condemn four blocks to the east of the rail yard, which includes the homes of 864 people and businesses with about 200 jobs. Many of the residents have vowed to fight the project and will almost certainly file a lawsuit that could delay construction or stop it altogether. They have already formed an alliance with other community groups called United Brooklyn Coalition Against Urban Removal.

With the state in control of the land, however, Mr. Ratner would be able to avoid the city's land-use review process and build a larger and more dense project than he would under the city's zoning regulations. But he will have to complete a stringent environmental review, which could turn up problems like oil contamination in the rail yard.

Although Mayor Bloomberg and Mr. Ratner have stated that the project would be built mostly with private money, the developer has asked state and city officials about doing $150 million in infrastructure work, including moving the tracks and utility lines in the area and building new streets and sewer lines.

Mr. Ratner has also proposed taking about $28 million a year in sales and income taxes generated at the arena to help pay the bonds for its construction. In addition, he is expected to seek tax-free financing for the housing, probably through the state's 80-20 program, which requires developers to set aside 20 percent of the apartments for low- and moderate-income tenants.

Councilwoman Letitia James, whose district includes the neighborhood, is a rare voice of opposition among Brooklyn politicians. She considers the project an oversized monster that will destroy a vibrant working-class neighborhood that has rebuilt itself over the past 20 years.

"This is a great day for rich developers and a sad day for working families," Ms. James said. "It will open the floodgates to public financing of sports arenas."

Harvey Robins, a former official in the Koch and Dinkins administrations, said the Ratner project is "antithetical" to building communities. "You're putting up monstrous buildings in a low-density area."

Brad Lander, director of the Center for Community and Environmental Development at the nearby Pratt Institute, somewhat sheepishly acknowledged that he was excited about a professional basketball team coming to Brooklyn.

But he said it was disturbing that Mr. Ratner will bypass the city's land-use review process. He also feared that so many politicians had jumped on Mr. Ratner's bandwagon that it will undercut any attempt to negotiate for public benefits: earmarking housing and jobs specifically for local residents, building adequate parking and roads to offset potential traffic congestion on game nights. While there is a housing crisis in Brooklyn, he said, there is also an affordability crisis that the city should address.

"I'm excited out of hometown pride and the possibility of affordable housing and jobs," said Mr. Lander, who lives in Park Slope. "But I'm very concerned that there will not be a meaningful public process in which the developer commits to things that could make this really work for Brooklyn."

Not in Our Backyard, Wary Residents Say

BY ANDY NEWMAN

Before the first N.B.A. tipoff at the gleaming arena that the developer Bruce C. Ratner envisions for the area straddling the Atlantic Avenue rail yards, Mr. Ratner will have to take on a scrappy squad from down the block: his neighbors.

A more ethnically, economically and commercially diverse crew would be hard to assemble, even in New York City. Within the three-block chunk imagined for demolition, there are artists and auto body shops, a world-famous violin builder, a cherished neighborhood bar and a small company that makes hats for church ladies.

There are no-longer-young yuppie homesteaders who bought pieces of empty warehouses in a crack-plagued neighborhood 15 years ago, and their forebears, immigrants from Mexico and Barbados who bought rundown houses and patched them up. There are professionals in million-dollar penthouses and big Pakistani and Palestinian families crowded into small apartments.

There is a Haitian car-alarm installer on Flatbush Avenue who just signed a 10-year lease on his garage, a Japanese print-maker on Pacific Street, and a clothing store named after Harriet Tubman.

Altogether, neighborhood organizers say, there are about 1,000 residents and workers in their unglamorous corner of Prospect Heights. All of them would have to move if Mr. Ratner gets the state to invoke its power of eminent domain and seize their buildings so he can erect an arena for the New Jersey Nets, which he is purchasing, and a vast retail and apartment complex.

And, for better or worse, they are taking their place in the long line of New Yorkers fighting quixotic-seeming battles against projects that threaten to devour their neighborhoods.

It is a mixed civic history, one filled with hard-fought failures - the efforts to stop the World Trade Center, Lincoln Center and Mr. Ratner's own MetroTech complex in downtown Brooklyn - and a few longshot successes, like the defeat of the highway project called Westway.

Patti Hagan, a leader of the Prospect Heights Action Coalition, pointed out the dozens of signs and banners ("Don't Destroy Our Homes") hanging in windows. "It's all-out war at this point," she said. "You only get one chance to fight, and if you don't take the opportunity to fight what you think is wrong right now, it will happen, you will be bulldozed and there's no going back."

The local councilwoman, Letitia James, said yesterday that in the 24 hours since word got out that Mr. Ratner had bought the Nets, she had fielded calls from "at least 100 residents" considering lawsuits. "Everyone is calling me in tears," she said.

But veteran organizers noted that development battles are wars of attrition, usually won by the party with the deepest pockets. Olive Freud, who led the fight against the Columbus Center project on Columbus Circle in Manhattan, recalled the day in 1987 when a formation of 800 protesters opened black umbrellas in Central Park to show the size of the shadow the building would cast.

"They chased it away," she said. "People thought they had won.'' But within a few years, she said, another developer emerged. "Eventually he got exactly what he wanted.''

Scott Bullock, a senior lawyer at the Institute for Justice, a Washington group that helps property owners fight eminent domain seizures, said a successful campaign needed to get organized and educated early, keep the pressure on politicians and make as much noise for as long as possible.

So far, the arena opponents seem to be on schedule. Ms. Hagan trumpeted a traffic study predicting that another 23,000 vehicles a day would use chronically clogged Flatbush and Atlantic Avenues.

They are studying environmental-impact laws and gearing up to fight the Empire State Development Corporation, which has the authority to condemn properties and pay the owners for them.

A pair of architects who live in part of a converted factory on Dean Street have even proposed an alternate development plan that involves razing the Atlantic Center mall, a much-maligned shopping complex that Mr. Ratner built just north of the proposed arena site. (Its newest tenants include two state agencies, the Department of Motor Vehicles and the Empire State Development Corporation itself, which together pay Mr. Ratner more than 1.5 million taxpayer dollars a year in rent.)

"If Mr. Ratner were willing to condemn his own property, he would be able to build his arena without displacing anyone from their homes," said one of the architects, Karla Rothstein. "It would be an improvement on the existing mall."

She said she could not understand how the doctrine of eminent domain, which allows the state to seize blighted or underutilized land for the public good, could be applied to an area where long-vacant factories have been rapidly transformed into chic condos, or to a development that would be largely run as a private profit-making enterprise.

As Mr. Ratner continues to line up support - he already has Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz on his side, and is working on the governor's office - Ms. Hagan said she felt that time was short.

All of this leaves people like Joe Pastore, a semiretired driver for the state who lives in a $400-a-month rent-stabilized studio just off Flatbush Avenue, angry and confused.

"I live at 473 Dean Street since 1967," he said. "For the government to tell me I've got to leave my home, that's not fair, you understand? This is no highway being built or no public building being built for the city or the state or the federal.

Mr. Pastore, 59, recalled that he had watched his block evolve from a strip packed with working man's bars to a desolate eyesore and back to a thriving street.

"There's been a lot of changes here," he said. "But I never thought I'd be one of them."

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

BrooklynRider

January 23rd, 2004, 10:34 AM

There are some very heavy hitters and strong legal groups backing the neighborhood groups opposing this plan. I think they are effectively focusing on Emminent Domain abuse. Ratner has an uphill battle. Neighborhood groups are attempting, with great affect, to shift the focus to Ratner's Atlantic Center. Everyone views IT as a blight on the neighborhood, a failed development, and are suggesting that it be demolished and incorporated into his development rather than pushing the new development into prospect heihgts. I think it is a good argument. Ratner can't defend Atlantic Center and this is going to undermine him. Letitia James has been very effective in forging a strong, committed coalition of communities and politicians to fight this.

NYguy

January 23rd, 2004, 11:01 AM

NEWSDAY...

Just How Many Would Be Ousted?
Numbers differ on displacement by arena

By Luis Perez
January 23, 2004

Getting a score on how many people would lose their homes to make way for a basketball arena in Downtown Brooklyn depends on whom you team up with.

Developer Bruce Ratner, who reached an agreement Wednesday to buy the New Jersey Nets and is pushing to house the team in a complex at Flatbush and Atlantic avenues, said in announcing the plan in December that 100 people would be relocated. His office has since said that number was an estimate and has conceded it could be higher.

Neighborhood resident Patti Hagan, who has led a group objecting to the plan since learning of it in August, said her door-to-door tally showed a gentrified mix of 864 people living in the six blocks slated for redevelopment.

U.S. Census records and figures provided by the city show the real net effect lies somewhere in between, about 350.

The issue is bitterly contested because residents would be forced out through eminent domain, the government's right to buy and take over land when it is deemed to serve a "public use."

According to the 2000 U.S. Census, 202 people lived in the six-block area. Most of them, 127 people, lived on the block that would house the stadium itself. The block is bound by Pacific and Dean streets and Flatbush and Sixth avenues, across from the Long Island Rail Road yard, over which the arena would also sit.

The other 75 residents, according to the Census, show up on the block bound by Dean and Pacific streets and Carlton and Vanderbilt avenues.

City Department of Finance records last updated in October, meanwhile, find 335 to 393 people living in 157 housing units on the same blocks, according a city official.

While both numbers are greater than Ratner's suggestion, Hagan said they don't account for recent growth.

"I know that to be an incorrect figure because I live here and I walk around here, and also because I'm a trained researcher," said Hagan, a former fact-checker for The New Yorker magazine.

Hagan cited four new co-op buildings as well as a private women's shelter on Dean Street, saying those residents would not show up on the Census or in the city data.

Kris

January 25th, 2004, 03:01 AM

January 25, 2004

DOWNTOWN BROOKLYN

To Some, the Nets Are a Slam Dunk, to Others a Technical Foul

By DENNY LEE

http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/2004/01/25/nyregion/basekt.184.jpg
The new arena would be only a few blocks from this stretch of Sixth Avenue, near Prospect Place.

Brooklynites who would be displaced by a new arena for the Nets are howling about the proposal, while many people who live elsewhere in the borough are big boosters of the idea. But among merchants and residents who are in between - living outside the area where the arena would be built but in the close vicinity - there is no such clear consensus.

Billy Bob, a manager of Jimmy Jazz, a clothing store on nearby Fulton Street, is happy about the idea, which, if it leaps numerous regulatory and other hurdles, will bring a 19,000-seat arena and other improvements to Flatbush and Atlantic Avenues in Downtown Brooklyn. Mr. Bob expects brisk sales for basketball paraphernalia emblazoned with the borough's name. "This will be great for business," he said. "It will bring more people in."

Ludlow Beckett, however, who owns a home furnishings store on Greene Avenue, is not convinced that basketball fans will patronize his shop. "They will be going to a Red Lobster, not to small, unique stores," said Mr. Beckett, president of the Fulton Area Business Association, which represents 60 merchants. "This won't bring foot traffic into our shops."

For some Brooklynites, the prospect of Manhattan-style vehicular traffic is particularly unsettling. "Whenever there is a game, Atlantic and Flatbush Avenues will become parking lots," said Councilwoman Letitia James, who represents much of the area, including Prospect Heights. "People moved outside of Manhattan to get away from the traffic and noise."

Clarence Nathan, co-owner of Premium Goods, a sneaker store on Fulton Street, says he is unsure what the arena's impact will be, but he tends to pessimism as both a businessman and a resident. "I live around here, and the traffic will be really bad,'' he said. "There will be no parking. I don't think it will increase business. They're coming here for the game, and then they'll leave. But who knows? Maybe we'll get more people."

Other merchants, however, are even more optimistic than Mr. Bob, the owner of Jimmy Jazz. Bob Killen, owner of La Bagel Delight on Seventh Avenue in Park Slope, sees the arena as a great economic boon for the borough. "It's going to create a lot of jobs,'' he said. "It will be great for business. We would like to open a store right there."

In some ways, reaction to the plan seems to vary according to how far someone lives from the site. Patti Hagan, who lives two blocks away, worries that the proposal will undo her eclectic, reviving neighborhood. "This great urban mix will be crushed," said Ms. Hagan, a member of the Prospect Heights Action Coalition.

Bernard Graham, who lives about 20 blocks away in Park Slope, has a rosier outlook.

"It's good for Brooklyn, it's good for Brooklyn's economy, and it's good for Brooklyn's self-esteem," said Mr. Graham, president of the Park Slope Civic Council, which represents 800 residents. "A lot of small cities identify with their professional sports teams, and Brooklyn is no different from a small city."

One group of residents seems to fully support the stadium: Nets fans. "Even at my age, I still get that feeling of being in the N.B.A. when I make a layup," said Darrell Canada, a 45-year-old construction worker who lives at the Raymond V. Ingersoll Houses. "Growing up in Brooklyn, I know that that court gives kids hope."

Mr. Canada added : "We're talking about bringing opportunities to an impoverished community. They're talking about losing a few parking spots."

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

Ernest Burden III

January 28th, 2004, 06:19 PM

I may have posted this here at one point, though probably not.

This current proposal is not the first stadium designed for the Flatbush/Atlantic area. This was what we would have gotten had the Dodgers not left. The architect was a student of Bucky Fuller, one of that time's most 'out-there' designers. Of course the new design is by the real thing, not a follower thereof.

http://www.architecturalvisions.com/dodgerstadium.jpg

I find the similarity of a glass-sided, round(ish) stadium interesting. I did this rendering for a magazine cover, I've always been fond of it.

It was a good idea then (1957) and its an even better idea now. This project is the best thing to be proposed for Brooklyn in recent memory. I am not surprised at the opposition, but to hold back an entire boro to protect the rights of a few hundred people to live in blight or semi-blight is ludicrous at best. Ratner has a history of giving people displaced by his project more than fair offers. He will likely improve their lives along with the whole of Brooklyn. The only people likely to suffer would be the activists, who thrive on keeping people in bad situations so that they can be seen as their advocates. Grease their palms, or see those palms raised in objection.

Enough ranting, the Gehry proposal is great and should be given every chance to be built!

Gulcrapek

January 28th, 2004, 06:37 PM

Ernest, I e-mailed you a while ago - did you get it? I didn't bother PM here because I never see you on. It's about St. John the Divine.

Ernest Burden III

January 28th, 2004, 08:48 PM

Ernest, I e-mailed you a while ago - did you get it? I didn't bother PM here because I never see you on. It's about St. John the Divine.

Yes, I did. I'm sorry I haven't gotten back to you yet. If I don't do something right away it ends up on another 'long list'.

I was meaning to post this rendering weeks ago, too, when the idea was first made public. I hope the new design doesn't just end up another interesting historical image like my rendering.

Ernest Burden III

Gulcrapek

January 28th, 2004, 09:04 PM

Ok, thanks. :D

(btw my original post can be deleted)

NYguy

January 29th, 2004, 10:59 AM

TLOZ Link5

January 29th, 2004, 01:46 PM

Imagine how dingy those concrete pilings would get over the next forty years—and for that matter, how much graffiti would have gotten on them in the '70s and '80s.

NYguy

March 5th, 2004, 08:53 AM

Daily News...

James aims to slam-dunk Ratner plan

By HUGH SON

The anti-Brooklyn Nets arena forces are ready to trot out a plan of their own.

Councilwoman Letitia James (D-Fort Greene) will announce Sunday that she has her own blueprint for the Prospect Heights site where developer Bruce Ratner would build a basketball arena and a complex of residential and office towers.

"You can be pro-development and bring jobs into the community without displacing families and businesses," said James, an outspoken critic of the Ratner plan.

The design James backs would avoid ousting residents because it would be built solely over the LIRR rail yards near Atlantic and Flatbush Aves., James added.

It includes a mix of commercial and affordable housing buildings - but no home court for the Nets, the NBA team Ratner recently paid $300 million for, James' spokeswoman Tania Gelin said.

"It will be on a human scale, not those massive towers Ratner is proposing," Gelin said.

Arena booster Borough President Marty Markowitz said it wasn't appropriate to respond to James' proposal until it was released.

"However," Markowitz sniped, "we're confident that her plan will not include an arena in her neighborhood."

A spokesman for Ratner declined to comment.

Under Ratner's plan, a 24-acre swath of Prospect Heights would be cleared for the Nets arena and a series of skyscrapers - and the state would use eminent domain to condemn the homes of current residents.

Details for the counterproposal aren't set yet, however - there will be a March 20 forum at Hanson Place Central Methodist Church in Fort Greene where architects and residents will discuss possible features.

"We're coming up with a menu of alternatives with a view of a more singular project down the road," said Marshall Brown, an architect who volunteered to help out on the proposal. "We want to look at the needs and desires of the neighborhood first," he added.

Frank Rogers, a Brooklyn architect and former city planner, said that James' idea sounded like a good one - but he admitted he wasn't impartial. He lives a block from where Ratner's arena will stand. "You could do an awful lot by restricting yourself just to the area of the yards," he said.

Gulcrapek

March 5th, 2004, 05:55 PM

I can see her plan already.

"A complex of five to ten story buildings, which would bring the development to a human scale, adjacent to a small park where our children can play."

billyblancoNYC

March 6th, 2004, 02:26 AM

5 to 10 stories??? It would be a, what say, 12 acre development.

A 10 acre park with a grade school and high school, and 10 three story brownstones, all for familes of 6 or more making no more that 3.5% of the city's median income.

Yee-hee.

Kris

March 31st, 2004, 09:19 AM

Nets arena plan may be scaled back to preserve housing

By Errol A. Cockfield Jr.
Staff Writer

March 31, 2004

Hoping to quiet some public outcry over an arena proposal for the Nets in Brooklyn, developer Bruce Ratner has asked renowned architect Frank Gehry to shift the plan's footprint to save some homes at the project's southern end.

Ratner's plan to condemn residences and businesses to make way for the arena has emerged as his tallest public relations hurdle, inspiring a localized, but aggressive opposition.

Bruce R. Bender, executive Vice President for Government and Public Affairs for Ratner's company, Forest City Ratner, said the firm has placed a high priority on displacing as few residents as possible.

"The challenge is to solve the condemnation issue," Bender said, noting that Ratner met with Gehry in Los Angeles last week to consider reconfiguring the site plan. Scores of homes, mostly apartments, are on the proposed site, but Bender could not say how many may be saved by adjusting the plan.

This comes as Forest City Ratner, the city, and state officials at the Empire State Development Corporation are crafting an agreement that would give the project a state economic development designation, allowing it to avoid local reviews.

Such a designation would allow Ratner to raze businesses even as legal battles over property value play out.

Siegel said 162 dwellings, representing 334 residents, would be razed along with 33 businesses that employ 235 people. A spokesman for Ratner said plan 146 residential units would be demolished, but the firm has not taken a census to determine the number of residents.

Responding to traffic concerns about the project, Bender said the firm has asked the city Department of Transportation to develop a pilot program to give residents exclusive parking on streets near the stadium.

Tom Cocola, a city DOT spokesman, said the agency had already been considering issuing such permits. The proposal to build the arena is part of a redevelopment plan to transform Atlantic Yards, near the intersection of Flatbush and Atlantic Avenues, into a mix of residential, office space, parks and retail.

Civil Rights attorney Norman Siegel, who represents Devlop Don't Destroy, the coalition fighting the project, said he will file suit if Ratner gains approvals for the project.

Siegel said eminent domain -- where governments seize land for public benefit -- should be limited to projects such as hospitals and highways.

"They can ... change the scale of the project so no one has to leave," he said. "Use of eminent domain is inappropriate." Bender disagreed, saying it would be impossible to build a 19,000 seat arena without affecting some property owners.

He also said the project would bring public benefits by generating some 10,000 permanent jobs, and economic activity from other major events in addition to professional basketball."This is going to be a public facility," Bender said.

Copyright © 2004, Newsday, Inc.

NYguy

March 31st, 2004, 09:54 AM

Hoping to quiet some public outcry over an arena proposal for the Nets in Brooklyn, developer Bruce Ratner has asked renowned architect Frank Gehry to shift the plan's footprint to save some homes at the project's southern end.

They won't be happy with that of course. Nothing short of cancelling all plans entirely will hush that crowd. Saving homes is not the real issue - being against the arena is just a natural, knee-jerk reaction for NIMBYs...

BrooklynRider

March 31st, 2004, 10:25 AM

NYguy

April 1st, 2004, 09:07 AM

They won't be happy with that of course. Nothing short of cancelling all plans entirely will hush that crowd. Saving homes is not the real issue - being against the arena is just a natural, knee-jerk reaction for NIMBYs...

I'm thinking that your prediction will prove wrong. They are not against development. The issue is stealing people's homes.

The issue is hardly that. If you listen closely to what they are saying, its: the office towers will overwhelm the neighborhoods, the stadium will bring in too much traffic, etc. The fact that the plan may cause the state to condemn some homes for the project just happens to be a convenient (and the strongest) issue for those opposed to the development. It wouldn't matter if not a single home was lost - they don't want that arena, nor do they want the towers that will come with it. Keep following this development, and you will see the shifts in arguments...

I'm sure some of the people, if not moved, would also be complaining about living for years in a construction zone. You can't win either way...

BrooklynRider

April 5th, 2004, 12:08 PM

From a negotiating point of view, you need to object to everything and be prepared to give some items away to get what you truly want. They can't argue on one issue, no leverage. The go in with a laundry list, focus on their hot button items, and, hopefully, leave the table with their core interests intact.

On another front... Ratner is proposing an additional 3,000 seat arena for amateur sporting events. There is already skeptical speculating that he is doing this to have any funding for the propsed Coney Island Sportsplex transferred to his project.

NYguy

April 12th, 2004, 10:15 AM

Newsday...

A moving alternative
Nets owner is looking into putting condo building on rollers and hauling it across street to make way for controversial development

April 12, 2004

There's something in the way he moves ...

Nets owner Bruce Ratner is thinking about using giant rollers to move one or more occupied residential buildings that would otherwise be destroyed if he builds the team's new arena on Atlantic Avenue.

Ratner's development company grabbed headlines in 1998 by rolling the Empire Theater 168 feet on 42nd Street in Manhattan. He may repeat the trick to accommodate his controversial 19,000-seat Brooklyn Nets arena in Prospect Heights, sources close to the developer told Newsday.

In the fall, Ratner dispatched engineers to the Seagoing Lofts condominium building at 24 Sixth Ave. to test the feasibility of relocating it to a site across the street, said an official familiar with the Nets project.

"Nothing they saw led them to believe it couldn't be done," the official said on condition of anonymity. "You might be able to literally save the building by rolling it 20 feet across the street. ... What you don't want to do is condemn buildings and displace people if you don't have to."

Under the plan, Ratner could move the 21-unit building, a spiffed-up red brick former Spalding sporting goods factory whose apartments fetch $500,000 or more, to a lot currently occupied by a warehouse.

"Seagoing" refers to the name of a fish company that was the building's last commercial occupant.

"I don't like the idea, and I personally don't care if it's feasible," loft owner Kieran O'Leary, 42, said yesterday. "I don't want to live next to an arena, anyway."

Marc Wancer, 36, peered at the rain-streaked stretch of Sixth Avenue that his loft would have to roll across and chuckled in disbelief.

"Ratner really must be a high roller," he said.

Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, who backs the Nets' move from New Jersey, urged residents to keep an open mind.

"From day one, my sense is that it's possible; if a building could be moved, then I would applaud that," he said. "Bruce and I have both spoken about it over the course of many months. It's among a smorgasbord of possibilities."

While an ambitious idea, it pales to the relocation of the landmarked, 3,400-ton Empire, which cost Forest City Ratner about $1.2 million.

Last month, Newsday reported that Ratner and architect Frank Gehry were considering revising the arena project to spare an unspecified number of occupied buildings that would otherwise have to be razed.

The total number of buildings that would have to be moved for the arena, residential towers and new commercial buildings is unclear.

Attorney Norman Siegel, who represents a coalition fighting the project, has said 162 dwellings with 334 residents could be displaced. The project, backed by the Bloomberg administration, could also displace 33 businesses employing 235 people, according to Siegel.

Gulcrapek

April 12th, 2004, 11:52 AM

I wish they could roll a whitish building farther down out of the way. But this is cool. It'll definitely be cool to watch (if it happens).

TLOZ Link5

April 12th, 2004, 01:40 PM

Detroit did it too during the construction of its baseball and football stadiums. The landmark Gem Theater was rolled from the proposed site of the stadiums to an empty lot 3,000 feet away.

TomAuch

April 12th, 2004, 06:05 PM

I wish they could roll a whitish building farther down out of the way. But this is cool. It'll definitely be cool to watch (if it happens).

If they do it, I hope anyone here from Brooklyn would get some pictures. That should definately be on the front page on WNY.

Gulcrapek

April 12th, 2004, 06:38 PM

I'm sure it'll be on the news, maybe even make CNN or MSNBC. Not every day entire buildings are rolled away.

NYguy

April 12th, 2004, 08:03 PM

"I don't like the idea, and I personally don't care if it's feasible," loft owner Kieran O'Leary, 42, said yesterday. "I don't want to live next to an arena, anyway."

At least they're being more honest now. I never knew railyards were so desirable, but then railyards don't bring new people...

NYguy

April 13th, 2004, 11:02 AM

Daily News...

Ratner touts Net savings on rents

By PAUL H.B. SHIN

Half of the new housing to be built with the proposed Nets arena in Brooklyn would be set aside for low- to middle-income families, developer Bruce Ratner pledged yesterday.

In a move that may make the controversial $2.5 billion project more acceptable to critics, Ratner said he'd reserve 20% of the proposed 4,500 new apartments as affordable units and another 30% as middle-income units. That would go far beyond what is required by law.

"I wouldn't do this project if I can't do that," Ratner told the Daily News Editorial Board. "Going about to just build luxury housing - that's not what I want to do."

An affordable apartment is defined as one where the monthly rent is less than $543 for a one-bedroom flat and $653 for two bedrooms. The monthly rent in a middle-income apartment must be less than $1,395 for a one bedroom and $1,810 for two bedrooms.

Ratner's 21-acre plan at Atlantic and Flatbush Aves. also calls for 2.4 million square feet of office and retail space, and a 19,000- to 20,000-seat arena. The plan is controversial because about 140 to 160 families would have to move out to make way for construction.

To qualify for tax-exempt bonds and tax abatements, real estate developers normally agree to what's called an 8-0/20 program, setting aside 20% of the units for affordable housing, while selling or renting 80% at market rate.

"You're not going to make as much money, but you're not going to have a marketing problem for 50% of the units," said Ratner, who is not legally bound to his housing goal.

Reaction by his critics was mixed."He has a socially conscious streak in him," said Bertha Lewis, executive director of the nonprofit community activist group ACORN.

But Arena opponent Francis Byrd is cautious. "We're a long way from being able to say we've been able to settle our differences."

NewYorkYankee

April 13th, 2004, 09:20 PM

Has the development started yet? Or has the whole plan been dismissed?

TLOZ Link5

April 14th, 2004, 02:32 AM

Ratner has the Nets. The arena plan will be going through a review eventually.

Kris

April 19th, 2004, 08:00 AM

Master Builder

Frank Gehry has designed everything from cardboard chairs to vodka bottles. His next project: remaking New York City

WEB EXCLUSIVE

By Jennifer Barrett
Newsweek

April 16 - If you’re hoping to persuade Frank Gehry to design something in your city, here’s one phrase you should not use: “the Bilbao effect.” He hates it. “When people approach me like that, I turn them down,” he tells NEWSWEEK. The architect understands that his iconoclastic design draws hundreds of thousands of admirers annually to Spain's Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, which opened in 1997. But he takes issue with the term, which was coined after cities around the world tried to emulate the museum's success by commissioning high-style architecture designed specifically to draw attention—and tourist revenues. Gehry is not comfortable with the whole phenomenon. He says his designs are meant to benefit and improve the communities where they will be built and he insists he wants to be a “good neighbor.”

But that is not always easy. Take the proposed New Jersey Nets complex in Brooklyn, N.Y. The $2.5 billion plan for commercial and residential development, which includes 2.1 million square feet of office space and 4,500 apartments, will also require the destruction of several area businesses and apartment buildings. That has residents in the area in an uproar. Gehry is working on revisions to the plan to address residents’ concerns. But he and developer Bruce Ratner, who owns the basketball team, still have a long way to go before the project is approved. In the meantime, his firm, Frank Gehry & Associates, is working on a new theater in Brooklyn, a hospital wing in Scotland and a museum extension in Gehry’s birthplace of Toronto, among other projects. His new SuperLight chair, made from aluminum and weighing just 6.5 pounds, just debuted at Milan’s Internazionale del Mobile and a new line of Polish vodka was just released in bottles and cases that he designed. NEWSWEEK’s Jennifer Barrett spoke with Gehry about how he decides which projects to pursue—whether they’re bottles or buildings—and what he’s got planned next. Excerpts:

NEWSWEEK: You recently designed watches for Fossil and a bottle for vodka. What’s the appeal for an architect in designing consumer products?

Frank Gehry: I am always attracted to things that are a challenge. It’s a quick fix. Architecture takes so long. That’s why you do the small stuff—instant gratification. And , my son, Alejandro, who is an illustrator artist, asked me if I would work with him … And my mother was born in Poland, and sometimes she spoke Polish in the house. So I found there was an emotional hook, as well, which I didn’t expect. I worked with Alejandro and we did many designs. I did an office building in Hanover where I used the twisted form, and it was the beginning of a study of those types of forms. And after all the interviews and meetings, this design [based on the Hanover building] was the design that everybody liked. When you look through the bottle, it plays with the light and creates illusory image. The Fossil watches were something I resisted at first … I said I’d do it, finally, if I could invent. The analog one is out. We are still playing with the other design; I don’t know where it will go.

[i]Are you trying to create products that are more accessible to people or is it the creative challenge that attracts you to doing these products?

I am happy when I see someone wearing the watch … But it’s more the challenge. I did a teapot, too. But I can’t do the decoration. I can only play with invention forms. I’m not going to compete with Michael [Graves] in Target.

We shouldn’t expect a line of Gehry-designed house wares at Target anytime soon?

No, but they have already talked to me.

You’ve got plenty of architectural projects you’re working on, too—the most controversial of which might be the proposed New Jersey Nets complex in Brooklyn. Did you expect such a strong reaction to the proposal?

Since I am not a Brooklynite, I didn’t expect it—especially since it [the land] was mostly over railroad tracks. But I am leaving that part up to Bruce Ratner. If it becomes an important fight, we won’t do it.

How are you dealing with residents’ complaints that the arena will mean more traffic and the loss of existing businesses and residential buildings?

Bruce Ratner and his team are mostly talking to the neighbors. We’re taking our direction from them. There are concerns and it is complicated … Bruce is asking me to design a new apartment building for them [neighbors whose apartments might be destroyed for the complex]. He’s got a specific site nearby.

How did you get involved in this project? It’s a little different than designing a museum or a concert hall.

Bruce is a good guy. The kind of work they’ve done isn’t startling architecture, but he’s said he wants to change that now. That’s why I’m there. They asked if it could be an intimate space like the Disney Concert Hall. That was the right thing to ask for. We want to create a feeling of togetherness. That’s what we are trying to do. And it’s not easy to do. Our latest design has people 20 feet closer to the court than any other arena. You can make it appear more intimate. But a lot of them [sports arenas] feel the opposite.

You’ve also got projects in Canada—an extension to the Art Gallery of Ontario—and a hospital wing in Scotland. How many projects does your firm take on at one time?

The hospital wing is a 2,000-square-foot area for cancer patients. The building in Canada is already designed; they are just waiting for the funding. I can only do four to five projects at a time. The projects go through different stages. It is usually a year and a half before they start construction after the design. We have maybe 20 projects now, but only four or five are in the early stages.

You are also involved in designing a satellite museum for the Guggenheim in New York. I understand the Guggenheim is now considering a site across 11th Avenue from the proposed New York Jets stadium in Manhattan. Where does that stand?

They’ve asked me to come on if they get this going, and I said yes. But until you actually start—until someone starts paying you, well…

The Guggenheim you designed in Bilbao, Spain, sparked strong reactions among those who’ve seen it. Are you surprised by the response the museum got?

It’s not going to be for everybody because it is a democracy where people have different opinions. I don’t think anything I have done is up to offending the world. I try to be a good neighbor. To do other than what I am doing, I would be talking down to them. I don’t want to do that. I’m used to people liking it or not liking it. That happens to everything. I think there’s architecture and there are buildings. Some aspire to architecture and hopefully some of us get there.

What do you think of the state of architecture now?

I think it’s more exciting now. If you go back to the '50s, when I first came out of school, there were only four or five known architects of any stature. And now there are about 50. People are more interested in architecture now than they were. And I think more people are getting to do things. There are more opportunities. There are more women in architecture. I hope that will grow. I think it will. There are a lot of talented women.

You’ve gone from designing minimalist cardboard furniture to modern titanium structures, designed with the help of computers.

I’m not that interested in repeating myself. Minimalist things seem antithetical now. It’s as pastiche as postmodernism was. It’s become a simple one-liner in this time, in this context. I never liked the idea of a simple room where all the furniture had to be set up a certain way, and you couldn’t throw your clothes on the floor or the furniture—it was more about posing. I love minimal artists. But I don’t think it applies to architecture, as well.

How would you describe your style now?

It’s personal, and it’s the experience I have at the time. I am looking for a sense of movement, which I got into in the vodka bottle with the glass. The reason I like it is that it creates this feeling without resorting to 19th-century decoration.

Many people tend to associate you with the Disney concert hall in L.A. or the Bilbao. Which one of your designs do you think best represents you and why?

That’s like asking which kid is your best. I love doing the urban thing, though. The Brooklyn project is closer to the stuff I am really interested in. The single building in one place is the reality, but I really enjoy getting involved at the urban scale with the community. I would love to do more urban housing, for middle- and lower-income residents. I started doing that in 1962, and there’s no real call for it now. People seem only interested in the "Bilbao effect" thing. I hate that. I’m only an architect, no matter what anybody says—a humble architect.

© 2004 Newsweek, Inc.

NYguy

April 19th, 2004, 08:22 PM

The Brooklyn Paper...

Ratner ups the ante
Says he might add ‘mini’ arena for kid sports to Netsplex site

By Jotham Sederstrom
April 3, 2004

Developer Bruce Ratner has been floating the notion that he might build a second sports facility — for amateur athletics — in addition to a professional basketball arena for the New Jersey Nets, on the site for the proposed Atlantic Yards development.

While it isn’t clear whether the facility would be housed within the proposed 800,000-square-foot, 19,000-seat professional basketball arena or elsewhere, amateur athletic sgroups working closely with Forest City Ratner say they have been told that a 3,000-seat “gym” adjacent to the arena was being considered.

“We have been talking to local sports folks and they’ve indicated an interest in an amateur athletic facility and that is something we would like to discuss further with them and consider,” said Joe DePlasco, a spokesman for Ratner, who declined to elaborate on where it would be located or how regularly it would be available to amateur organizations.

“We do very much want to incorporate a larger amateur athletic program overall into the effort,” Dellasco added. “And we are certainly open to discussing using the NBA facility for major school games, etc.”

Ratner’s Atlantic Yards site stretches east into Prospect Heights from the intersection of Atlantic and Flatbush avenues.

Richard Lipsky, a lobbyist for Ratner who works closely with amateur athletics groups and youth organizations, said that he’s met with more than 60 groups to discuss an outreach program sponsored by Forest City Ratner. He said that besides discounted tickets to Nets games and a possibility that the Nets arena would host Public School Athletic League (PSAL) championship basketball games, a flurry of other ideas have been suggested, although none are certain.

Vernon Jones, president of NYC Basketball.com, expressed doubt that the extra facility would be anything more than a practice facility for the New Jersey Nets, which Ratner agreed to purchase in January for $300 million. If that were the case, he said, area youth groups would likely only be allowed access on an irregular basis.

At an anti-Ratner rally on Sunday, and later in telephone conversations, Jones suggested that $67 million earmarked four years ago for the construction of Sportsplex, an amateur athletic arena planned for Coney Island, could be usurped by Ratner and put toward the Atlantic Yards project under the guise of being used as a facility for amateur athletics.

“The impression is that this is something that’s being done out of the goodness of his heart,” Jones said of Ratner’s recent outreach to youth groups and amateur athletics groups. “But it isn’t like that at all. My concern is that the arena should be used 365 days a year for amateur athletics because that’s what those funds are for.”

In 2000, city, state and Brooklyn officials earmarked $67 million toward the construction of the Sportsplex in Coney Island. Then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani pledged $30 million and the state legislature and Gov. George Pataki each offered $15 million. Then-Borough President Howard Golden secured $7 million.

Sharon Toomer, a spokeswoman for Borough President Marty Markowitz, said this week that Borough Hall’s portion of the money is still on the table for the Sportsplex, although she didn’t know if it would also become available to other amateur athletic proposals as more submissions surface.

“It was earmarked for the Sportsplex and it’s still there,” said Toomer, who added that the funds would not be available until 2006 and would not be divided among multiple groups.

Since it was first conceived in 1987, the plan for the 12,000-seat Sportsplex has been steeped in difficulties, and was essentially shelved after Giuliani shunned it in favor of building Keyspan Park, a baseball stadium for the minor league Brooklyn Cyclones adjacent to the Sportsplex site.

The plan was revived after it was listed as a site for indoor volleyball in the city’s bid for the 2012 summer Olympic games, but that plan has since cooled in light of Ratner’s plan for a downtown arena.

Kenneth Adams, president of the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce and a key supporter of the Sportsplex, said that while the funding from the borough president is still available, he didn’t know if the same held true for the remaining $60 million.

He said the future of Sportsplex would become clear by the end of the year when the design firm of David Brody and Bond, and the accounting firm of Ernst and Young, chosen to lead Coney Island’s redevelopment, release their preliminary proposal for the area.

“These are two absolutely distinct projects, with distinct funding needs,” Adams said of the Downtown Brooklyn arena and Sportsplex.

Two Ratner spokesmen said this week that those amateur athletics funds have not been discussed as a part of their plans.

“That’s not even on the table, we haven’t even looked at that,” said Lipsky. “This issue of financing isn’t the most challenging. It’s the ability to configure the [amateur sports] gym within the footprint without losing something else necessary to make a viable project.”

And Toomer said that Ratner’s group, with whom the borough president has worked closely on the basketball arena plan, has not approached Markowitz about the Sportsplex money.

Carlton Screen, executive director of the Flatbush Youth Association, said that the possibility of showcasing PSAL championships, or even playoffs, at the Ratner arena would be seen as great progress for amateur athletics in Brooklyn. Now, he said, playoff games are held in the Bronx, at Lehman College, and championship games are played at Madison Square Garden in Manhattan.

“This will give the amateur world in Brooklyn an opportunity to express itself,” said Screen, who won city championships in 1965 as a captain of Erasmus High School’s basketball and baseball teams.

Both he and Richard Kosik, a retired special education instructor who has taught at Fort Hamilton High School in Bay Ridge, said that they have met with Lipsky several times to discuss ways in which Ratner could reach out to youth groups, including building the smaller facility.

Kosik said that in at least three meetings Lipsky told him that facility was being considered as a development adjacent to the arena, although he didn’t tell him precisely where it would fit in the already cramped Atlantic Yards landscape.

“I think that it could be a positive thing, with the Nets coming to Brooklyn,” said Kosik. “Because all indications are that they would be very community-oriented and fan-friendly.”

NYguy

April 19th, 2004, 09:11 PM

Three videos on Brooklyn and the arena development. Includes interviews with Marty Markowitz and some residents that may be displaced...

http://www.thirteen.org/nyvoices/features/brooklyn_bounce.html

Kris

April 22nd, 2004, 12:55 PM

Intelligencer

Architect Digest

Frank Gehry’s New York plans—built and scrapped.

By Jeff VanDam

http://www.newyorkmetro.com/nymetro/news/features/architectdigest040419_1_200.jpg
Unrelated Visions: A hotel for Ian Schrager at Astor Place and One Times Square.

Each month seems to bring news of another Frank Gehry project: the Nets arena, a theater, and now rumors of a new Guggenheim. But before one gets seduced—or, as with some Brooklynites, enraged—by renderings in the papers, it’s worth recalling that many of the architect’s past New York designs haven’t been realized. A tally of the major ones.

THE BUILT:

Condé Nast cafeteria, 4 Times Square. Completed: 2000. Cost: $30 million. A titanium-walled canteen.

Issey Miyake store, Tribeca. Completed: 2001. Cost: Undisclosed. Includes a rippling titanium sculpture.

THE PENDING:

Brooklyn Nets arena. Expected cost: $500 million. An opportunity “to build a neighborhood from scratch,” said Gehry.

Theatre for a New Audience, Fort Greene. Expected cost: $22 million. A 299-seater across from BAM.

InterActiveCorp Headquarters, Chelsea. Expected cost: $138 million. An Ikea-storage-cabinet of a tower for Barry Diller’s Web companies.

THE NEVER REALIZED:

Guggenheim Museum, financial district. Included a glass underbelly over the East River. Canceled in 2002. There’s now talk of a Guggenheim on the West Side, but a spokesman says, “It’s way too premature to speculate on that”—or on Gehry’s involvement in it.

New York Times HQ, midtown. A twisting high-rise with the Times’ logo on the side. Gehry withdrew from the 2000 competition, which was won by Renzo Piano.

Astor Place Hotel. A tower for Ian Schrager resembling a statue draped in a sheet. Planned in 2000, then dropped.

Lincoln Center renovation. Included a huge glass canopy over the plaza. Commissioned in 2001 but scrapped by Lincoln Center in 2002; Diller Scofidio + Renfro just unveiled their plans.

One Times Square. Gehry proposed swathing the ball-drop tower in fabric and projecting cartoon characters on its side. Commissioned by Warner Bros. in 1996. But then the company stopped returning his calls.

From the April 26, 2004 issue of New York Magazine.

billyblancoNYC

April 22nd, 2004, 01:27 PM

Does anyone know how they will roll hundred year old buildings? I know it's been done before, but how?

NoyokA

April 22nd, 2004, 03:55 PM

Also Pending is a 55-60 storey tower in lower manhattan.

NewYorkYankee

April 22nd, 2004, 07:54 PM

Okay Im confused, sorry yall, :lol: Gehry is designing the arena in BK...right? Are they building this arena thing now...???

NYguy

April 25th, 2004, 05:02 AM

Ratner just keeps making the deal sweeter for the opposition....(Brooklyn Paper)

RATNER PAYOFF: Developer suggests he’d give victims of eminent domain new homes near arena

http://www.brooklynpapers.com/html/issues/_vol27/27_16/Ratner,Bruce.GM.jpg

Developer Bruce Ratner.

By Deborah Kolben
April 24, 2004

If you can’t beat ’em, build ’em a new building.

Plowing ahead with plans to construct a $2.5 billion arena, office and housing complex in Prospect Heights, developer Bruce Ratner is now looking to construct a new building to house some of the residents his plan would displace.

Ratner and architect Frank Gehry have been in discussions about the building, according to Ratner spokesman Joe Deplasco, who said “a number of sites” were being considered for its construction.

“It’s among the various options we’re considering at this point,” Deplasco said.

Gehry, in fact, told Newsweek online this week, “Bruce is asking me to design a new apartment building for them [neighbors whose apartments might be destroyed by the complex]. He’s got a specific site nearby.”

As part of the 21-acre plan, Ratner would build a 20,000-seat basketball arena for his recently purchased New Jersey Nets, flanked by four sweeping office towers and buildings containing 4,500 residential units.

The plan is dependent upon the state’s condemnation of more than two square blocks of privately owned property.

For the past several months, Ratner has been going head to head with Prospect Heights residents who would be evicted or otherwise impacted by construction of his Atlantic Yards project. And few of them interviewed this week were thrilled with the idea of moving into one of his buildings. Others declined to talk about their discussions with Ratner.

“Personally, I would want to stay in my home. And if I had no other choice but to move, I would want to move into a home of my choice,” said Dan Michaelson, who owns a condominium at 24 Sixth Ave., the A.G. Spalding Building, which would face the wrecking ball under Ratner’s plans.

At the same time, Ratner is, according to sources, floating a new plan that would require less use of eminent domain.

According to one official, the new schematic would save half of the block between Flatbush and Sixth avenues.

NYguy

April 25th, 2004, 05:17 AM

http://www.developdontdestroy.org/pieces/plan.gif

Of course, the opposition will gladly accept donations to help their cause....
http://www.developdontdestroy.org/donate.php

NewYorkYankee

April 27th, 2004, 05:00 PM

Me too, Hopefuly they'll do it.

TLOZ Link5

April 27th, 2004, 07:29 PM

Whatever causes the least amount of demolition possible.

NYguy

April 30th, 2004, 07:52 PM

Brooklyn Paper (May 1 edition)

Council airs Nets arena on Tuesday

By Deborah Kolben

As developer Bruce Ratner moves forward with plans to build his Atlantic Yards development, the City Council has scheduled the first official public hearing on the 21-acre proposal.

The public hearing is scheduled for Tuesday, May 4, at 10 am inside the council chambers at City Hall.
Both opponents and proponents of the plan are invited to testify.

The sweeping, $2.5 billion commercial and retail development includes a 19,000-seat professional basketball arena, four soaring office towers and 4,500 units of housing.

While Ratner has the support of high-ranking officials including Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Gov. George Pataki, he still faces opposition from residents in the footprint and surrounding neighborhoods.

As part of the plan, Ratner is asking the state to use its power of eminent domain to condemn more than two square blocks of privately owned land. The MTA has said that it has not yet agreed to sell Ratner the air rights to build over the 11-acre Long Island Rail Road storage yards.

The project will likely be co-sponsored by a state agency, such as the Empire State Development Corp., and will therefore not be required to pass the city’s stringent land use review process.

NYguy

May 2nd, 2004, 06:03 AM

Alternate visions for the site...

http://www.davissportsplex.homestead.com/files/west_section.jpg
http://www.davissportsplex.homestead.com/

http://www.brooklynartistscommon.homestead.com/files/west_arts_perspective.JPG
http://www.brooklynartistscommon.homestead.com/

NoyokA

May 2nd, 2004, 07:25 PM

What the hell is that?

TLOZ Link5

May 2nd, 2004, 10:07 PM

What the hell is that?

The community proposal for the Atlantic Yards site... :roll:

krulltime

May 2nd, 2004, 11:32 PM

Is that the best the community can come up with?

:x BORING!!!

NYguy

May 3rd, 2004, 09:42 AM

Is that the best the community can come up with?

:x BORING!!!

As boring as those renderings are, it would probably be worse in real life. And a waste of space...

Fan club Brooklyn NETS....
http://sports.groups.yahoo.com/group/Brooklynnets/

ZippyTheChimp

May 3rd, 2004, 09:58 AM

You people have no aesthetic awareness. Can't you see how the statue is evocative of Big Willy.

billyblancoNYC

May 3rd, 2004, 02:48 PM

From http://groups.yahoo.com/group/coneyisland2/

From: "Giovanni" <brkl97@a...>
Date: Fri Apr 30, 2004 7:45 pm
Subject: BROOKLYN NETS NEED YOU!!!!!!!!!!

Folks, I have said before I was in close contact with the Nets team,
and now is when I call for help from the group... On TUESDAY, there
will be a City Council hearing on the Nets and the Arena and i just
got a call asking to round up all the supporters we can to be
there... this is not just please show your support this is big...
SO...the information follows and please pass it on to WHOEVER you
know that can come and support the team and the arena... this is an
important day, more important than I can stress... I would love to
see HUNDREDS of supporters there if we could...Thanks so much, I'll
get to any questions soon... info is as follows:
When: Tuesday, May 4th at 10:00AM

Where: City Hall, Council Chambers, before the Committee on Economic
Development.

Transportation: W or R to City Hall, 4, 5, or 6 to Brooklyn
Bridge/City Hall

From: "Giovanni" <brkl97@a...>
Date: Fri Apr 30, 2004 8:12 pm
Subject: NETS RALLY 2

P.S...
I just called and found out that people should be there as early
as possible, but no latr than 9a.m. so they can get in on the
event...and... the first 250 people who come out to support the team
and arena will be thanked with the first official Brooklyn Nets t-
shirt ever... so again, we need ya... now's the time!

NYguy

May 4th, 2004, 08:52 AM

I was going to attend the hearing today, but decided not to. Maybe someone else will be there to report on events. It won't affect the course of development however....

More dates for various Brooklyn developments:
(from nostadium.homestead.com)

Public Meetings

Tuesday, May 4, 10am. PUBLIC HEARING on the Ratner Nets Arena Proposal held by the Economic Development Committee of the City Council. CITY HALL, 250 BROADWAY In the main Chambers of the City Council. Arrive early and bring identification. We need people to show thier support and attend. There will be some time for Public Comment, so Sign in to speak when you arrive

Wednesday,May 12 @6:30 P.M. Community Board 6 General Board Meeting. Location Brooklyn Boro Hall 209 Joralemon St. Community room. To discuss Downtown Brooklyn Plan. Open to the public. PLEASE ATTEND!

Wednesday, May 12, 7pm. Open Community Discussion on the Proposed Nets Arena and High Rise Complex. LOCATION: To Be Determined.

Thursday, May 13, 6pm. Community Board 6: Landmarks/Land Use Committee - Public Hearing on the IKEA Red Hook Project. PAL Miccio Centern110 West 9th Street, GymnasiumnRed Hook. No pre-registration is necessary. Speakers will be given up to 3 minutes. Written statements are welcome and can be submitted to "info@brooklyncb6.org" The anti-Ikea group wants to pack the place so it will be very hard for the board to vote overwhelmingly in favor of it, in spite of what the Executive Committee wants.

NYguy

May 4th, 2004, 08:58 AM

NY Post...

NETS GOOD $PORTS

By GERSH KUNTZMAN

May 4, 2004 -- The Nets will be a net gain.

Developer Bruce Ratner's proposed arena for the New Jersey Nets in Downtown Brooklyn would pump more than $800 million into city and state coffers over the next 30 years, according to a study by a sports economist.

Andrew Zimbalist, an economics professor at Smith College in Massachusetts, is critical of using public money for arenas. But this proposal is different, he said, because the city and state will put up relatively little money, and moving the Nets to Brooklyn will capture millions of dollars in tax revenue collected by New Jersey.

"It's a very attractive project," Zimbalist said. "I think my $812 million is a conservative estimate."

He said the report left out "hundreds of millions of dollars" in additional revenue - such as property taxes of new residents and the tax on any profit the Nets would make - because they are impossible to estimate accurately.

Critics scoffed at the report, which was commissioned by Ratner himself and released on the eve of today's City Council hearing on the $2.5 billion arena, housing and retail complex.

"This is a self-serving document written by a hired hand," said Councilwoman Letitia James (WFP-Brooklyn), whose district includes the intersection of Atlantic and Flatbush avenues, where the arena would be built.

James pointed out that Zimbalist admits in a footnote that his attendance and construction-cost numbers came from Ratner.

Zimbalist denied that his books were cooked. "These are my numbers and my analysis. The methodology is correct," he said.

According to Zimbalist, the city and state would spend $690 million on infrastructure improvements and other costs over the next 30 years. But that money is offset by the $1.5 billion in tax revenues from the project. (All figures are based on current dollars).

A large chunk of the revenue will come from income taxes on the salaries of high-priced players. Those income taxes, estimated at $110 million over the next 30 years, are collected by New Jersey.

Ratner has promised to create affordable housing in the 4,500-unit project. James, whose committee will hold a hearing today, questioned Ratner's definition of "affordable."

"This report says that 'middle-income' is up to $142,000," she said. "That's not middle income in my community. That's luxury housing."

BrooklynRider

May 4th, 2004, 10:02 AM

Rep. Major Owens is pushing the Brooklyn Navy Yard. He cites the 300 acres are already city-owned, making the review and approavl process easier and less costly. However, he also cites that the available land makes it possible to create 25,000 parking spaces. This, I think, is totally opposite what thecity should be looking at. The one thing I like about Ratners Atlantic Yards is its reliance and assumption of mass transit usage. An arena surrounded by a 25,000 space parking lots is fine for Indiana, butnot for Brooklyn. Shea Stadium sits isolated in a parking lot and that lot only has 10,000 spaces.

NYguy

May 4th, 2004, 07:22 PM

Not to mention that is exactly what the team is trying to move away from. People have also been pushing Coney Island, but the site won't change. I've seen some coverage of the hearing on television, nothing new was said. This project will get done.

Kris

May 5th, 2004, 07:35 AM

May 5, 2004

Arena Developer Rethinking Condemnation of Houses

By DIANE CARDWELL

Building a glittering new Nets arena over the Atlantic Avenue railyards in Brooklyn may not require condemning more than 100 residences through eminent domain after all, an executive behind the arena proposal said yesterday.

"We're working diligently to substantially reduce the amount of residential condemnation and eminent domain that will be part of this project," James Stuckey, executive vice president of the developer, Forest City Ratner, said at a hearing of the City Council's Committee on Economic Development. "We're looking at how we can reshape the plan, we're talking with residents and we are looking at how we can substantially reduce and possibly eliminate the need for residential condemnation."

The whole project is roughly bounded by Atlantic, Vanderbilt and Flatbush Avenues and Dean Street.

The proposed development, which would bring a Frank Gehry-designed arena along with 4,500 residential units and four office towers to the crossroads of Prospect Heights, Fort Greene and Downtown Brooklyn, has been hotly debated since it became public last December.

Proponents, who include Bloomberg administration officials and labor leaders, say that the project will provide jobs, reasonably priced housing, cachet, tourism and other economic activity. Opponents say it will worsen traffic, ruin the hard-won character of revitalized neighborhoods and bring only transient jobs or those paying minimum wage.

But the reliance on eminent domain, a tool long used by government to acquire land for public projects, has been perhaps the most controversial element, conjuring images of ordinary Brooklynites being tossed from their homes by a developer.

The original proposal would have required the state to condemn property around the railyards that now includes about 140 residences and 25 businesses employing roughly 200 people, according to a Forest City Ratner spokesman. (Forest City Ratner is the New York Times Company's partner in developing the new Times headquarters on Eighth Avenue in Manhattan, in part through the use of eminent domain.)

"We object to the use of eminent domain to condemn the private property of residents and business owners of Prospect Heights for the benefit of one private developer, especially when that developer owns property adjacent to the proposed condemnation site which could be used for the proposed development," Norman Siegel, a lawyer for a group called Develop Don't Destroy, said in testimony submitted to the Council.

Some opponents of the Atlantic Yards plan have suggested putting the arena at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, but Mr. Stuckey countered that only the Atlantic Avenue area had sufficient space and access to transportation to be feasible for the stadium as well as the planned office towers and residences.

After the hearing, Mr. Stuckey declined to elaborate on how the company planned to avoid condemnations, but said that it was considering redrawing the physical outlines of the plan and offering generous buyouts to property owners. "We think that there's a win here, that we can do this project, create these jobs, create this housing and do it in a way where we don't have to condemn people's homes as well," he said.

Still, the hearing appeared to do little to assuage concerns over jobs, housing and financing for the project among the council members, who do not have much power over the process because it is likely to be controlled by the state.

Andrew M. Alper, president of the city's Economic Development Corporation, told the Council that it was too early to know precisely how much the city would contribute to the project, or in what form, but that the cost of the city's contribution would be less than the projected revenues from moving the Nets to New York and from the arena itself.

But for some council members, the talk of projected jobs and low-cost housing in the absence of hard numbers and concrete assurances was not enough. Letitia James, who represents Fort Greene, said that she had been at the Ingersoll and Whitman public housing projects over the weekend, where, she said, unemployment still hovers near 75 percent, as it did when Forest City Ratner built the Metrotech development nearby.

"Do you know how many dreams that I saw standing at Ingersoll-Whitman, dreams that were deferred and destroyed?" she said.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

Kris

May 5th, 2004, 09:26 AM

Nets arena plan aired out

BY ERROL A. COCKFIELD JR. AND CURTIS L. TAYLOR
Staff Writers

May 4, 2004, 8:18 PM EDT

Several hundred Brooklyn residents filled the City Council chamber Tuesday to voice concerns about the $2.5-billion development project that would include a new basketball arena for the Nets.

Their concerns included the fear of losing their homes, job creation and traffic issues.

Bill Howell, chairman of the Downtown Brooklyn Advisory and Oversight Committee, said the project's developer, Forest City Ratner, met or exceeded expectations on previous projects developed in the borough in the past 17 years.

"When Metro Tech was proposed, there were critics who said that Forest City would not provide jobs to the community," said Howell, president of Howell Industries, a minority-owned business in Red Hook. "They were wrong, and the evidence is clear. Just check the certified payrolls and the addresses of the workers at the job site and they will show that jobs actually went to the community," he told the council's Economic Development Committee.

Homeowner Chris Owens said the city failed to make a convincing case for the development.

"The city cannot articulate the benefits," he said. "There are a lot of assumptions at the moment."

Jim Stuckey, vice president for Forest City, testified that adjustments were being made to the existing plan to save more of the 160 dwellings earmarked for demolition under the current plan.

The arena is part of a redevelopment plan to transform Atlantic Yards, near the intersection of Flatbush and Atlantic avenues, into a mix of residential, office and retail space and parks.

Thirty-three businesses also would be demolished under the existing plan, according to opponents.

Monday, Forest City issued an economic study prepared by Andrew Zimbalist, a Smith College economist, who concluded that the Atlantic Yards development would net $812 million of additional revenue for the city and state over the next 30 years. The new revenue would come mainly from taxes on the incomes of players and team executives, as well as commercial and residential development adjacent to the proposed arena.

Forest City Ratner retained Zimbalist, who has written extensively about the negatives of sports arenas, in December.

Zimbalist said he is a proponent of the Downtown Brooklyn project because it departs from the typical stand-alone model. About 1.9 million square feet of office space and 4,500 new housing units would surround the arena.

"That makes it different from other sports projects," Zimbalist said.

Copyright © 2004, Newsday, Inc.

NYguy

May 6th, 2004, 09:06 AM

More dreams.......(Daily News)

Grand designs for Nets arena
One plan places it at the navy yard

By PAUL H.B. SHIN AND HUGH SON

http://www.nydailynews.com/ips_rich_content/38-nets_arena.JPG

One of the designs for proposed Nets arena that would allow many neighbors of the Atlantic Ave. site to keep their homes.

Brooklyn politicians, architects and activists revealed their designs this week for the Prospect Heights site where mega-developer Bruce Ratner wants to build an NBA arena.

The new proposals include one that calls for the arena to be built at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, instead of over the Atlantic Ave. rail yards, where Ratner is seeking to develop it.

But the designs were overshadowed by Ratner's surprise announcement on Tuesday that he will try to reduce or eliminate the need to displace residents - a major complaint of foes of his plan.

Some opponents groused that Ratner was trying to appease his critics with hollow promises.

"I think he's trying to steal the thunder of one of many, many arguments we have against this project," said Daniel Goldstein, political chairman of the grass-roots group Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn.

"He didn't make the commitment they wouldn't use eminent domain, and that's what we've been asking for," added Norman Siegel, the lawyer representing the 140 to 160 families facing eviction under Ratner's $2.5 billion plan.

Marshall Brown, an architect and urban designer working with City Councilwoman Letitia James (WFP-Prospect Heights), has drawn a design calling for buildings five to 10 stories tall, interlaced with parkland, to be built on the rail yard site. The plan also would include 700,000 feet of retail space.

"We're building only over the yards, so we're not removing a single building from the site," Brown said.

Rep. Major Owens (D-Brooklyn) - a longtime proponent of developing the Brooklyn Navy Yard - said that the waterfront site had 300 acres that would better suit an arena for the NBA's New Jersey Nets, the team Ratner recently purchased and wants to move to Brooklyn.

"You could see it from Manhattan and the three bridges," Owens said. "It would be a terrific tourist attraction."

Meanwhile, Joel Towers, an architect and director at Parsons School of Design, offered two ways Ratner could develop a sports arena on Atlantic Ave. without venturing onto private property.

Towers' designs involve either placing the arena on a raised platform above Atlantic Ave., or on property Ratner already owns at the Atlantic Mall. The second plan would require the developer to raze his own buildings and adjust Atlantic Ave. to go around the arena.

Siegel vowed again this week that he wouldn't rest until Ratner issued a guarantee that no resident whose property is endangered by the plan would be forced to move.

"The fact that some people might be spared is a step in the right direction, but I have to be concerned about everybody," he said.

NYguy

May 6th, 2004, 09:12 AM

But the designs were overshadowed by Ratner's surprise announcement on Tuesday that he will try to reduce or eliminate the need to displace residents - a major complaint of foes of his plan.

"I think he's trying to steal the thunder of one of many, many arguments we have against this project," said Daniel Goldstein, political chairman of the grass-roots group Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn.

I wish they would let us in on the "many, many" arguments they have against this project, all of which undoubtedly fall under the "we just don't want it" category. Of which the simple answer is to MOVE!

Anyway, its good that they now KNOW the cause they've built their entire argument around is being taken right out from beneath them.

NYguy

May 7th, 2004, 08:51 PM

Brooklyn Paper

Coalition cracking - Source: Owners starting to cut deals

By Deborah Kolben

A coalition of property owners who banded together to fight developer Bruce Ratner’s Atlantic Yards basketball arena, office tower and housing proposal showed signs this week of crumbling.

Only a handful of tenants and homeowners living on the two blocks facing condemnation under the state’s authority of eminent domain came to testify at Tuesday’s City Council hearing. Of the project’s opponents who came to testify, most do not live on the site.

The group, known as Develop Don’t Destroy-Brooklyn, who banded together earlier this year to hire civil rights attorney Norman Siegel to fight the plan, has hosted several large-turnout rallies in the past few months, comprised largely of the people who would either be evicted or have their property condemned if the plan is approved.

But aside from the conspicuously slim turnout at Tuesday’s public hearing, there were other, more overt signs of a fractured coalition this week. Anti-Atlantic Yards posters have come down from the entryway and most windows of 636 Pacific St., one of many buildings that would face the wrecking ball to make way for the 21-acre residential, retail and commercial complex.

Why have the residents gone silent?
Because they’re negotiating with Ratner to sell their homes, sources told The Brooklyn Papers.

Ratner is the principal owner of Forest City Ratner, best known for constructing the Metrotech office complex in Downtown Brooklyn.

Just last week, all but two of the 31 condominium owners at 636 Pacific St., a nine-story building known as the Atlantic Art Building, were negotiating with Ratner to sell their apartments, sources told The Brooklyn Papers.

The art-deco former storage building, converted into luxury condos last year, is just one of many buildings facing condemnation as part of the plan.

Forest City Ratner spokesman Joe DePlasco declined to comment on tenant negotiations.

But at Tuesday’s hearing Forest City Ratner Vice President James Stuckey said the company was trying to reduce the amount of condemnation and said they may be able to do the plan “in a way where we don’t have to condemn people’s homes.”

It was unclear whether Stuckey meant shifting the arena or buying out residents.

The sweeping, $2.5 billion Atlantic Yards plan proposes to build a basketball arena for Ratner’s recently purchased New Jersey Nets and 17 towers over the Long Island Rail Road storage yards and adjacent blocks emanating from the intersection of Flatbush and Atlantic avenues and stretching east into Prospect Heights.

Daniel Goldstein, a resident at 636 Pacific St. and a leader of Develop Don’t Destroy-Brooklyn, said he was not involved in negotiations with Ratner, but declined to comment on his neighbors’ negotiations.

“If he is able to remove people from their homes by offering buyout packages, those negotiations were always in bad faith because they always had the threat of state condemnation behind them,” said Goldstein, who testified at Tuesday’s hearings.

Those sentiments were echoed by Patti Hagan, a spokeswoman for the Prospect Heights Action Coalition, a local group also formed to fight the Ratner arena plan.

Asked about why the other almost 300 residents facing eminent domain eviction did not show, Goldstein said, “People have to work.”

Salvatore Perry, an architect who, with his wife, owns an apartment at 475 Dean St., which is also facing condemnation, said his building had not made a deal with Ratner but declined to comment on any ongoing negotiations.

Joel Towers, an urban designer and renter in the building, who testified at Tuesday’s hearing, said the tenants had met with Ratner in January and even had a video conference with architect Frank Gehry, who is designing the arena and surrounding office and residential towers.

While owners are busy negotiating, several renters are worried about what will happen to them. Zafra Whitcomb, who moved into the building almost five years ago, said he doesn’t know what he will do.

“Ratner is not negotiating with tenants,” Whitcomb said.

ZippyTheChimp

May 8th, 2004, 12:18 AM

Displaced renters could be offered an incentive package to remain in the neighborhood. Make people happy, and you break up stubborn opposition.

NoyokA

May 8th, 2004, 12:34 AM

Promising! Something great to come home to.

BrooklynRider

May 10th, 2004, 11:04 AM

I think that tackling the protests of "eminent domain abuse" by faithfully negotiating is a shrewd business move. Ratner is experiencing extremely bad criticism and, as a result, a P.R. nightmare with his initial proposal. Local Brooklyn papers are all over him for his fortress like developments that seem to be built to "protect" tenants from the neighborhoods. Atlantic Center and Metrotech were scathingly ripped to shreds by locals. I think he was wholly unprepared for the ferocity.

He is going to buy out property owners, who I think are realizing that even if they save their property, they are still going to be situated next to an arena, attracting its fair share of drunks and rowdies. Negotiating a deal out of there is the smart path.

NYguy

May 14th, 2004, 08:43 AM

http://www.nydailynews.com/ips_rich_content/558-FRONT_BIG.jpg

Slam dunk!
Residents get a cool mil to get out of Ratner's way

By HUGH SON and NANCY DILLON

Real estate tycoon Bruce Ratner is showing Brooklyn homeowners the money.

He's turning residents of one building into instant millionaires so they'll go quietly - letting him knock down their homes to make way for his controversial $2.5 billion Nets arena and housing complex.

That means people who paid about $600,000 for a swank three-bedroom, 1,300-foot condo just last year are being offered a cool $1.2 million to flee.

One couple is bolting to trendy Chelsea, where a million bucks can buy a corner loft with 11-foot ceilings and a roof deck, according to real estate Web site Corcoran.com.

Another woman said she hopes to stay in Brooklyn, where the bulging pot of newfound cash can buy a seven-bedroom "mansionette" on tony Prospect Park West.

A move to Staten Island could land these residents in a brick colonial estate on ritzy Todt Hill, down the street from the late mob boss Paul Castellano's storied neo-Federal mansion.

"Many people really love this building, but Ratner understood that we're young and not that rooted yet in the community," said one resident of 636 Pacific St. who requested anonymity.

"It's a lot of money," said another woman, who did not want her name used, citing an internal building pact to keep mum about the deal.

Nearly all the 30 owners in the eight-story condo - a renovated warehouse called the Atlantic Arts Building - are negotiating with Forest City Ratner.

One holdout remains.

"They're kind of mimicking what they did at MetroTech, which is to treat people equitably," said Atlantic Arts Building developer Marc Freud, referring to the downtown Brooklyn office and university complex Forest City Ratner built in the early 1990s.

Ratner recently purchased the Nets and is set on moving them to Brooklyn. He commissioned renowned architect Frank Gehry to design a 21-acre residential and commercial complex over and around the Long Island Rail Road's Atlantic Yards.

But the project - which would displace more than 160 homeowners - has faced opposition from local leaders and residents, who say it will toss aside longtime Brooklynites and overwhelm the neighborhood.

Opponents called Ratner's buyout offers a cynical move that will do little to quell the uproar against the project in Prospect Heights and Fort Greene.

"There are still a number of hurdles, including a significant number of people in the footprint and the adjoining communities who are opposed to this project," said Councilwoman Letitia James (WFP-Brooklyn).

Ratner spokesman Barry Baum would say only that the company was "looking at how we can substantially reduce and possibly eliminate the need for residential condemnation."

The buyout of the Atlantic Arts Building is seen as key because it's in the direct path of the planned 19,000-seat basketball arena. Ratner hopes to have the arena ready for tipoff by 2007.

Roger Paz, a Prospect Heights resident who lives near the proposed arena site, said word of negotiations at 636 Pacific St. spread a panic among homeowners, who fear Ratner is using a divide-and-conquer strategy.

"All of a sudden on the street, there was talk of people making deals," Paz said. "Nobody wanted to be last to cut a deal."

Movin' on up

Here's a look at what $1.2million can get you around the city:

1. Park Ave., Manhattan - A "super-luxury" one-bedroom apartment in the Trump Park Avenue, at 60th St.

2. Boerum Hill, Brooklyn - A four-story brick townhouse with a "graceful" center staircase, gourmet kitchen, garden and English basement.

3. Tottenville, Staten Island - A four-bedroom brick mansionette with a lush front lawn, backyard pool, intercom system and a two-car garage.

4. Jamaica Estates, Queens - A six-bedroom Tudor with three fireplaces, a private driveway leading to a two-car garage, and plenty of trees.

5. Riverdale, Bronx - A "sensational" three-bedroom stone Tudor with a breakfast balcony, a garden, a two-car garage and an "entertaining level" with a summer kitchen and a stone dining terrace.

NYguy

May 14th, 2004, 09:00 AM

I'm sure now the people who accept money and make deals with Ratner will be hated by the arena opponents. The very people who they were building their entire argument around will now be looked at with the same scorn as Ratner.

More news of the development...(Daily News)

Ratner Co. vows room for elderly
Low-cost & seniors-only flats

By HUGH SON

At least a portion of the apartment complex developer Bruce Ratner plans to build at Atlantic Yards will be set aside for senior citizens, high-ranking sources have told the Daily News.

Bruce Bender, an executive in Ratner's Forest City Ratner Corp., said that 10% of the affordable and middle-income housing that Ratner has pledged to build on the Prospect Heights site will be reserved for elderly tenants.

"We have to recognize that seniors on fixed incomes need housing," Bender said. "It's important because what we're trying to do is for everybody in the borough."

If Ratner builds a total of 4,500 apartments - half of which will rent to those within specific income brackets - then 225 apartments will be dedicated to older people, a Ratner spokesman said. Along with homes, Ratner's 21-acre proposal includes an NBA arena, office towers and retail space.

The senior housing vow is part of a larger agreement that Ratner hammered out with ACORN, one of the nation's largest groups representing low- and moderate-income families.

"We've actually created a brand-new model of housing," boasted ACORN Executive Director Bertha Lewis.

According to the proposal - which Lewis said is still being drafted into a binding agreement - there are five brackets for low- and moderate-income housing, starting from those earning $18,000 yearly all the way to families who make $98,500 per year. No family would pay rent exceeding 30% of its income, she said.

Apartments for seniors will differ from regular units, with wider doors, ramps and other amenities for the aged, she added.

Lewis said she was pleasantly surprised when she contacted Forest City Ratner with her affordable housing proposal, and was granted a meeting with the real estate mogul himself.

"This is the first time we've had a developer not laugh us out of the room," she said.

Critics viewed the news as the latest public relations gesture meant to deflect attention from the displacement of hundreds of residents who live in the footprint of Ratner's planned megacomplex.

"I think it's terrific if it's 10% for seniors, but it doesn't change the fact that he's planning to impose this project on an already existing community," said Patti Hagan, president of the Prospect Heights Action Coalition. "You don't do a good deed on top of bad deeds."

But the pledge was welcomed by Evangeline Porter, 71, a Crown Heights retiree.

"I applaud it wholeheartedly," Porter said. "We need to have a percentage for senior housing, because many of the people that are going to be displaced are seniors."

http://www.nydailynews.com/ips_rich_content/818-lewis_bertha.JPG

Bertha Lewis

Clarknt67

May 14th, 2004, 01:05 PM

Arena Opponent: "This is about our homes. This is about respecting community. We have roots here in Brooklyn! This is a neighborhood, he can't just bulldoze over our homes and turn this into Manhattan!"

Ratner: "Here's a million dollars, go away."

Arena Opponent: "Yee ha! I'm rich, screw community! I'm buying a loft in the Meatpacking district!"

:wink:

billyblancoNYC

May 14th, 2004, 06:36 PM

We have roots here in Brooklyn. I moved here from Kansas a whole 13 monthes ago. I can't leave...

NYguy

May 14th, 2004, 06:39 PM

LOL. Its funny, I was born in Brooklyn, but only lived there for a couple of years. But you always feel connected to Brooklyn somehow.

NYguy

May 14th, 2004, 06:50 PM

(Brooklyn Paper)

Ratner buyout silences critics

By Deborah Kolben

Real estate developer Bruce Ratner is closing in on a $32 million deal to buy out residents of a nine-story building standing at what would be center court of his new Nets arena project.

Residents of the Atlantic Art Building at 636 Pacific St. are being offered up to double what they paid for their posh apartments, but few are talking publicly about the deal.

That’s because they must agree to a gag order to get the money, sources said.

The waiver residents are being asked to sign prohibits them from speaking out against the arena or attending anti-arena rallies and public hearings.

Residents are also required to take down anti-arena signs from the building’s entranceway and doorway and are forbidden from donating money to any groups opposing the project.

Civil liberties attorney Norman Siegel, who is representing residents and businesses that would be displaced by the $2.5 billion retail, residential and commercial development, called the gag order “extremely offensive and troubling.”

While first amendment rules don’t apply to private business deals, “lawyers are thinking about whether there is anything that can be done [about the gag rule],” Siegel said.

Barry Baum, a spokesman for Ratner, declined to comment on the gag order saying, “We are not discussing negotiations with individual residents.”

James Greilsheimer, an attorney representing the owners at 636 Pacific St., also declined to comment.

Prospect Heights Councilwoman Letitia James, an outspoken opponent of the project, said she found the gag order “very troubling.”

“This project is not a done deal, money can not buy love from the entire community,” said James, adding, “Unless he’s willing to have a dialogue with the larger community, he is going to continue to face roadblocks.”

NYguy

May 15th, 2004, 09:15 AM

Daily News...

Ratner puts biz bldgs. on arena hit list

By HUGH SON

Real estate mogul Bruce Ratner, who made instant millionaires of condo owners living in the path of his planned basketball arena, is throwing even more money around.

The deep-pocketed developer also has been quietly snapping up commercial properties in the neighborhood.

"They're being very nice, and being very, very fair," said K.C. Lerner, the owner of two buildings that will soon become the property of Ratner.

Lerner's buildings, 624 and 640 Pacific Ave., flank the Atlantic Arts building, where condo owners are cutting a deal to move out in exchange for more than $1 million apiece.

"The bottom line is, everybody's moving up," Lerner said.

The purchases help smooth the way for Ratner's 19,000-seat sports arena, the planned new home for the Nets basketball team.

A Ratner spokesman declined comment on any negotiations.

J.R. Giddings, proprietor of a Caribbean eatery and bar at 177 Flatbush Ave., said he was looking forward to meeting Ratner next week to start talks to sell his three-story building.

Not everyone in the footprint of the planned 21-acre arena and housing complex is itching to leave.

Jo Watanabe, who runs a printmaking business at 642 Pacific St. and leases the entire three-story building for $6,000 a month, said he doesn't know where he can find a comparable deal. Moving costs alone will cost him $50,000, he said.

"It's going to kill us. I have to find a new place," Watanabe said.

NYguy

May 22nd, 2004, 08:20 AM

Brooklyn Paper....

Nader to rail against arena

By Deborah Kolben

Consumer advocate and potential presidential spoiler Ralph Nader is coming to town this week to speak out against the proposed Brooklyn arena and Westside Manhattan stadium projects.

An outspoken opponent of government-sponsored sports facilities, Nader runs a Web site, leagueoffans.org, devoted to educating the public about the sports industry.

“Ralph Nader opposes corporate welfare and sees the stadium agreements where the government pays for the stadium and the corporations get the benefit as a form of corporate welfare boondoggle for very wealthy owners of sports franchises,” said Kevin Zeese, a spokesman for Nader.

Nader will host a news conference in Manhattan on Monday afternoon to speak out against the stadiums as part of his Northeast campaign tour.

But many Ratner arena opponents won’t be attending.

“We don’t want to get involved in partisan politics,” said Daniel Goldstein, a spokesman for Development Don’t Destroy — Brooklyn, a group of area tenants, residents and businesses who oppose the project.

“But we fully support Mr. Nader’s position on the Ratner proposal and the Westside Development proposal,” Goldstein added.

Nader raised the ire of many Democrats in 2000 who blamed him for taking away enough votes from Al Gore to give George Bush the presidency. And he has curried little favor from the party with his 2004 run as an independent, which many Democrats believe will hurt the presumed Democratic nominee, John Kerry, more than Bush.

Developer Bruce Ratner is looking to build a $2.5 billion residential, retail and commercial development at the intersection of Atlantic and Flatbush avenues extending into Prospect Heights.

In order to build the $435 million arena to house his newly purchased New Jersey Nets, Ratner needs to purchase air rights to build over the MTA rail yards and must buy out or ask the state to condemn much of the rest of the property.

It is still not clear how much public money will be needed to build the project, but a Ratner executive said it was most likely in “the hundreds of millions.”

At the same time, the Jets are looking to build a new stadium on the Westside that would cost $600 million in public financing.

NewYorkYankee

May 22nd, 2004, 01:09 PM

In my opinion I think that these are great additions to both the westside manhattan community and to downtown brooklyn...When I was at the Jacob Javits center in April for the NY auto show I thought that the west side despretly needed something!

NYguy

May 23rd, 2004, 10:13 AM

Daily News...

Everyone wins when the Nets get to Brooklyn

Okay, so the Jersey Nets got trounced in game seven of the NBA playoffs. Just wait'll the Nets come to Brooklyn. The Nets have heart and talent. Now all they need are some loyal fans to make them go the extra mile to the championship.

Maybe no basketball game in recent memory was as thrilling as the Nets game last week that went into triple overtime.

But as you watched it play, you just had to imagine how much more exciting still it would have been if they were playing it in glorious Brooklyn. Most of the year the Nets, one of the best basketball teams on the boards, have been playing to half-full houses in Jersey, their talent and their heart lost in the chemical fumes of a state that long ago glommed the Giants and the Jets, tried to hijack the Yankees, kidnapped the Statue of Liberty, and after 9/11 tried to lure away many of our nervous financial companies and institutions from the wounded city.

The Nets payback for going to Jersey from Long Island has been world-class ball played in an arena as empty as a tax collector's wake. You couldn't scalp a Nets ticket at Rahway State Prison if it came with a three-day furlough.

But if the Nets would have been playing this year's playoff series in downtown Brooklyn, Flatbush Ave. would have looked the way it did in 1955 when the Dodgers beat the Yankees in the World Series.

"It would be all-out bedlam," said a basketball fanatic friend of mine the other night. "Look at how much excitement the Cyclones cause - and they're just a minor league team. Imagine what a professional championship team would do for Brooklyn! Fuhgeddaboudit."

"I know people who have been going to Jersey to see the Nets because they know they're coming to Brooklyn," says Sean Jenkinson, who can't wait for the Nets to come to Brooklyn. "It'll be insane if they make the playoffs in Brooklyn."

If the Nets were playing in Brooklyn this year, the borough of church keys would've been rocking with crowds, parties and rallies. Saloons would've been packed with fans rooting for the home team. Brooklyn Nets hats and jerseys would be the new fashion statement among the young people. And old. School bands would be competing to play during half time and the victory parade.

Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz would've dumped the diet and pigged out on hot dogs at courtside. If they'd won the championship, Markowitz would have asked that school be let out early and led the parade through the crowded Brooklyn streets. Every former Brooklynite - who never truly leaves what poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti called "a Coney Island of the mind" - would return for games or tune in from sea to shining sea to root for the home team of their old stomping ground.

New immigrants, who continually reinvent Brooklyn, would rally 'round the home team the way my old man cheered himself hoarse every summer for the Dodgers, which helped make him an American. Blue-collar natives and yuppie newcomers would share the same pride.

You'd need a mighty net to throw over the party for a Brooklyn Nets championship.

And the best part is that this is no longer a pipe dream.

It's looking more and more like the Nets will be dribbling into Brooklyn in 2007. Developer Bruce Ratner is putting on a full-court press to get the new 19,000 Nets Arena and his $2.6 billion commercial and residential complex built. They will create 15,000 construction jobs and 10,000 new permanent jobs in a borough crippled with an 8.8% unemployment rate and 4,500 badly needed new units of housing. The housing units will be income-designated - 20% low income, 30% middle income and 50% fair market, with 10% of the cheaper half earmarked for the elderly.

And Ratner's people say there will be a large section of Nets tickets that will sell in the $15 range. Jobs, housing, taking care of old-timers and an affordable pro-ball team. Come on, we're talking a slam-dunk for Brooklyn here.

Although there has been some spirited opposition to his plan (and this wouldn't be Brooklyn if there wasn't a good fight), all but one of the 29 residents of the Atlantic Arts building on Pacific St. are accepting Ratner's million-dollar plus offers for their $600,000 apartments, allowing them luxury upgrades rather than displacement. Ratner also is making offers on adjacent commercial buildings that even the Godfather couldn't refuse.

"Ratner is in communication with many of the other local residents," says Barry Baum, a Ratner spokesman. "I think we're making great progress. Bottom line is Ratner wants to give people a more than fair deal."

Put it this way: I wish I had a piece of property on Pacific St. to sell to Ratner.

"Ratner believes the Nets will be playing in Brooklyn by 2007," Baum says.

Let the celebrations begin.

http://www.nydailynews.com/images/columnists/hamill_d.jpg

NYguy

June 3rd, 2004, 10:35 AM

Daily News...

Flyer blitz ripped by arena foes

By HUGH SON

Real estate tycoon and NBA Nets team owner Bruce Ratner has blanketed Brooklyn with glossy pamphlets touting the benefits of his proposed Atlantic Yards complex - but critics are calling the ads a foul move.

Brochures were sent to 350,000 homes in Brooklyn this week and are the first in a series of mailings and print ads planned, said Ratner's spokesman Joe DePlasco.

"We understand that even though there's tremendous support for the project, there are people with questions," DePlasco said.

"A Garden of Eden Grows in Brooklyn," reads the full-color three-panel booklet, with glowing quotes in favor of the Atlantic Yards from Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), Gov. Pataki, Mayor Bloomberg and Borough President Marty Markowitz.

The promotional piece boasts that Ratner's 21-acre project will bring to Brooklyn 4,500 mixed-income units of housing, 25,000 permanent and construction jobs, six acres of park space and a new home for the New Jersey Nets.

Included is a postcard that can be returned for a free "Brooklyn Nets" souvenir - though the NBA has yet to approve a move to Brooklyn.

Opponents of the Atlantic Yards proposal are claiming that the deep-pocketed developer isn't playing fair with the mailing, which probably cost about $200,000, according to a political consultant familiar with mail campaigns.

And lawyer Norman Siegel, who represents residents of the anti-arena group Develop Don't Destroy, called the mailing "a David versus Goliath situation."

But James Caldwell, president of BUILD, an employment-advocacy group that supports the Ratner bid, hailed the informational campaign.

The political consultant questioned, however, whether such a broad campaign was an effective way to spread the word. He noted that direct mail works best when "you're targeting specific groups of voters and decision-makers."

krulltime

June 3rd, 2004, 10:42 AM

Included is a postcard that can be returned for a free "Brooklyn Nets" souvenir...

I see where this is going. :wink:

BrooklynRider

June 3rd, 2004, 10:58 AM

I got one in the mail. It wouldn't be so bad if they weren't tying the return of the card stating "I support the arena" to receiving a prize. I appreciate the effort Ratner is making to win support - especially now that he is outright paying for property instead of abusing emminent domain. However, I think he would win more support by adding amenities that are purely for public use - parks, recreation centers, a vibrant landscape. Also, I am still opposed to taxes generated by the arena being funneled to Ratner for further development. He claims it is all privately funded - funneling taxes to him seems to indicate otherwise. Once that little item is removed from the scenario, I could happily support it.

Gulcrapek

June 3rd, 2004, 07:51 PM

I got one too. I have to see where it is, I hope nobody threw it out...

NYguy

June 4th, 2004, 06:36 PM

You folks in Brooklyn should keep the mailing itself as the souvenir. Years from now, after the arena is built, you will remember it as part of the process.....

(Brooklyn Papers)

Nets’ Cracker Jack mailer
Ratner offers prize for Atlantic Terminal support

http://www.brooklynpapers.com/html/issues/_vol27/27_22/27_22coupon.jpg

Mailer coupon from Bruce Ratner offering a Nets “souvenir” for supporting the Atlantic Yards.

By Deborah Kolben

Support the Nets … and win a prize!

Drumming up support for his massive Atlantic Yards development project, real estate mogul Bruce Ratner sent out 350,000 glossy pamphlets to Brooklyn homes over Memorial Day weekend promising residents a free gift if they back his plan.

The colorful foldout, with words of praise from Sen. Charles Schumer, Borough President Marty Markowitz and a slew of other politicians, is the first major mailing Ratner has put out since he first announced the $2.5 billion basketball arena, and retail and residential development last December.

In addition to photos of children and young families, the mailing includes a perforated tear-away postcard with the words — “Yes! I support Atlantic Yards.”

Residents who send the card back are promised “a free Brooklyn Nets Souvenir.” Each card also contains a barcode that includes their address information.

There is no place to indicate opposition to the plan.

“It’s such a sleazy tactic to say if you fill this out you get a free souvenir,” said Jackie Connor, a Park Slope resident who said she scribbled the words “eminent domain abuse” on the card before sending it back.

“I hope they’ll see that as a no,” she said.

As part of the sweeping plan Ratner, principal owner of Forest City Ratner, seeks to either buy-out or have the state condemn 11-acres of privately owned land.

The rest of the 21-acre project, which encompasses six blocks in Prospect Heights emanating east from the intersection of Atlantic and Flatbush avenues, would be built over MTA-owned land.

In addition to building a basketball arena to house his newly purchased New Jersey Nets, Ratner is seeking to build 4,500 units of housing and four soaring office towers.

“What a nice gimmick,” Prospect Heights Councilwoman Letitia James, an ardent opponent of the project, said when she heard about the mailing.

“It’s a marketing tool and [Ratner] is trying to dangle jobs and goodies in front of people who really need to be at the table and a part of the process,” she said.

Although it strongly supports his plan, neither Ratner’s name nor the name of his company appears anywhere on the six-sided mailing.

Patti Hagan, a spokeswoman for the anti-arena Prospect Heights Action Coalition, said she was outraged when she saw the pamphlet this week.

“It’s kind of a desperate ploy to spend all this money to try and persuade people of something and play it off as if the New York Times is somehow supporting the whole thing,” said Hagan referring to a quote and large logo from the paper of record used on the pamphlet.

Under a snippet ostensibly pulled from a Times article appears the full Times logo.

According to the mailing, the project will create “10,000 new, permanent jobs” and “15,000 construction jobs.”

“They’re not new jobs,” said Hagan, “they’re just jobs being moved over from Manhattan or somewhere else.”

Hagan said arena opponents do not have the money to put out that kind of slick marketing material.

The pamphlet hit mailboxes this week just as a television campaign criticizing the heavily subsidized Manhattan Jets Stadium hit the airwaves. Those advertisements are sponsored in part by a coalition backed by Madison Square Garden’s owners, Cablevision.

It is still unclear how much public money will be needed for the Ratner project. At a City Council hearing last month a Forest City Ratner executive estimated the pubic contribution to be “hundreds of millions.”

Some residents also raised concerns this week about Ratner using cards promising free gifts to gauge public opinion.

But according to Ratner spokesman Joe DePlasco, the cards are not a poll.

“They wouldn’t provide a very official count,” he said. “Its just something fun to do … it’s just a giveaway.”

He said there was no particular reason they decided to send out the mailing now.

“It just seemed like the right time, the colors are nice and spring-like and now the weather is nice and spring-like.”

NYguy

June 4th, 2004, 06:41 PM

Brooklyn Papers...

Bloomie’s Downtown
Mayor sees Nets, Downtown plan as done deals

By Deborah Kolben

When Mayor Michael Bloomberg addressed a Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce luncheon Thursday, he talked about Bruce Ratner’s Nets arena plan as a done deal and said concerns from the local community about the Downtown Brooklyn Plan had been resolved.

But City Council members Letitia James and David Yassky disagree.

After Bloomberg made his comments, James, an ardent opponent of the $2.5 billion arena and office tower plan in Prospect Heights, which Ratner calls Atlantic Yards, said the mayor “made a lot of assumptions.”

Addressing more than 500 attendees at the annual event, hosted at the New York Marriott Brooklyn on June 3, Bloomberg said, “We‘ve addressed a lot of [James and Yassky’s] concerns in terms of rezoning Downtown Brooklyn. I think the concept is going to go through and it will end up with City Council approval,” the mayor said.

But James and Yassky said they still have several concerns.

“I do believe development in Downtown Brooklyn is good for the city, I just want to make sure that we’re working toward a package,” said Yassky, who is pushing for traffic mitigation and is seeking pilot permit parking program for residents as part of the plan.

The Downtown Brooklyn Plan would allow for the construction of at least 6.7 million square feet of office space, 1 million square feet of retail, 1,000 units of housing and 2,500 parking spaces. The comprehensive rezoning of 60 blocks — much of which would be classified as urban renewal — would pave the way for office, residential and academic towers.

City and borough officials say the plan, which also requires condemning at least seven acres of private property — including 130 residential units and 100 businesses — will turn the area into a bustling, 24-7 hub.

James, whose district includes Prospect Heights and Fort Greene, is seeking height limits on the towers along Flatbush Avenue — a portion of the plan that is in her district.

She is also working with community members along Duffield Street whose homes and businesses would likely be taken under the city’s power of eminent domain to make way for office towers.

Some of those residents claim the Underground Railroad ran beneath their property and should therefore be preserved.

Bloomberg also praised Ratner’s $2.5 billion Atlantic Yards residential and commercial plan, which is centered around a basketball arena to house the New Jersey Nets.

“[Borough President] Marty [Markowitz] mentioned the New Jersey Nets, and, yes, they’ll come and Brooklyn is a great sports borough,” said Bloomberg.

“It’s an assumption, and you know what they say about assumptions,” James quipped after the luncheon.

Ratner still needs to secure air rights to build over the Long Island Rail Road yards at Atlantic and Flatbush avenues. As part of the plan, Ratner seeks to either buy-out or have the state condemn 11 acres of privately owned land.

James wants an open bidding process for the yards site and has raised questions about the amount of public funds needed for the project, for which neither the city nor Ratner have provided a clear answer.

billyblancoNYC

June 5th, 2004, 02:18 AM

The more Leticia opens her mouth the more I'd like to close it for her.

TLOZ Link5

June 6th, 2004, 10:46 PM

How long have these residents been claiming that the Underground Railroad "ran beneath" their homes? I think it's safe to say that there WAS no actual railroad; it was a loose network of abolitionists who ran clandestine halfway houses that received, harbored, and shuttled groups of runaway slaves on their way to Canada — Great Britain had abolished slavery in the empire back in the 1820s or so — or states that did not yet have legislation authorizing the return of runaway slaves.

If many of these people actually have secret passages or rooms in their homes, however, then they can talk.

BrooklynRider

June 7th, 2004, 11:00 AM

Hey, I wouldn't criticize Letiticia James. I'd only hope that my council member would represent my community as well. She's doing her job and, I dare say, she is doing an admirable job for her constituents. I like the plan as well (as long as Ratner is paying for the land), but if it was proposed for Park Slope - you can bet I'd be fighting just as hard against it.

As for Underground Railroad claims... There was well documented underground railroad activity in this area of Brooklyn. One of the best preserved examples is at Plymouth Church in Brooklyn Heights, where Henry Ward Beecher a virulent abolitionist preached and Abraham Lincoln once spoke. Tours are available of the underground.

Addresses may have been "stops" on the underground railroad. The question is whether the buildings are original to the time, preserved and whether they are worthy of landmark status. One need only go down by Bowling Green to see the plaque commemorating the home of George Washington during his presidency. This is not a city big on preservation - especially if it gets in the way of development and "progress".

krulltime

June 7th, 2004, 11:50 AM

Underground Railroad happened all over the northeast not just Brooklyn. To preserve every place where this took place in nonsense. I think if there is real credability that a famous person was kept in one of these places then the situation might change. But then again why is it coming to the surface now when there is development and not when the site or the place was a run-out area.

But we can't have preservation on every place for every individual. It is too much of a process to evaluate in every site. This is just an excuse to halt development. :roll:

BrooklynRider

June 7th, 2004, 03:22 PM

billyblancoNYC

June 8th, 2004, 03:08 AM

Let's preserve every home that any slave has every stood in, even if for only 5 minutes. Yes, yes, I like it.

NYguy

June 16th, 2004, 08:46 AM

NY Post...

TOUT OF BOUNDS

By PATRICK GALLAHUE

June 16, 2004

Developer Bruce Ratner isn't just buying up property for his proposed Nets arena in Brooklyn — he's shopping for cheerleaders.

According to the contract obtained by The Post, people who sell their apartments at 636 Pacific St. in order to make way for the arena must agree to publicly shill for his $2.5 billion plan and "testify in favor of the project at hearings" if requested.

The building's board must even designate two homeowners to speak to the press in favor of the plan.

"The whole thing is extremely offensive and upsetting," said Norman Siegel, a lawyer for Develop Don't Destroy, a neighborhood group founded to oppose the arena. "At a minimum, it is inconsistent and antithetical to the principles and values of freedom of expression."

Those who sign the deal will even have their vocabulary limited to saying only that they were "treated fairly, honorably and decently" by Ratner and that they were "happy with the result," according to the contract.

The document also requires sellers to withdraw from joining, assisting, funding or participating in any group founded to oppose Ratner's Frank Gehry-designed arena project.

"It's one thing for people to agree to sell their property," Siegel said. "It's another thing when these conditions are placed upon them."

The contract adds that sellers within the building should use their "best efforts" to "cause non-selling unit owners to enter into contracts with purchaser [Ratner]."

They're also supposed to keep the company updated on their progress with the unwilling homeowners on a weekly basis.

A spokesman for Forest City Ratner Cos. would not say how many people have already signed the agreement. But estimates suggested that no more than two of the 31 units in the building were holding out.

"We do not talk about discussions with individual property owners or agreements signed by them," said Forest City Ratner spokesman Barry Baum.

But many of the placards and posters — hung in protest outside 636 Pacific St. — have already come down.

Ratner has battled local activists who protested the threat of condemnation of their houses via eminent domain, since he bought the NBA team last year and disclosed that homes would have to be razed. But earlier this year, Ratner began shying away from condemnation and said he would seek buyouts. Some homeowners are reportedly being offered as much as $1 million.

Ratner struck similar deals when building the Downtown Brooklyn commercial complex Metrotech in the 1990s.

Many took handsome payouts but are barred from speaking publicly about their dealings with him.

krulltime

June 16th, 2004, 10:55 AM

people who sell their apartments at 636 Pacific St. in order to make way for the arena must agree to publicly shill for his $2.5 billion plan and "testify in favor of the project at hearings"

oh what a tactic coming from a developer. Is this sort of brive legal? :?

krulltime

June 16th, 2004, 11:07 AM

Underground Railroad happened all over the northeast not just Brooklyn. To preserve every place where this took place in nonsense. I think if there is real credability that a famous person was kept in one of these places then the situation might change.

The Underground Railroad protected escaped slaves - not celebrities. Slavery was a significant black mark on this country's history and, although slavery is abolished, race relations remain wanting. I would edit your statement to read that "If there is credible evidence that a preserved or restorable station of the Underground Railroad exists, it should receive full review by the City Landmarks Commission". The fact that you are hearing about claims that homes that served as stations on the Underground Railroad might be in danger, does not mean that this information has just surfaced. The press is selective about what is and isn't news. These claims are "news" now because the places are endangered.

I haven't seen any of these places, so I have no strong feeling either way. But, don't diminish the significance or relevance of these places. Concentration camps existed all over Eastern Europe during WWII. I don't think a single one should be destroyed or built over. And, the comparison is fair.

Did you notice I use 'famous' as oppose to 'celebreties'.

You know that 'famous' happens to applies to both 'celebreties' and 'historical fugures' as well right?

Well it does.

From www.Dictionary.com:

Famous - Famous is applied to a person or thing widely spoken of as extraordinary; renowned is applied to those who are named again and again with honor; illustrious, to those who have dazzled the world by the splendor of their deeds or their virtues.

Famous - widely known and esteemed; "a famous actor"; "a celebrated musician"; "a famed scientist"; "an illustrious judge"; "a notable historian"; "a renowned painter"

I also dont think that the comparison to the Concentration camps in europe applies as well. It might apply to the homes of the good hearted europeans that kept jews hidden while the Nazis were on the look out for jews. I dont think those homes are landmarks.

If you want a good comparison to the Concentration camps you might say big plantations areas especially in the south were they had hundreds of slaves.

BrooklynRider

June 16th, 2004, 06:39 PM

Did you notice I use 'famous' as oppose to 'celebreties'.

You know that 'famous' happens to applies to both 'celebreties' and 'historical fugures' as well right?

Well it does.

From www.Dictionary.com:

Famous - Famous is applied to a person or thing widely spoken of as extraordinary; renowned is applied to those who are named again and again with honor; illustrious, to those who have dazzled the world by the splendor of their deeds or their virtues.

Famous - widely known and esteemed; "a famous actor"; "a celebrated musician"; "a famed scientist"; "an illustrious judge"; "a notable historian"; "a renowned painter"

I also dont think that the comparison to the Concentration camps in europe applies as well. It might apply to the homes of the good hearted europeans that kept jews hidden while the Nazis were on the look out for jews. I dont think those homes are landmarks.

If you want a good comparison to the Concentration camps you might say big plantations areas especially in the south were they had hundreds of slaves.

I don't want to get into a pissing contest over this, but, had you given me the benefit of the doubt and also looked up the definition of "celebrity", you would find:

Celebrity - 1. A famous person. 2. renown; fame.

Given both of our activity and interaction on this board, please recognize that I don't split hairs to create useless arguments in threads and I treat other posters with courtesy and respect.

I think you made some great points in the second half of your post that I'd have to agree with. I'd appreciate greater consideration for my posts from you in the future.

Cheers.

krulltime

June 16th, 2004, 07:17 PM

I know this got off topic but I wasn't arguing here. I was just making clear that I did not use the word 'celebreties' since is mostly use for living 'famous' and 'imporatant' people in our society (of course it is being use as lately with rappers and lousy singers and actors and the like).

But I was just trying to clarify my post with a defenition of 'famous' since it includes both 'celebreties' and 'historic figures' and etc.

I am not attacking you at all BrooklynRider. I was just tring to clarify my post since not only you but others will make the mistake of misinterpreting what I was trying to say.

But thanks to you I did that.

NYguy

June 18th, 2004, 08:59 AM

Daily News...

Hardhats & activists cheer on Ratner plan

By BILL FARRELL

Shouting "Jobs! Housing! Hoops!," hundreds of union workers and community activists gathered outside Brooklyn Borough Hall yesterday in support of developer Bruce Ratner's Atlantic Yards project.

The $2.5 billion development would include a 19,000-seat arena for the Nets basketball team as well as 4,000 units of housing - including market-rate, moderate and low-income residences - and 2 million square feet of office space.

Energized by the prospect of 15,000 construction jobs, 10,000 permanent jobs and the project's proposed housing component, the noontime crowd roared their approval at every mention of job and housing opportunities.

"A chance like this comes along only once in a generation," said Borough President Marty Markowitz. "The Atlantic Yards will accomplish both those goals. Not only with construction jobs, but with thousands of permanent full-time jobs that will improve Brooklyn's quality of life for generations."

Bertha Lewis, executive director of the activist organization ACORN, lauded Ratner for pledging to set aside 10% of the residential units developed at Atlantic Yards for senior citizens, and offer community residents preferential treatment for jobs and housing.

Lewis called Ratner "the first developer who ever said we need housing for everyone," adding, "These are things that have never been done before, but they are happening in Brooklyn."

However, not everyone in the crowd supported the plan.

As Markowitz addressed the throng, protesters Patti and Schellie Hagan created a stir as they walked through the crowd carrying picket signs objecting to the development.

There were a few tense moments as two burly men in Teamsters T-shirts tried to tear away Schellie Hagan's sign, but Markowitz kept things calm.

"Leave her alone - she has a right to be heard," Markowitz said from the podium as police officers stepped in to protect Hagen.

But the handful of protesters were no match for the crowd of labor union members and ACORN activists, who were handed sandwiches, water, t-shirts, hats, buttons and treated to a 30-minute concert by Young Rascals founder Felix Cavaliere.

"This was just another Bruce Ratner production," Hagan said. "Did these people make their signs, buy their water and shirts? I don't think so."

NewYorkYankee

June 18th, 2004, 12:14 PM

How long til' this thing gets started! :D

krulltime

June 18th, 2004, 12:29 PM

LABOR HAILS B'KLYN ARENA 'NET' WORK

By Hasani Gittens
June 18, 2004

More than a dozen of the city's most powerful labor and community groups rallied in support of the proposed Brooklyn Nets arena yesterday.

The crowd of more than 1,000 gathered in front of Borough Hall in Downtown Brooklyn to let the public know they stand behind Bruce Ratner's Atlantic Yards proposal.

Anthony Pugliese, of the New York City District Council of Carpenters, said the rally was to drown out the "noise" from protest groups.

"There's been rallies making noise that are against us," he said. "Labor is for it."

Copyright 2004 NYP Holdings, Inc.

NoyokA

June 19th, 2004, 07:15 PM

Bruce Ratner discusses Atlantic Yards in this CNBC interview:

http://www.fcrc.com/SquawkBox%20Interview.wmv

krulltime

June 21st, 2004, 03:03 AM

PROTESTERS DUNK NETS' ARENA PLAN

By LORENA MONGELLI nd CHRIS MICHAUD
June 20, 2004

Several hundred people rallied on Pacific Street in Brooklyn yesterday to voice their opposition to Bruce Ratner's proposed arena and luxury-housing plan for the area.

"This is overdevelopment," said Daniel Goldstein of Develop, Don't Destroy, a community group that opposed Ratner's massive development plan for the Prospect Heights neighborhood.

The plan would displace hundreds of homes to make way for an arena for the soon-to-be Brooklyn Nets along with some other commercial buildings.

"It will destroy the character of this community," said Goldstein, adding "this is not an appropriate development.

"It's about a private owner using taxpayer-subsidized money to fuel his own interests."

State Sen. Velmanette Montgomery (D-Brooklyn) and Rep. Major Owens (D-Brooklyn) also attended the rally and block party, where neighbors enjoyed barbecue, tacos and carrot cake as they snapped up T-shirts with slogans opposing Ratner's plan.

"This is still our land, and we should have the right to make use of it for the people," Owens told the crowd. He said the Brooklyn Navy Yard would be a better location for a new arena.

Adrienne Dunbar, 26, a bartender who has lived in Prospect Heights for eight years, said she lives there because she wants to, "not because I have to.

"If Ratner's plan goes through, I won't be here. Who wants to live next to Madison Square Garden or Yankee Stadium? It's a dump," she said, adding that her home was one of many that would be bulldozed to make way for the new arena and luxury high rises if the plan goes through.

Copyright 2004 NYP Holdings, Inc.

krulltime

June 21st, 2004, 03:06 AM

State Sen. Velmanette Montgomery (D-Brooklyn) and Rep. Major Owens (D-Brooklyn) also attended the rally and block party, where neighbors enjoyed barbecue, tacos and carrot cake as they snapped up T-shirts with slogans opposing Ratner's plan.

At least they got to enjoy the beautiful day. :roll:

Kris

June 29th, 2004, 09:11 AM

June 29, 2004

In Brooklyn, a Plan Passes and an Arena Is Protested

By DIANE CARDWELL

The City Council took a major step in remaking Downtown Brooklyn yesterday, formally approving an ambitious rezoning package that is intended to encourage commercial and residential development as part of the city's efforts to attract and keep jobs within the five boroughs.

"This plan will go a long way toward creating a vibrant downtown in Brooklyn and ensuring New York City's competitiveness for many years to come," Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said in a statement. "We will now focus our energies on attracting companies to Downtown Brooklyn and developing the sites, both commercial and residential, covered in this effort."

The plan, which passed by a vote of 47 to 0 with one abstention and covers an area roughly bounded by Flatbush Avenue and Tillary, Adams and Schermerhorn Streets, could create 4.5 million square feet of new office and commercial space and 1,000 apartments, as well as a new park on top of a garage at Willoughby Street.

"The purpose of this plan is to help New York City compete with New Jersey, Westchester, Connecticut for high-paying office jobs," tens of thousands of which the city lost to those areas during the last economic boom, Councilman David Yassky said in voting to approve the package. "This plan will help us keep those jobs in the next boom."

Still, some elements of the plan that had touched off community opposition, including the potential demolition of buildings that may have been stops on the Underground Railroad and an expected shortage of parking for residents, remain unresolved. Council members said they planned to hold hearings to consider designating the buildings that were possibly used by runaway slaves as landmarks, while Mr. Yassky, who represents the area, said the city had agreed to a number of steps to open more parking spaces to residents, including, perhaps, a residential permit program.

Similar concerns about overdevelopment in the area surfaced yesterday when a group opposed to a neighboring development project, one that would bring a Nets arena and 17 commercial and residential towers to an area sweeping west from the Atlantic Avenue railyards, released a report concluding that the plan could cost city and state taxpayers up to $506 million. "Make no mistake, this project will be using taxpayer money - loads of it," Gustav Peebles, a postdoctoral fellow at Columbia University and a co-writer of the report, said at a news conference announcing the findings.

The report was written largely in response to an economic analysis commissioned by Forest City Ratner, the Atlantic Yards developer. That report concluded that the project would bring about $800 million in net revenue for the city and state. The money would come in part from tax revenues associated with the arena, increasingly valuable real estate and spending by new residents and office workers.

But the report by Dr. Peebles, an anthropologist who studies economic issues, argues that the Forest City Ratner report, written by Andrew Zimbalist, an economist who analyzes the sports industry, makes several faulty assumptions, including overstating the need for new office space, inflating the projected income levels of potential residents and workers and ignoring the effect of a long-term construction project on property values. The new report, written with Jung Kim, an urban planner with a master's degree from the London School of Economics, concludes that the project is not worth the public investment the developer is seeking.

"In other states and localities, developers pay impact fees out of their own revenues to cover the social costs arising from their projects," the report says. "Here in New York, the payment is in reverse, with taxpayers handing over hundreds of millions to wealthy developers."

Barry Baum, a spokesman for Forest City Ratner (which is The New York Times Company's partner in developing its new headquarters on Eighth Avenue in Manhattan), said company officials had not yet fully reviewed the report and could not comment on the details. "However," he added, "Andrew Zimbalist is a respected economist who has not in the past generally supported this kind of project, but clearly sees a great benefit for the city and state from the Atlantic Yards arena and development."

Dr. Zimbalist, for his part, said he had not seen the report and knew only what he had heard from reporters. Saying he was unsure whether Dr. Peebles or Mr. Kim had fully understood the economic issues, he added, "I was very careful in my use of numbers."

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

Downtown Brooklyn, the Plan (http://forums.wirednewyork.com/viewtopic.php?t=278)

krulltime

June 29th, 2004, 09:59 AM

The plan, which passed by a vote of 47 to 0...

OK I guess it was a deal. :)

krulltime

July 1st, 2004, 11:31 AM

FOE: NETS' FISCAL PLAN FOULS OUT

By PATRICK GALLAHUE
July 1, 2004

New Jersey's sports czar yesterday slammed real-estate mogul Bruce Ratner's plan to move the Nets to Brooklyn, saying it was based on faulty economics.

"One of his major assumptions in his economic report is that we're going to close the Continental Arena," the Nets' current home, said George Zoffinger, the president of the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority.

"He's nuts. Not only are we not going to close the arena but we're going to have 80 more dates [without the Nets]."

Ratner's economic study on his $2.5 billion Atlantic Yards project — by sports economist Andrew Zimbalist — claims the arena project, as well as the adjacent commercial and residential towers, would create more than $800 million in tax revenues over 30 years.

But the report admits the numbers are based on assumptions such as "the eventual closing of CAA [Continental Airlines Arena]."

"Make no mistake, we will continue to be open for business," Zoffinger said. "We're going to be far better off without this the Nets. I expect be an economic boom to the Continental Arena and good riddance to a tenant that needs a public subsidy to survive."

During the bidding war on the NBA team last year, Ratner and Zoffinger were bitter rivals. Efforts to keep the Nets in New Jersey eventually lost out on Ratner's proposal for a new 20,000- seat, Frank Gehry-designed Brooklyn arena in Prospect Heights.

But the bad blood lingered and in the heat of battle Zoffinger even suggested the Nets be renamed the "Brooklyn Rats." A spokesman for Ratner did not return calls.

Copyright 2004 NYP Holdings, Inc.

Kris

July 3rd, 2004, 09:38 PM

July 4, 2004

PROSPECT HEIGHTS

In a Proposed Arena's Shadow, a Shot of Protest With That Beer

By JAKE MOONEY

A block south of the Long Island Rail Road train yard, in an out-of-the-way corner of Brooklyn, a few regulars at Freddy's Bar and Backroom were having an early-evening cigarette last week when talk turned to the future.

It happens a lot these days at Freddy's, at Sixth Avenue and Dean Street. The bar sits on land where Bruce Ratner, the developer, is proposing to build a new arena for his New Jersey Nets, and it could someday fall to a wrecking ball if the entire plan becomes a reality.

"Every single night the topic comes up once, at least," said Ross Bonadonna, a musician who lives nearby.

His friend, Abe Maneri, added, "Sadly, it comes up so often that people get disgusted by it."

In the six months since Mr. Ratner bought the Nets, neighborhood opposition has been fierce and some critics have adopted Freddy's as a home base. At the bar, a well-worn place with Tom Waits on the jukebox and live music most nights there is particular frustration with local elected officials who support the project.

Borough President Marty Markowitz, for one, has said the arena would build up Brooklyn's economy and morale. In response, a sign in one window of the bar demands, "Marty RESIGN!"

Freddy's has been the scene of fund-raisers against the arena, in late February and mid-April, and its backroom has a photo exhibit of people who say they would be hurt by the project, like a pair of Dean Street residents who fear they will not be able to pass their homes on to their children.

Haynes Atkins, a painter who has lived in the neighborhood for 15 years, said he was a fan of the architect Frank Gehry, who would design the arena. But Mr. Atkins said the location was wrong for the arena, and so was the timing of the proposal. . "This area has bloomed incredibly over the last few years," he said, referring to its new boutiques and restaurants.

Still, owners of property within the site of the proposed arena have begun selling their buildings to Mr. Ratner, making it unclear if the developer will have to resort to the eminent domain process to take over the land, as he originally planned.

Even outside the site of the proposed arena, Mr. Bonadonna said, the uncertainty casts a shadow over everyday life.

"If you want to make an area blighted,'' he said before heading back into the bar, "hang a sword of Damocles over its head and say, 'We may kick you out at any time.' "

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

Kris

July 3rd, 2004, 11:12 PM

July 4, 2004

THE CITY

The Brooklyn Nets

The idea of bringing a professional sports team to the city almost always sounds great - and then the calculation of cost versus benefits begins. It seems a new team requires a new sports facility, and for some reason, owners of these lucrative franchises are seldom willing to build anything without enormous infusions of public money. That is one of the major concerns about the proposal to place the Jets football stadium on Manhattan's far West Side at a cost to taxpayers of $600 million. It is also an issue when it comes to the Nets and Brooklyn. While the plans to bring professional basketball to Atlantic Avenue are in many ways more attractive than the football proposal, the scale of public investment needs closer examination.

The amount the city and state will be asked to contribute to help the developer Bruce Ratner build the arena as part of a $2.5 billion, mixed-use 21-acre complex over Brooklyn's Atlantic Yards and on adjacent land is still being negotiated. But the public may be asked to guarantee hundreds of millions of dollars in bonded debt if the government helps pay for the arena and for significant infrastructure improvements to allow construction - including moving Long Island Rail Road tracks two blocks. The tab also could include some 3,000 new parking spaces, which will help, if only a little, to manage the influx of cars in an already-clogged corridor.

Both proposed sports facilities in Brooklyn and Manhattan would be built over rail yards owned by the cash-short and debt-ridden Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which should not be pressured to give away its assets. The state-run authority - which lacks other new sources of revenue - should demand and get a fair market price for any land and air rights the developers at either site need.

A study commissioned by Mr. Ratner (who is a partner of The Times in constructing its new headquarters building) shows that the government would more than get back its investment in the Brooklyn project, based on 30 years of projected new tax revenues from team salaries and new office and residential occupants, among other factors. Another study, endorsed by opponents of the development, maintains that taxpayers could lose half a billion dollars in the deal. We would like to see a third, truly independent examination.

Local objections to the Atlantic Yards development need to be addressed, particularly concerning the thousands of additional cars and cabs that can be expected on game nights. While some residents will be dislocated and inevitably wind up feeling pushed around, the mere threat of change is not a reason to oppose the project. Neither is the use of the state powers of eminent domain, as long as the people involved are compensated fairly. Mr. Ratner seems to have been generous in buying out homeowners and moving renters. Community residents have also been promised that the development around the arena will include 4,500 housing units, half slated to go to low and moderate income earners and the elderly. To address another longstanding complaint about sports projects, Mr. Ratner says 3,000 of the 19,000 seats for Nets games at the new Frank Gehry-designed arena will be sold at levels many neighborhood residents could afford - around $15.

A basketball arena near downtown Brooklyn is basically a more attractive proposition than a football stadium in Manhattan. The building is less overwhelming and more likely to see regular use. Both the proposed sites need economic development, but the most important need of the far West Side of Manhattan is a subway line, not a monstrous sports center. The proposed Brooklyn site, at Flatbush and Atlantic, is already perhaps the best transportation hub in the city, but the area clearly needs an additional jump-start if it is going to thrive, and Mr. Ratner's project might provide that.

There is also, of course, the dream of giving back to Brooklyn some of the luster it lost when Robert Moses killed Walter O'Malley's vision of building a domed stadium for the Dodgers at the same site nearly 50 years ago. That dream, the housing, the cheap tickets and all the other good things are not worth risking hundreds of millions of dollars in public money and dooming Brooklyn to impassible streets on every game night. But if those issues can be properly addressed, the idea of the Brooklyn Nets is tantalizing.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

krulltime

July 10th, 2004, 12:33 PM

B'KLYN POL DEMANDS NEW ARENA $$ STUDY

By PATRICK GALLAHUE
July 10, 2004

To clear the smoke from dueling studies of the planned NBA arena in Brooklyn, a city lawmaker wants an independent fiscal watchdog to referee.

Councilwoman Letitia James (D-Brooklyn) wrote a letter to the mayor and council speaker this week asking for the Independent Budget Office (IBO) to put out a report on the proposed arena.

"We need a truly independent, impartial non-interested entity to study this plan," James told The Post yesterday.

Developer Bruce Ratner bought the New Jersey Nets last year and plans to build an NBA arena for the team as the centerpiece of a $2.5 billion commercial and residential development over an MTA rail yard in Prospect Heights.

Ratner's review claims the project will generate more than $800 million in tax revenues over 30 years.

But a rival study — performed by a group opposed to the arena — claims the project could cost the city and state as much as $500 million.

The Independent Budget Office said it had considered studying the proposal prior to James' request, but that it had not yet committed to putting out a full report.

Copyright 2004 NYP Holdings, Inc.

krulltime

July 10th, 2004, 12:34 PM

"We need a truly independent, impartial non-interested entity to study this plan," James told The Post yesterday.

:x Please give it a rest you lost already. Let the area flourish.

BPC

July 10th, 2004, 11:58 PM

Kris

July 11th, 2004, 12:26 AM

July 11, 2004

THE CITY

Nets Stadium? Not So Fast (2 Letters)

To the Editor:

Re "The Brooklyn Nets" (editorial, July 4):

Forest City Ratner's proposed Brooklyn Atlantic Yards development definitely needs an independent fiscal impact study, but even that is not enough. Forest City Ratner is trying to run this through the Empire State Development Corporation, a Robert Moses-like move that would remove this privately owned project from the usual public oversight and community input. This is not acceptable for something that will change Brooklyn forever and use so much of our tax money.

By focusing on the arena in your editorial, you ignore the massiveness of the buildings. Forest City Ratner proposes a complex of 17 immense towers, including four office towers and 13 apartment towers, in an area famous for its low-rise buildings with shops on the street level.

The housing would be on the luxury level, as Bruce Ratner's own figures indicate, with middle-income housing targeted at families earning $75,000 - more than twice the average for Brooklyn families. This is a bad deal for all New Yorkers.

Mr. Ratner's promises of jobs and low-income housing would come at an outlandish cost. The arena is a red herring for these towers, which should be built in a much smaller scale. Basketball has virtually nothing to do with any of this. It is all about money. If it is our money, it should be our choice.

Steve Ettlinger
Murray Hill

•

To the Editor:

With regard to your call for a "truly independent examination" on the Brooklyn Nets arena proposal, I would like to emphasize that the economic analysis produced by Gustav Peebles and me was done independently and without payment. Furthermore, a third-party analysis would represent only one step in a comprehensive review process.

Your editorial does not seem to recognize that there are other development options for both the Atlantic Yards and the Far West Side. The choices are not limited to a sports arena versus no development at all. A thorough review would consult the public, draw competitive proposals and account for all possible development alternatives, including ones in the case of the Atlantic Yards that do not require the use of eminent domain.

Forest City Ratner's own data show the arena to be a money-loser, and anyone in the real estate field would recognize the scheme's office component as highly speculative. And yet we are asked to hand over hundreds of millions in subsidies without exploring options that could be both more profitable for the developer and beneficial to the community.

It is a sad statement on how the State of New York conducts its business that a major paper like The Times does not view eminent domain as an extreme measure.

Jung Kim
Bronx

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

TLOZ Link5

July 11th, 2004, 12:36 AM

I always thought that New York was the one city in America that was great enough and secure enough to opt out of the insane giveaway of taxpayer funds for private sports stadiums. I guess not. Our leaders apparently believe this City is no better than Cincinatti.

Cincinnati was taking too huge a gamble on the construction of its new stadiums, considering the multiplied and magnified economic and social woes of that city. In New York the new sports facilities are a comparatively modest investment.

billyblancoNYC

July 11th, 2004, 03:11 AM

I always thought that New York was the one city in America that was great enough and secure enough to opt out of the insane giveaway of taxpayer funds for private sports stadiums. I guess not. Our leaders apparently believe this City is no better than Cincinatti.

Sure.

Look at it as any other city expense, like all the millions, if not billions, this city spends on social programs benefitting only a small portion of the city.

NYguy

July 11th, 2004, 01:48 PM

I always thought that New York was the one city in America that was great enough and secure enough to opt out of the insane giveaway of taxpayer funds for private sports stadiums. I guess not. Our leaders apparently believe this City is no better than Cincinatti.

The City gives away "taxypayer funds" for private companies located in the city. Why should sports stadiums - which are primarily for public use - not benefit as well? Especially when the stadiums will attract more revenue into the city than what is being given?

krulltime

July 27th, 2004, 01:27 PM

Prospects for Prospect Heights unclear
How will Ratner’s stadium and 4,500 new housing units impact Downtown Brooklyn?

By Matthew Strozier
July 2004

Last month, 28-year-old Simon Ramsey moved even closer to the Nets. He moved down Underhill Avenue to a new home on Vanderbilt Avenue in Prospect Heights, a few blocks from the site where developer Forest City Ratner wants to construct at 19,000-seat arena.

But it's not the attraction of the Nets, or the planned 6.5 million square feet of residential and commercial space alongside the arena, that excites Ramsey about his new home. Ramsey, a photographer, loves Brooklyn's trees.

"The trees along the streets of Brooklyn are incredible," he said on a sunny June Saturday as he lugged suitcases down Underhill Avenue and stood in the shade of a Brooklyn tree. "It's so hard to find trees like that in the city."

Prospect Heights sits inside, and adjacent to, the Nets development in Brooklyn, known as Atlantic Yards. No other neighborhood will be potentially helped more, or hurt, by the barrage of construction. Altogether, there would be 4,500 housing units, 2.1 million square feet of office space, 300,000 square feet of retail space, 3,000 parking spots and six acres of public open space. The stadium, at the intersection of Flatbush and Atlantic avenues, will sit atop the Long Island Rail Road rail yard.

Opposition to the development is loud, but it's not clear whether it's enough to stop it. On the day that Ramsey moved down Underhill Avenue, there was an anti-Ratner rally on Pacific Street, where buildings on land needed for the development would be taken by eminent domain. The rally filled most of the block, and was a cross between old-time block party and lefty protest. One sign read, "We Love Mom & Pop Brooklyn" and another read in bold black letters, "Our Communities. Our Taxes. Our Choice."

"This is nothing more than a land grab for the rich," City Council member Letitia James told an energized crowd.

What the Ratner development would mean for Prospect Heights real estate is unclear, several agents said in interviews. They said it depends on how it's built, how it looks, the amenities for the area, and whether residents decide to compromise with developer Bruce Ratner.

"I think it's a bit of an unknown," said Teri Cavanaugh, sales agent for Brooklyn Properties and a Prospect Heights resident. "A lot of it depends on how the stadium looks and how friendly it is to the surrounding area."

"If it's like MetroTech [16-acre commercial complex also built by Ratner in the area], it won't be so great, because the construction of MetroTech is not so beautiful," she said. "If they are sensitive to the area and have it blend into the area, and if Ratner is friendly to the neighborhood around it and helps them develop commercially, it would be a good thing."

Concerns center on the high-rise buildings that would accompany the arena, said Jim Kerby, a Douglas Elliman agent and Prospect Heights resident.

"Right now, it seems they are proposing a severe line between a low-rise neighborhood and the buildings," he said.

In many ways, agents said the proposed site for the Nets arena doesn't have a parallel in New York. There is no neighborhood like Prospect Heights next to Madison Square Garden. Columbia University's plan to redevelop a section of West Harlem is similar, one agent said, but not on the same scale.

Following the resurgence and gentrification of Park Slope, Prospect Heights has gone through a real estate surge during the last decade, agents said. Brownstones in the area now sell for between $800,000 and $1.5 or $1.6 million, depending on the block and condition.

Industrial buildings have been converted to condominiums, including the former Daily News printing plant on Pacific Street, now called Newswalk. Last month, a 1,149-square-foot unit in that building was selling for $735,000. A three-bedroom, two-bathroom, 1,200 square foot co-op in a prewar building on Grand Army Plaza sold late last year for $575,000.

Prospect Heights' schools don't attract young families the way they do in Park Slope, but the tree-lined streets, relative quiet and transportation access provide plenty of incentives. "It's a very neat neighborhood," said Kerby. "It's essentially just the mirror neighborhood of Park Slope across Flatbush Avenue."

Forest City Ratner executives say their project will be a boon to the neighborhood. Atlantic Yards will meet vital city needs, with mixed-income housing, 25,000 construction and permanent jobs and public space, said Barry Baum, a company spokesman, who released a prepared statement. "There is no doubt that Atlantic Yards will be a tremendous public benefit to Brooklyn and the city." The developer declined to comment further for this article.

In neighborhood interviews, several residents agreed that those benefits make Atlantic Yards attractive, even as they fret about traffic and eminent domain.

"It's all right. I'm for it," said Alexis Davis, 18. "But it's a shame that people would have to move out."

It's also too bad, she added, that this wasn't proposed years ago when the blocks around the rail yards were far less desirable than they are now.

Opponents say the plan would mean displacement of around 350 people, a 400-person capacity homeless shelter and 33 businesses with 235 employees, according to The Village Voice.

The opposition calls Atlantic Yards overdevelopment, plain and simple.

"This community is not like a city," said Kara Yeargans, 50, a Fort Greene resident who attended the anti-Ratner rally on Pacific Street. "There are a lot of mom-and-pop stores." The arena will destroy that small-scale neighborhood feel, Yeargans said.

"It's not what I came here for. It's like Manhattan," she said. And she said the development's job promises are empty. "Young people look at this as a way to get jobs, but that didn't happen at MetroTech."

Still, real estate turnover in Prospect Heights remains low, agents said.

"It doesn't seem like people are running away," Kerby said.

The concern about prices may be more in the short-term during construction, and as people wait to see how the development fight shakes out. Kerby said he sees signs of hesitancy from buyers, and some may be looking at Park Slope, Fort Greene and Boerum Hill before Prospect Heights.

"People may just be more inclined, if they have to buy a house, to buy a house there," he said.

Copyright 2003-2004 The Real Deal.

NYguy

August 20th, 2004, 07:42 PM

Brooklyn Papers

HELLO DOLLY!
Brooklyn planning commissioner Williams has a stake in Ratner’s Nets

http://brooklynpapers.com/html/issues/_vol27/27_33/27_33williams.jpg

Borough President Marty Markowitz announces his appointment of businesswoman Dolly Williams (above left) to the City Planning Commission in 2002. She now also owns a piece of Bruce Ratner’s Nets.

By Deborah Kolben
The Brooklyn Papers

Dolly Williams, the borough’s City Planning commissioner and a key player in Brooklyn’s development and land use review, is among the lengthy list of investors real estate magnate Bruce Ratner has secretly put together to purchase the New Jersey Nets.

According to a list of the Nets investors, a copy of which was obtained by The Brooklyn Papers this week, Williams and her husband, Adonijah Williams, owners of A. Williams Construction, are both investors in the team Ratner hopes to bring to a new arena he envisions at the corner of Flatbush and Atlantic avenues.

Williams was appointed to the 13-person commission in 2002 by Markowitz, a vocal supporter of the Nets plan who, since he took office, has touted the notion of bringing an NBA franchise to Brooklyn.

The commission, with appointees by the mayor, each borough president and the public advocate, weighs in heavily on all development and land use projects that are subject to city public review.

Sources confirmed that Williams’ stake in the team is nearly $1 million. Ratner has consistently declined to divulge the identy of his partners.

Opponents of the Ratner plan this week condemned Williams’ interest in the team as a potential conflict of interest and called it “deeply troubling.”

“She needs to remove herself from any discussion of the project or give up her interests in the team,” said Daniel Goldstein, a spokesman for Develop-Don’t Destroy Brooklyn, a community group fighting the project.

Contacted this week, Williams said she is an investor in both the team and Ratner’s plan to build a new Nets arena, three soaring office towers and 4,500 housing units extending from Downtown Brooklyn into Prospect Heights. She said she “had not thought about” whether her company would be involved in the 8 million square feet of construction.

“It is not a conflict, otherwise I would not do it,” said Williams, a minor investor whose nearly 30-year-old construction company is worth millions. She receives a $45,131 salary for her City Planning Commission post.

Responding to the conflict of interest charge, Michael Kadish, a spokesman for Markowitz said, “As with any planning commissioner, we would expect that Dolly Williams would recuse herself from voting or discussing any matter before the commission in which she has a commercial interest.”

While such a major city land use proposal would typically pass through the commission as part of the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure [ULURP], Ratner is looking to steer the 21-acre project, half of which would be built over the state-run Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s Long Island Rail Road storage yards, through a less stringent state review instead.

His plan to build a Frank Gehry-designed arena surrounded by skyscrapers at Flatbush and Atlantic avenues, would also require the condemnation or sale of 10 acres of privately owned property.

Wayne Hawley, general counsel for the city’s Conflicts of Interest Board, said he could not comment on whether Williams’ investment constituted a conflict, saying only that the board “had issued nothing public about any City Planning commissioner that may be an owner of the Nets.”

Not surprisingly, the list of investors in what is expected to become the NBA’s Brooklyn Nets starts off reading like the invitation list to a Ratner family picnic.

There’s the principal owner of the team, mega real estate developer Bruce, his brother, the noted constitutional rights leader, Michael Ratner, and his daughter, Elizabeth Ratner, a reporter for the New York Observer, among other Ratners.

Two prominent investors who had already announced their intent to buy a piece of the team include Brooklyn-born rap star Jay-Z and New York Mercantile Exchange Chairman Vincent Viola. While Jay-Z (aka Shawn Carter) is on the list, Viola is not on the list, but many of his family members are listed as trustees and beneficiaries in the ownership team.

Other noteworthy names on the investor list include Richard S. Rubin, chairman of the Brooklyn Museum, mystery writer Mary Higgins Clark, and Lyor Cohen, former head of Island/Def Jam Records who now heads Warner Music Group.

The new investment team is made up of more than 80 entities including nearly 200 individuals. Each entity contributed a minimum of $1 million, according to sources close to the deal.

David Carter, a sports business consultant and professor at the University of Southern California, said he was not surprised by the lengthy list of investors.

“The price of franchises has gone sky high over the course of the last decade making it virtually impossible for a single individual to swallow the entire financial responsibility,” said Carter.

The new investment team also includes Community Youth Organization [CYO], the former Nets ownership group, which signed on after Goldman Sachs investors bailed out of the deal earlier this month leaving Ratner $60 million short.

The CYO is made up of more than 30 entities and 70 individuals including former Tyco executive Dennis Kozlowski, who was accused of looting $600 million from that company.

But their investment in the team may be brief.

“Financial arrangements between CYO and Bruce Ratner is of a temporay duration and made in order to get the deal closed,” said Edwin Stier, president of CYO. “A substantial part of that interest is going to be sold as soon as we can make arrangements.

NYguy

August 24th, 2004, 08:44 AM

NY Post...

NETS' ALL-$TAR TEAM

By PATRICK GALLAHUE

http://www.nypost.com/photos/news0824200420.jpg

Ratner

August 24, 2004 -- The New Jersey Nets may have lost some stars since the NBA team was sold to developer Bruce Ratner — but the squad still has plenty of famous investors, including mystery writer Mary Higgins Clark and disgraced ex-Tyco chief Dennis Kozlowski.

The lengthy and diverse list of investors who bought the team for $300 million and plan to move the Nets to Brooklyn has been made public for the first time.

And if the team ever does make it to Brooklyn, it shouldn't have a hard time rustling up celebrity fans. Investors include the former head of Island Def Jam Music Group, Lyor Cohen, and Londell McMillan, a lawyer for Prince and Wesley Snipes.

Beyoncé's business partners in a clothing line — Arthur and Jason Rabin — also have a stake in the destiny of the team, along with the siren's rapper boy toy, Shawn Carter, a k a Jay-Z.

The crowded investment team is made up of 80 entities — comprised of more than 200 individuals — who have ponied up at least a million bucks apiece.

And it includes some big names outside of the world of arts and entertainment, like City Planning Commissioner Dolly Williams.

Williams was appointed to the City Planning Commission in 2002 by Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, one of the project's biggest boosters.

But opponents of the project are fuming that Williams — a city official who dictates building policy — could be a partner in the controversial development.

"It's an apparent conflict of interest," said Patti Hagan, a member of Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn, a neighborhood group founded in opposition to the arena.

A spokesman for the City Planning Commission said, "The project has not been referred to the commission, and if it was, she would of course recuse herself ."

Disgraced ex-Tyco chief Dennis Kozlowski and Fred Walsh are also among the investors.

But they are only short-term holdovers from the previous ownership that joined Ratner so the deal could go through after a group of investors from Goldman Sachs fled earlier this month.

Ratner hopes to have the Nets playing in Brooklyn by 2007 in a Frank Gehry-designed arena, which is to serve as the centerpiece of a massive $2.5 billion commercial and residential development over what is now the MTA rail yards in Prospect Heights.

NYguy

August 24th, 2004, 09:06 AM

Daily News...

An Olympic battle
Group fighting Nets arena appeals to IOC

BY FRANK LOMBARDI
DAILY NEWS CITY HALL BUREAU

http://www.nydailynews.com/ips_rich_content/335-house_save.JPG

Newly unfurled banner at 624 Pacific St. in Prospect Heights joins others in voicing opposition to proposed basketball arena in area. Only this one has an Olympic twist.

Opponents of a proposed pro basketball arena in Brooklyn are trying to embroil the International Olympic Committee in their fight with developer Bruce Ratner.

The effort is being joined by opponents of the proposed Jets football stadium on the West Side.

The group opposed to Ratner's Atlantic Yards site in Prospect Heights has unfurled a giant banner on the facade of an affected apartment building. The banner bears an appeal aimed at IOC President Jacques Rogge of Belgium.

"Dr. Rogge and the International Olympic Committee, Please Don't Destroy Our Homes," reads the 10-foot-by-10-foot banner unfurled at 624 Pacific St. by a group called Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn.

Today, the group's representatives and supporters will press their case at a City Hall press conference. Joining them will be several opponents of the proposed domed Jets stadium - which the city's Olympics bid envisions as the Olympic Stadium.

They include Brian Hatch, a former Salt Lake City deputy mayor, who runs a Web site - www.NewYorkGames.org - that monitors stadium developments here.

Hatch said both the Ratner and West Side sites are "fatally flawed." He favors building stadiums in Flushing and Coney Island.

David Goldstein, spokesman for Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn, said the group will stress that the city's bid for the 2012 Summer Olympics "should not be used to force people out of their homes to build unneeded and unwanted arenas."

As part of its bid for the 2012 Summer Olympics, the city designated the proposed Atlantic Yards Arena - where Ratner wants to move his newly purchased New Jersey Nets basketball team - for gymnastic competition.

Joseph DePlasco, a spokesman for Ratner, was undaunted by the effort to involve the IOC in the arena fight.

"We hope the Olympic Committee does indeed visit Brooklyn," he said. "They will see a project that has been embraced by people throughout the borough."

DePlasco said Ratner has committed to "do all that is possible to avoid residential condemnation" and to pay owners "handsomely" for needed properties.

NoyokA

September 24th, 2004, 03:56 PM

Havent heard much in a while. Im sure there’s a lot going on behind closed doors.

NYguy

September 24th, 2004, 09:21 PM

Brooklyn Papers (Sept 25 edition)

Boards 2, 6 & 8 call for arena ULURP

By Jess Wisloski
The Brooklyn Papers

It’s the largest Brooklyn development project in nearly three decades, but Bruce Ratner’s Atlantic Yards basketball arena, office tower and housing project will not have to pass through city review.

And that, say members of the three community boards within whose bounds the plan would be built, is just plain wrong.

Community boards 2 (Brooklyn Heights, Downtown Brooklyn, Boerum Hill, Fort Greene and Clinton Hill), 6 (Park Slope, Gowanus, Cobble Hill, Carroll Gardens and Red Hook) and 8 (Prospect Heights and Crown Heights) all voted at their last meetings to call on city and state officials to put the plan through the city’s Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP).

The boards collectively agreed to introduce the votes on Sept. 8 after officials from two agencies with key roles in the proposed sale of development rights in the Atlantic Yards area to Ratner — the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC) and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) — declined invitations to speak at a town hall meeting for members of the three community boards.

Encompassing the area from Atlantic Avenue to Dean Street between Vanderbilt and Flatbush avenues, the proposed development would include a new home for Ratner’s recently purchased New Jersey Nets basketball team, three soaring office towers, 4,500 housing units and 2 million square feet of retail space. The $2.5 billion arena plan is projected to cost city taxpayers an estimated $500 million.

Since the MTA controls the Long Island Rail Road yards over which roughly a third of the project would be built, its support is crucial, as is that of Gov. George Pataki, whose ESDC would be needed to condemn 10 acres of private property in order for Ratner to realize his dream.

If the ESDC sponsors the plan, it will then be able to sidestep the rigorous ULURP process that development projects of such scale would normally trigger in the city. The community boards individually drafted letters to Pataki and Mayor Michael Bloomberg, appealing for assistance in getting cooperation from the agencies they control and for a mandatory ULURP to be implemented.

The three boards “have been planning for some time to have a public education hearing at which time we’d have the ESDC explain the process which we feel is Forest City Ratner’s definition of the project. We have concerns that there’s not going to be sufficient opportunity for public comment,” said Robert Perris, district manager of CB2.

Perris said the letter drafted by CB2 called for the project to be “subject to the preclusion of the abuse of eminent domain and for competitive bidding for the acquisition of the MTA rail yard.” Though he said the “abuse” clause could be left open to interpretation, the primary concern was the process.

Craig Hammerman, district manager of CB6, said the members were concerned about the reluctance of the agencies to inform the public. “Our greatest disappointment is the fact that this is not a small process by any means, and that the state agencies should be willing to talk to us all about what process is going to take place,” said Hammerman. “We can never really discuss things too early. If it was city agencies we were dealing with I would have expected them to be more responsive and accountable.”

Deborah Wetzler, an ESDC spokeswoman, said her agency declined the invitation because no decision has yet been made about the state’s involvement in the project.

“It’s way too premature,” she told The Brooklyn Papers.

Two activist groups — Develop-Don’t Destroy Brooklyn, which formed in opposition to Ratner’s plan, and the New York Public Interest Research Group (NYPIRG) have previously called for an Atlantic Yards ULURP, but neither received a response from the mayor or governor.

“The call for ULURP is getting louder and louder, and to have the three boards who are going to be affected by the project call for it is very important,” said Daniel Goldstein, a spokesman for Develop-Don’t Destroy Brooklyn.

Both groups became vocal after Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, a Democrat from Manhattan, publicly called for the plans for a new Jets football stadium on Manhattan’s West Side to be put through ULURP, despite Bloomberg and Pataki’s efforts to tack the stadium plan onto an expansion of the Jacob Javits Center, which would not require a ULURP.

On July 9, Prospect Heights Councilwoman Letitia James delivered letters to Bloomberg and Council Speaker Gifford Miller asking them to ensure that the Ratner proposal be subject to ULURP. Her letter to the mayor cited a statement he made last December: “We are not at a time when we can use public funds to support an arena.”

Gene Russianoff, an attorney for NYPIRG, charged that Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, one of the staunchest political champions of the Nets arena plan, has treated ULURP as if it were merely “a device to derail the project.”

Asked whether Atlantic Yards should go through the city review process, Markowitz, who has powers of land use oversight under ULURP, told The Brooklyn Papers in June, “ULURP is not applicable.” Contacted this week for a response to the community boards’ requests, he shied away from supporting their call for ULURP.

“We respect the community boards and understand their position. We couldn’t agree more that whether this is a city or a state process, community participation is a must and the community’s voice needs to be heard. My staff and I have been dedicated, from day one, to establishing a process for real community empowerment for the Atlantic Yards project,” Markowitz said through a spokeswoman.
Russianoff believes the obvious is being overlooked.

“It’s not like ULURP is some fearsome process,” he said. “The vast majority of development proposals go through ULURP. They get researched, modified and changed.”

Councilwoman James is already focused on the next step.

“I’m trying to hold a meeting with the chairpersons [of the community boards],” she said, to figure out before ESDC signs on to the project in a memorandum of understanding, what might be coming and how to help their communities cope.

She believes Ratner has an uphill battle ahead of him, though.

“It’s going to take him a lot to do eminent domain for those who are in the footprint of the plans,” said James. “There are many people who will refuse to be bought out.”

NYguy

October 2nd, 2004, 08:56 AM

BROOKLYN PAPERS

Ratner close to deal with state
‘60 days until arena plan review’

By Jess Wisloski

Bruce Ratner and state and city agencies are close to signing a memorandum of understanding that would get the ball rolling on the developer’s proposed Atlantic Yards project, a Westchester daily newspaper reported this week.

One of the soon-to-be lead agencies on the application confirmed for The Brooklyn Papers that talks with the developer were progressing and Ratner, in an interview with the Journal News, said the state public review process for his plan to build a professional basketball arena, 4,500 apartments and three soaring office towers emanating from the intersection of Flatbush and Atlantic avenues was just two months away.

“The major thing now is going through the public process, which will start probably in about 60 days. There will be hearings. That will take about eight months. And then hopefully in about a year, a year and a quarter, we’ll start construction,” Ratner told the Journal News.

Ratner plans to bring his recently purchased New Jersey Nets to the new arena.

A Ratner spokesman, Joe DePlasco, clarified the comment, saying the developer is “hopeful that the MOU is completed soon,” but said he didn’t know if 60 days was a target for signing such an agreement, at which time the process would be announced publicly at each juncture of review and approval.

Forest City Ratner Executive Vice President Jim Stuckey spoke at a public meeting Thursday night, but would not comment on what stage agreements between the state’s lead agencies, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which owns 13 acres of rail yards over which Ratner hopes to build, and the Empire State Development Corporation, which as the lead sponsor could wield the power of eminent domain to capture the remaining 11 acres of the plan’s Prospect Heights footprint from private owners.

“I don’t know,” Stuckey told The Brooklyn Papers when asked if the state-run MTA is involved in negotiations, bids or advances by Ratner’s group.

When asked if any headway had been made, or if they were involved in negotiations, MTA spokesman Tom Kelly replied, “No. No. Nothing’s happened yet.”

A spokeswoman for the Empire State Development Corporation, however, confirmed her agency’s involvement.

“The talks are moving along, the talks are going very well, and things are moving along rapidly. We’re working jointly with MTA and [the city Economic Development Corporation], but there are still some issues we need to work out,” said Empire State Development Corporation spokeswoman Deborah Wetzel. She said no agreements had been made by the MTA.

At the community meeting in Fort Greene, Stuckey did say that when the MOU is signed, Forest City Ratner, which has offered to pay market-price for the MTA’s property, will hire an independent appraisal firm to determine the value of the land, and suspects the MTA will do the same. According to the MOU mandate, both of the estimates would be accessible to public scrutiny, he said.

“An MOU is a recording of understanding,” he said. “It is not a legally binding contract, and it ultimately entitles the public to have the ability to comment,” on the process, he explained.

Still, ardent community activists are hoping that a public bidding process may yet be in the cards.

“There is no MOU signed on it as far as I know. There is no NBA agreement to let the Nets move, as far as I know,” said Councilwoman Letitia James at the meeting, hosted by the Downtown Brooklyn Leadership Coalition, nearly singing to the riled up audience of 200 local residents.

“Again, I don’t know all that’s happening behind closed doors, but as far as I know there is no state legislation or city legislation [in place]. So as far as I know, and as far as you know, this is not a done deal.

NYguy

October 2nd, 2004, 09:04 AM

BROOKLYN PAPERS

Ratner invites chosen few to draft agreement

By Jess Wisloski

For the past two months, community board leaders, Borough Hall staffers and members of select organizations have been attending closed-door meetings with developer Bruce Ratner to negotiate a contract that would guarantee certain benefits to the communities surrounding his Atlantic Yards site.

The so-called community benefits agreement, or CBA — which is said by both Forest City Ratner and sources involved in the negotiations to be swiftly approaching a final form — would include a labor agreement negotiated with unions to guarantee that a quarter of the construction jobs generated by the project go to local residents.

But judging by reactions to news of the agreement this week, community members, both those in favor of and those against the Atlantic Yards plan — which includes a basketball arena, 4,500 units of housing and three office skyscrapers — don’t feel either represented or included.

Ideas of having a CBA have been whispered since Ratner announced his plan late last year. The term community benefits agreement came from an initiative to hire locally for the development of the Staples Center basketball arena in downtown Los Angeles, and this would be the first of its kind on the East Coast.

Forest City Ratner’s version promises that 50 percent of the rental and condominium apartments will be “affordable housing” for various incomes, that there will be a minimum hiring quota of minority and women for available jobs, that seven acres of the project will be devoted to open space for a mix of recreational uses, and the icing on the cake: a project labor agreement that labor unions have reportedly signed on to, allowing 25 percent of the hires to come from the neighborhood by providing temporary union status to employees of local contractors.

Until this week, Ratner’s commitment was still unknown to the larger community. But the group, which has been meeting every Tuesday for the past eight weeks, has recently stepped up efforts to hurry the CBA along and is targeting a Nov. 1 completion date, according to sources.

Silence from community boards

Word that community board leaders have been meeting with the developer, coming just two weeks after the boards publicly demanded that Ratner’s project be subject to the city’s land use review process rather than the less stringent state review, had some community members scratching their heads in disbelief.

“What I find surprising is that the community boards are in meetings that they haven’t made public,” said Daniel Goldstein, a leader of the anti-Atlantic Yards group Develop-Don’t Destroy Brooklyn.

Goldstein was surprised to hear about the meetings. “It’s an illegitimate negotiation,” he said, noting the board chairs were attending the meetings on behalf of a constituency ignorant to the plans.

Community Boards 2, 6 and 8 all drafted resolutions urging Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Gov. George Pataki to put the plan through city oversight, yet one of the foregone conclusions of participants in the CBA meetings is that the land disposition and review will take place on the state level.

“Was their resolution for show?” Goldstein asked rhetorically. “What does it mean if they’re behind the scenes accepting and negotiating a private agreement?”

The leaders of the community boards, however, did not feel the one act was contradictory to the other.

“Ongoing negotiations are not something that is typically done in the public forum,” said Craig Hammerman, district manager of Community Board 6, who said he’d been attending meetings with board chairman Jerry Armer.

Hammerman said they were invited to participate “mostly in observation” and that it would have been irresponsible not to attend. Asked why their fellow community board members were not apprised of their attendance at the meetings, Hammerman said announcing their participation at community meetings wasn’t necessary.

“You’re a guest at a party; it’s generally not your role to invite other guests,” Hammerman said.

Anti-arena plan activist Patti Hagan, of the Prospect Heights Action Coalition, was livid at hearing the news.

“ That the communities and the community groups have been excluded — it’s a miscarriage of democracy!” she said. “How can [Ratner] call it a community meeting?”

Hagan said she wasn’t sure if her group would take action, but didn’t think it was fair for the community boards’ leaders to both advocate a ULURP in public and privately negotiate for a state-level process.

“I thought you only made one such agreement with the community,” she said, adding, “I think its weird.”

Robert Perris, district manager of Community Board 2, echoed Hammerman’s sentiment, and confirmed that he and board chairwoman Shirley McRae were “sitting in on discussions about a CBA primarily in an advisory capacity.”

Perris said that the whole district’s understanding would be more important once the deal was formalized, at which time it will review the agreement and “address public facilities,” the review of which is mandated by the City Charter.

Community Board 8 confirmed that they had been involved in the negotiations, but said their board members were made aware of the fact.

Stuckey said there was no clause of confidentiality imposed on attendees of the meetings, but ventured that the community board chairs or district managers, “may have felt uneasy about bringing it to work with as a board,” and were afraid messages would be mixed up as “details are still being hammered out.”

Even an insider to the negotiations, the DBOC’s Bill Howell, reacted with surprise when he read about the boards’ ULURP resolutions.

“I wasn’t aware that the community boards had voted to try and do the ULURP process,” said Howell. “But then, our sole purpose is the discussion of a community benefits agreement.”

NYguy

October 7th, 2004, 09:16 AM

DAILY NEWS

Minister changes teams to support basketball arena

BY HUGH SON

An influential Brooklyn religious leader plans to back developer Bruce Ratner's $2.5 billion arena project today - but critics are calling it a deal with the devil.

The Rev. Herbert Daughtry and Ratner will appear together today at the House of the Lord church in Boerum Hill, just a few blocks from the proposed site of the massive Atlantic Yards arena.

Daughtry had been one of several religious leaders to raise questions about the project in the past few months.

The minister's support was another win for Ratner, the billionaire developer who last week won backing from some community groups by pledging jobs and affordable housing.

Critics of Ratner's plan to build a Nets basketball arena and residential and office towers in Prospect Heights charged that the developer was intentionally causing rifts in the community.

"I'm dismayed that he's using a divide and conquer strategy," said City Councilwoman Letitia James (WFP-Clinton Hill). "What they're trying to do is stifle opposition, when in fact this project is not a done deal."

Other Brooklyn ministers disagreed with Daughtry's decision to back the project.

"I certainly respect Rev. Daughtry, but I think he's on the wrong side of this issue," said Rev. Dennis Dillon of the Brooklyn Christian Center, which also is near the site on Atlantic Ave. and Fulton St.

"Mr. Ratner has a very troubled history with the black community throughout New York," Dillon told the Daily News, "and there's absolutely no evidence that he will negotiate with this community in good faith."

Daughtry's support comes in exchange for his having input into what community facilities will be built on the 24-acre parcel, sources said.

Although the Brooklyn pastor has helped organize anti-arena demonstrations in the past, he played down that aspect yesterday.

"I never opposed it and I was never for it, I just didn't know what was going on," Daughtry said.

NYguy

October 8th, 2004, 10:21 AM

Its coming people...

DAILY NEWS

Ratner close to Yards deal

BY HUGH SON

Say hello to the biggest new landlord in Prospect Heights. Real estate tycoon Bruce Ratner now owns 80% of the condo and co-op apartments that are on the footprint of his $2.5 billion Atlantic Yards project, he revealed yesterday.

"Most of the owners are very satisfied and would say we've been more than fair to them," Ratner said at a press conference at the House of the Lord Church in Boerum Hill.

The Daily News reported in May that Ratner offered the residents of a condo at 636 Pacific St. more than 1 million dollars to leave. The deep-pocketed developer has since been snapping up properties and is in "active discussions" with the remaining owners, he said.

Renters sent packing by the project need not fear, either, Ratner said. He pledged that displaced tenants would be the first to move into the new apartments built, and won't pay any more in rent than they have been paying.

Opponents of the Atlantic Yards proposal - including Councilmember Letitia James (WFP-Clinton Hill) and State Sen. Velmanette Montgomery (D-Brooklyn) - have demanded that it go through the city land use review process, as opposed to a less stringent state review that wouldn't give local groups a chance to register ant protest.

Ratner was caught in a verbal gaffe yesterday when explaining why the Atlantic Yards would go through state review.

"The majority of the land is on MTA-owned property - that's why it will go through a state review," Ratner said.

But most of the project, about 55%, is on private property, not the MTA rail yards, Councilmember James pointed out.

Norman Siegel, an attorney representing area activists who oppose the project, added, "The people of Brooklyn and New York need a process where they can review the specifics of this proposal."

In addition to apartment towers, Ratner wants to build a 19,000-seat basketball arena for his newly acquired Nets NBA team, and create 2.4 million square feet of office and retail space on a 24-acre swath of Prospect Heights. About 350 people live there now, most of them in coops or condos.

The developer told The News that negotiations with city and state agencies are "going very well," and would be completed within the next two months.

Ratner made the rare public appearance yesterday to trumpet the endorsement of the Rev. Herbert Daughtry. The House of the Lord pastor said that because the project "appears inevitable," he wanted to secure the most benefits for his community.

Daughtry will join other Brooklyn groups in hammering out a legally binding contract outlining promises Ratner makes to improve the neighborhood. The minister announced the likely creation of a facility for local seniors, a day care center and a health care facility.

NoyokA

October 8th, 2004, 12:02 PM

Ratner now owns 80% of the condo and co-op apartments that are on the footprint of his $2.5 billion Atlantic Yards project, he revealed yesterday.

WOW. If this holds true, wow. Not much stopping him now, oh, say a measly 20%.

NYguy

November 12th, 2004, 09:33 AM

NY POST

TICKET TREATS FOR ARENA-PLAN FANS

By PATRICK GALLAHUE

November 12, 2004 -- It apparently pays to support a professional-basketball arena in Brooklyn.

Thousands of basketball tickets have been showered on Brooklyn residents who offered their support to an NBA arena in the borough for the New Jersey Nets.

"We always knew there was a buzz in Brooklyn about bringing the team here," said Bruce Bender, a spokesman for the Nets' new owner, Bruce Ratner. "But we didn't know how big that buzz was."

Ratner sent a mass mailing to 350,000 homes in Brooklyn several weeks ago that promised a souvenir if the recipient mailed back a postcard supporting the proposal to build a 19,000-seat arena in Prospect Heights.

In addition to a tote bag, the 11,000 people that responded were given a voucher for two tickets to a game at the Continental Arena in New Jersey.

So far, more than 1,100 people have redeemed their vouchers.

"These people could end up in the fourth row or the 40th row," Bender said.

The team can use all the good will it can get between long-sagging attendance at its stadium in New Jersey and a vociferous opposition to the proposed new Frank Gehry-designed arena in Brooklyn.

Ever since Ratner, and an investment team that includes rapper Jay-Z and mystery writer Mary Higgins Clark, purchased the team for $300 million, the developer has sparred with local activists over everything from condemnation to local benefits.

"I don't know who would really want to go see the decimated Nets play," said one Ratner opponent, Patti Hagan, referring to the departures of All-Stars Kenyon Martin and Kerry Kittles.

"They are not a championship team anymore. I guess it's a nice way for Mr. Ratner to pack the house."

Despite boasting a winning record in the 2003 and 2004 seasons, the Nets have one of the lowest attendance rates in the league. Last year, the team was fourth worst in the NBA, selling only about 75 percent of the Continental Arena's capacity.

Bender acknowledged the promotion would help build a local fan base but added, "It's about spreading the excitement."

The new arena in Brooklyn is planned to be the centerpiece of a $2.5 billion commercial and residential development over what is now the MTA rail yards in Prospect Heights.

The arena is expected to open for the 2007-2008 basketball season.

NYguy

November 19th, 2004, 09:23 AM

NY POST

NEW RAGE OVER NETS ARENA PLAN

By PATRICK GALLAHUE

November 19, 2004 -- A controversial proposal for an NBA arena in Brooklyn incited a revolt by community board members against their leaders yesterday, amid claims the honchos are stifling opponents of developer Bruce Ratner's plan.

Several community board members from the affected neighborhoods joined a protest at City Hall yesterday to criticize their chairpersons.

Lou Sones, a member of Community Board 6, was among those who claimed opponents of the plan have been silenced in meetings.

He called the board's treatment of the $2.5 billion commercial and residential complex, anchored by a 19,000-seat arena for the Nets, a "flawed and broken and unfair process."

Others griped that Ratner has paid lobbyists almost $200,000 since January and spent $32,074 lobbying government groups, including the community boards.

The group Forest City Ratner defended the project, pledging it will yield 4,500 units of mixed-income housing, job training for local residents and contracts for minority- and women-owned businesses.

Church leaders, who also claim to have been left out of negotiations, are planning to boycott the Atlantic Terminal Mall on Nov. 26, the day after Thanksgiving and one of the busiest shopping days of the year. The NAACP will join them, said Councilwoman Letitia James.

BrooklynRider

November 19th, 2004, 11:42 AM

For those of you following these developments, but who might not live in Brooklyn, this project and the shady political dealings behind the scenes are not playing well at all. The chairpeople of the community boards impacted by this project are under attack from their own executive committees and attendance at community board meetings is ever increasing.

The Brooklyn Papers in particular have been very critical of the non-inclusive meetings and the Community Boards could well end up seeking to remove the chairpeople or sue to stop the CB's endorsement of any CBA not first reviewed and given approval by the full executive committee.

Frankly, this once promising deal stinks. It is a going to take a P.R. magician to reverse the negative image it has had imprinted over any positive factors it might have. Worse for Ratner, surrounding CBs are lining up to support the Develop - Don't Destroy forces. The scale of popular opinion is tipping away from Ratner.

AND, I think Mary Markowitz is going to see a fierce campaign to defeat him next election. He has emerged as a slimeball in all of this - nothing more than a cheerleader along for the ride. He is ineffective and a "do nothing" politician. As you can tell, he hasn't impressed me and I will vote for ANYONE but him next year.

billyblancoNYC

November 19th, 2004, 04:07 PM

BrooklynRider

November 19th, 2004, 05:38 PM

People that do not want this have little minds and big mouths. Think about someone other than yourself, Brooklyn NIMBYs. Disturbing.

I'm going to just assume you weren't directing that comment at me and making a larger statement. I'm not going to review the rational and valid arguments made in this thread, although I do suggest your comment was particularly insensitive to the issues of this specific case.

What I will point out is that Manhattan is extremely high density. Brooklyn has its downtown, which is clearly delineated from its residential neighborhoods. With the recent new rezoning of downtown, the density and scale of the downtown can be expected to change. This project, however, is outside that zone and pushes extremely high density development into existing brownstone neighborhoods.

It is ignorant and pretty offensive, to me, that you are calling the people most vocally opposed to this "NIMBY's". That acronym stands for "Not In My Back Yard". The objections this plan raised and the intense outcry is due to the fact that the plan seeks to destroy BLOCKS of a thriving neighborhood. NIMBY is when you object to things being built or brought into your community that you will have to live with. That is NOT the case here. This project seeks to kick these people out of THEIR neighborhood by, at first suggestion, condemning the homes they have lived in for years and saying that evicting them "serves the public good".

This project has not withdrawn the use of eminent domain from its plan. This project is, through buy-outs, pressure, threats, and gag orders, seeking to destroy a neighborhood, that I am guessing you, from Whitestone, know little about. Admittedly, the opposition to emminent domain forced a change in Ratner's strategy - he is trying to buy out owners, but some people simply aren't willing to give up their homes.

I'm just wondering what you'd be saying if LaGuardia Airport decided to expand into your neighborhood or if the Jets Stadium, that I assume you also support, was proposed to be built on the lot your home currently sits on. You wouldn't be a NIMBY fighting development. You'd be a resident fighting for survival. That is what is happening here.

CB1, a notorious NIMBY often referred to often in this forum, iks an experienced player in challenging and / or negotiating development in its zone. It is cohesive and can unified. It speaks clearly and effectively on behalf of and with support of the community. Unlike CB1, the CBs involved in this development are themselves being torn apart. The chairpeople are not representing the desires of the community. The chairpeople are acting unilaterally and in opposition to CB executive committees and without support from the public, who demand that agreements be made based on factual, detailed written understandings and not general overview statements that are not legally binding. This is what I tried to explain when I said, "For those of you following these developments, but who might not live in Brooklyn..."

I've made some impulsive posts in these forums, so I know the urge. I am sure it was unintended, but I think you lacked your usual thoughtfulness with that post.

JMGarcia

November 19th, 2004, 05:55 PM

tmg

November 19th, 2004, 07:15 PM

BrooklynRider--

Thank you for your thoughtful comments.

As an urban planner, this looks to me like an extremely exciting, transformative project for Brooklyn that would yield tremendous benefits for the surrounding area. But I recognize that I don't live there, and I recognize that this is something that the borough needs to sort out for itself. I certainly understand why the project's neighbors are upset. Like any transformative project, it will bring wrenching change to the immediate area. That the final result might be preferable to the existing conditions is little comfort if your home has been razed.

What I don't understand is the outrage over Ratner's actions. Why should he not try to encourage homeowners to sell their apartments for more to him for more than market value? Why should he not try to sway public opinion? I really don't see anything unethical in the actions he has been accused of making so far.

Another thing I don't understand is the accusation that this will "destroy" an existing neighborhood. It will actually add a lot more housing (including affordable housing) to the area, increase the mix of activities, and increase the amount of open space. While I'm sympathetic to (but not convinced by) concerns about traffic from the stadium, or the wisdom of the public subsidy, how can the rest of the project be seen as an unmitigated bad.

djf17

November 19th, 2004, 07:57 PM

This project has not withdrawn the use of eminent domain from its plan. This project is, through buy-outs, pressure, threats, and gag orders, seeking to destroy a neighborhood, that I am guessing you, from Whitestone, know little about. Admittedly, the opposition to emminent domain forced a change in Ratner's strategy - he is trying to buy out owners, but some people simply aren't willing to give up their homes.

I wish someone would threaten me to sell my home for twice its value....

billyblancoNYC

November 20th, 2004, 12:07 AM

BrooklynRider

November 20th, 2004, 03:23 PM

I think one of the issues that make this such a contentious topic is that the "community" is not, as you suggest, decided as a whole on the subject. From what I have seen of this, the "community", just like the CB is split over the issue.

I just don't think the idea that no one wants this and its being forced upon them applies in this case.

Too often in NY (warning - general statement coming) those against something identify themselves as the "community" when they actually only represent the views of a vocal minority in the community.

JM-

First, to clarify my position on this, separate from what is going on with Ratner in trying to get it built, I am for the development of the Atlantic Yards. Generally, I like the preliminary desgns and I don't have any objections to the arena coming in.

The problem that I personnally have is that the plan was drawn up with the assumption that a series of occupied homes and residential buildings would be razed for this design. There was quite a large parcel of undeveloped and vacant parcels to work with and focus on. Ratner pushed the perimeter further, without ownership of the land, without an original intention of buying the land, and transformed an exciting project into one that looked like a greedy land grab.

He has been forced, due to the well-organized, educated, vocal, a strongly represented opposition, to buy-out owners. Something that perhaps should have been started and / or completed prior to presenting his design.

I am not using the word "community" to bulk up my opinion into something it is not. There are certainly people who support this or aspects of this. I am one. There are others opposed to it entirely.

The problems are the secret, private meetings Ratner is holding with individuals who hold representative positions in groups Ratner wishes to have on board to cite "support". They are meeting to discuss, develop and bang out a CBA - acting unilaterally, without input and without participation of the groups they represent. What these people are doing is negotiating behind closed doors and presenting to the community a CBA overview. Ratner is seeking to get support and endorsement early for this project from these groups without first laying out the details of the plan. He wants the support for his "project" in whatever form HE decides to build it, if he promises the communities that he will build into it "A", "B", and "C".

The boards want to understand the DETAILS of the project. He is reluctant to disclose details of the project. Chairs of the boards are trying to ram through a general CBA agreement and the individual committees are saying they cannot and will not sign off on any agreement that does not have the details. CB leaders are dismissing these requests and in some cases, full motions, on technicalities of presentation or protocol.

I think Ratner is moving masterfully through this project and bringing in individuals whom he knows and can potentially persuade. I can't find fault with him for how he's doing it. The issue is with the people who are refusing - read the papers - who are REFUSING - to hold public forums on these issues and allow the committee leaders and members into these meetings because, well, it would turn contentious. This is a problem. The community board is the place for people to address this stuff.

I am not in the immediate vicinity of this project. But, this project can be precedent setting. There is an immediately available foot print ready - without invoking emminent domain. It is a huge site. This project can be broken up into smaller projects or, as it will be executed: phased. It is the presentation that it is somehow all or nothing that irks me.

I think the board chairs are doing what they are doing because they do see some value in the project for the surrounding communities. But, Ratner has used money to buy silence from opponents. With those documented tactics taking place, private meetings feed suspicions. Interestingly, the actions of these board members have increased awareness of and, for the moment, opposition to this plan with out public hearings. Regardless of what the CBs decide with regard to a CBA, it will, almost certainly, trigger a series of lawsuits.

With regard to this project destroying a community, yes, there is a big blank wasteland of undeveloped land at the heart of this. But the southern edge of the proposed project takes in an ocupied area two blocks wide and about five or six blocks long. Those are occupied blocks. The warehouse conversions in that area were pointed to as examples of the neighborhoods growth and re-emergence just a few years ago. Now it is blighted and needs to be razed for the public good?

For me, traffic is a non-issue - especially for that area. The ammenities the project would bring are certainly attractive. A new arena (alternative to MSG) is great as is a Brooklyn pro team. But, where is the legally binding definition of "affordable housing"? Just because he says it - means nothing. Look at all the State Financed housing being built in the city with one-bedrooms starting at $400K+. Is that affordable? Why exactly are we proposing to create superblocks and destroy the grid, when the WTC proved the failure of that model?

There are just a lot of questions people would like answered. The CBs are charged with this resonsibility. The issue is not Ratner - he is going to do everything he can in his interest. It is expected. The CB leaders on the other hand are not operating publicly and, in my opinion, ethically. A review of my stands on numerous issues on this board will reveal I am generally pro-development. It will also reveal I am vehemently opposed to Emminent Domain abuse. I am opposed to stealing people's property. I am opposed to people charged with representing a group of people, negotiating in secret while under the banner of that group. I don't want CB's to pull out of negotiations, I just want all the viewpoints - including opposition - represented at the table. And, then, I want to see an Atlantic Yards Development move forward swiftly.

TonyO

November 22nd, 2004, 03:22 PM

Globest.com

$41M Mortgage Loan Advances Atlantic Yards Effort

By Barbara Jarvie
Last updated: November 21, 2004 07:55am

BROOKLYN, NY-The first phase of the $2.5-billion Atlantic Yards redevelopment has begun with a $40.5-million first mortgage loan to two entities sponsored by the Forest City Ratner Cos. The loan, which was originated by Gramercy Capital Corp., permits FCRC to acquire a number of residential and commercial buildings toward the effort.

The project involves the development of a Frank Gehry-designed arena for the New Jersey Nets basketball team as well as an office, retail and residential project at the intersection of Flatbush and Atlantic avenues. Bruce Ratner, president and CEO of Forest City Ratner Cos., owns the team. The bridge loan from Gramercy will be repaid prior to development of the 800,009-sf, 19,000-seat arena which can also be used as a venue for concerts and other sporting events.

The 7.7-million-sf plan, which will take approximately 10 years to come to fruition, also involves the construction of some 4,500 residential units in addition to 2.1 million sf of office space, 3.1 million sf allocated for retail use, open space and parking. The first phase of construction on the arena is expected to begin at the end of this year and be completed in the summer of 2006. The project adjacent to the Atlantic Terminal, one of Brooklyn’s MTA hubs with nine subway lines and access to the Long Island Railroad.

"Gramercy Capital Corp. became involved in this project in the earliest stages of the development and understood our business plan and vision in a way that traditional lenders could not," says Andrew Silberfein, executive vice president and director of finance for FCRC.

Locally based Gramercy specializes in the origination of structured first mortgage loans on transitional properties, subordinate mortgage participations and mezzanine loans. Since its initial public offering this past July, Gramercy has originated $299 million of investments, consisting primarily of subordinate mortgage participations, mezzanine loans and whole loans.

NoyokA

November 22nd, 2004, 06:11 PM

The first phase of construction on the arena is expected to begin at the end of this year and be completed in the summer of 2006.

Nice timeline. I for one can't wait, but atleast I won't have to wait very long.

Does Ratner now own all the land on the stadium footprint?

NYguy

November 26th, 2004, 08:54 PM

BROOKLYN PAPERS

DUELING DEVELOPERS
Boymelgreen’s plans put Ratner’s ’Yards’ in peril

By Jess Wisloski
The Brooklyn Papers

A competing developer’s plans for a portion of the Atlantic Yards site could throw a monkey wrench into Bruce Ratner’s dream of building a basketball arena, four office skyscrapers and 13 high-rise apartment buildings in Prospect Heights, The Brooklyn Papers has learned.

Aside from usurping a large chunk of the land Ratner has slated for residential development, Shaya Boymelgreen’s plan to build a 1.1 million-square-foot complex of market-rate apartment buildings on Pacific Street could also stymie the Metrotech developer’s hopes of having the six-square-block site designated as urban blight, a key component to getting the state to condemn nearly 11 acres of privately owned property for his use.

Working with fellow property owner Henry Weinstein, who has leased other Pacific Street properties to Boymelgreen over the past six years, the Leviev Boymelgreen development company would build the residential complex on adjoining property Boymelgreen and Weinstein each own at 750-800 Pacific St., between Carlton and Vanderbilt avenues. The site comprises the former Pecter’s Bakery.

Ratner proposes to build a $2.5 billion complex on property bounded by Flatbush, Atlantic and Vanderbilt avenues and Dean Street — including Pacific Street.

Weinstein owns four parcels of land on a block on which Ratner wants to build residential buildings — several as high as 40 stories — as well as courtyards, stores and underground parking, according to plans Ratner released this year. Under Ratner’s plan, Pacific Street would no longer exist on that block.

Boymelgreen has yet to make public his plans for 750-800 Pacific St. but a Web site of Boymelgreen’s joint venture company, Africa Israel Investments, touts the project as one of their American ventures and said the massive development would be built on an assemblage of seven parcels on a lot bounded by Vanderbilt and Carlton avenues, between Pacific and Dean streets.

Weinstein said he was happy to join forces with Boymelgreen, who he described as a “good developer.”

“He says what he’s going to do, he does what he says, and he keeps his word,” Weinstein told The Papers of Boymelgreen. “[He] is very sensitive to what the community needs.”

Boymelgreen’s current lease expires in 2047.

The Africa Israel Web site details that the industrial buildings on the property, would remain intact, converted to luxury one-, two- and three-bedroom condominium units, with new construction above the former baked goods factory.

Weinstein said commercial property would be kept on the lower two levels of the entire project. He said he’s not sure himself of the details, but no matter what, he has no intention of selling his land to Ratner.

Sara Mirski, development director for Leviev Boymelgreen, said she could not comment on the project, but the Africa Israel Web site specified the “existing neoclassical industrial buildings will remain intact” and be converted to eight- to 10-story residential buildings.

Boymelgreen made his name in Brooklyn with the renovation of the Newswalk building, at 700 Pacific St., in 2000. Then, in 2002, the state granted him the development rights for the Civil War-era Empire Stores, along Water Street at Empire-Fulton Ferry State Park in DUMBO, in which he will create a mall and gallery that will be part of the Brooklyn Bridge Park plan. He also has several buildings under construction in DUMBO and plans to build housing along the Gowanus Canal.

Meanwhile, Ratner’s development company, Forest City Ratner, has slipped quietly past its projected deadlines for completed agreements with the city and state over government sponsorship of the Atlantic Yards project.

Ratner’s proposed project is expected to be co-sponsored by the Empire State Development Corp. and needs a memorandum of understanding with the agency before it can start its state-level review process and potential eminent domain condemnations.

While Boymelgreen would need only a Board of Standards and Appeals-issued zoning change to build at 800 Pacific St., a manufacturing zone, the property, which Ratner has slated for several buildings of his 4,500-apartment complex, could still be subject to state condemnation, and sold through eminent domain if Ratner succeeds.

One of the first steps on Ratner’s behalf would be a review of the land surrounding the planned arena complex for condemnation by eminent domain.

Regina Myer, the Brooklyn director of the Department of City Planning, said the state could override a city process, but Weinstein doesn’t believe that the Empire State Development Corp. could possibly deem an area “blighted” when faced with a pending application to build market-rate housing on the site.

“I felt they weren’t bargaining in good faith as long as they have this eminent domain thing hanging over their heads,” he said. Weinstein said he was approached by Ratner officials, but said no deals were struck, and he told them what he thought of their negotiation process.

“I’ve lived here 30 years, and I don’t take kindly to people kicking me off my property,” Weinstein said.

He told The Papers that he and Boymelgreen were “talking about how to maximize the property. But we don’t want to do anything against the community; we want to go along with what they feel.” He said they both have been reaching out to community leaders and neighbors to get a feel of what that is.

“The area’s doing very well without a stadium,” said Weinstein, criticizing Ratner’s linkage of needed housing to a privately owned arena in order to seize property.

“I don’t know why that stadium has anything to do with building houses,” he said.

Though he labeled as “essential” development over the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s Long Island Rail Road storage yards — which both pro- and anti-Atlantic Yards advocates acknowledge to be a blight and “scar” on the community — Weinstein called Ratner’s plan “a waste of resources.”

“We’re certainly not going to go away quietly, that’s for sure. We’re going to spend any amount of money to keep my property — I certainly will, and I think Shaya will, too,” he said.

The Boymelgreen plan also indicates that a once-smooth relationship between the Israeli-financed developer and Ratner has now soured.

Ratner’s plan originally included Boymelgreen’s condominium-converted Daily News building, Newswalk, at 700 Pacific St., but excluded the building from his plan in April.

At the time that Newswalk was gerrymandered out of the Atlantic Yards site plan, the prevailing assumption was that Boymelgreen and Ratner were friends, or at least shared a cordial business relationship.

A Boymelgreen spokesman characterized his boss and Ratner as “friends,” back in January, and said the Newswalk building would become a joint project of the proposed site. This week the spokesman, Will Kim, said he did not believe anything had changed in their relationship despite the competing plans.

A source close to the Atlantic Yards negotiations told The Papers that Ratner and Boymelgreen had agreed to jointly develop the property at 800 Pacific St. but the contract was never signed and Boymelgreen partnered with Weinstein instead.

Forest City Ratner officials declined to comment for this article.

Three other condo apartment buildings are included in the footprint and Ratner has been negotiating with individual unit owners to purchase their properties, aided by the threat of eminent domain condemnation.

Weinstein added his belief that Ratner is not buying the rest of the property in the 21-acre site — the three condos comprise a small portion of the total acreage of private property Ratner needs — because he’s holding out for eminent domain.

“It seems to me that he’s not very anxious to buy our properties at market price,” said Weinstein. “If it was me, and I really needed a piece of property, I’d keep talking no matter what.”

True to Weinstein’s word, he and Boymelgreen have been reaching out to community leaders.

Prospect Heights Councilwoman Letitia James, an ardent opponent of the Atlantic Yards plan, said she met with Boymelgreen officials and would support them in their application for zoning changes.

“They want to ensure that their community remains intact,” she said. “They respect the character of the community.”

James said based on what Boymelgreen representatives told her the residential space would be small in comparison with Ratner’s total proposed housing. It would downsize whatever Ratner hoped to do, if not stop it, James related.

“I think it would put a wrinkle into [Ratner’s] project because he wouldn’t get the acreage that he needs,” the councilwoman said. Asked if she would support a downscaled version of the arena plan, James declined to commit.

“The devil’s in the details,” she said.

Derek2k3

November 27th, 2004, 12:05 AM

"James said based on what Boymelgreen representatives told her the residential space would be small in comparison with Ratner’s total proposed housing"

Obviously. Their parcel is only one-fifth of Ratner's entire development. Also, Ratner is proposing the same amount of square footage as these guys in low-rises and four small 20 story buildings which makes room for open space for half the block. Thus, Weinstein's proposal couldn't be anymore scale and character friendly than Ratner's plan unless they took away the park space. Letiticia is just anti-Ratner or/and an idiot.

NYguy

November 28th, 2004, 12:50 PM

DAILY NEWS

Home-court showdown
Both sides claim top score in arena land tally

http://www.nydailynews.com/ips_rich_content/123-stadium.jpg

Model of arena proposed as part of Bruce Ratner's Atlantic Yards project. Deep-pocketed developer has been snapping up properties in Prospect Heights, reducing need to condemn homes, but arena opponents say many commercial owners are holding out.

The battle over the proposed basketball arena at Atlantic Yards has reached a fever pitch - with both the well-heeled developer and activists engaging in some serious spin.

By snapping up properties in Prospect Heights, real estate tycoon Bruce Ratner has vastly reduced the need to condemn residential properties for his controversial Atlantic Yards project, Forest City Ratner executive James Stuckey told the Daily News this week.

Arena opponents, however, stress that the condos Ratner has bought amount to only a small percentage of the required land for the total project - and say Ratner wants to give the impression that he owns nearly all of the land he needs.

"They can talk about how many people they've bought out, but we know that there's a significant amount of property that they're not going to get," said Daniel Goldstein of Develop - Don't Destroy Brooklyn, an anti-arena group.

Goldstein estimated that the deep-pocketed developer has yet to buy half of the private property he needs to make way for his project, excluding the 11-acre rail yards the Metropolitan Transportation Authority owns.

In an exclusive talk with The News, Stuckey said that the buyouts were proof that the company was making good on a promise to "substantially reduce, and if possible, eliminate the need for residential condemnation."

The possible use of eminent domain to seize and condemn private property has been the most unpopular aspect of the $2.5 billion plan, which includes commercial and residential towers in addition to the arena.

To help pay for the buyouts - some of which made Brooklyn homeowners instant millionaires, The News reported in May - Ratner's company took out a $40.5 million loan from Gramercy Capital Corp.

Renters who are displaced by the development are being invited to live in comparable apartments in planned buildings for the same rent, Stuckey said.

Ratner owns nearly all of the condo apartments in two buildings on the block where he would build a 19,000-seat NBA arena. In addition, Forest City Ratner owns six rental buildings on the footprint and several commercial properties, said a source close to negotiations.

But, Goldstein said, unlike panicked homeowners who took Ratner's money and ran, many commercial property owners on the plan's footprint have no intention of leaving.

One such owner, Drew Tressler of Global Exhibition Services, said that he didn't intend to sell his three-story warehouse at 700 Atlantic Ave.

"I've been here 25 years; it's a very nice neighborhood," Tressler said.

Citing confidentiality laws, Stuckey declined to comment on how many commercial properties the corporation has yet to buy.

NYguy

November 28th, 2004, 02:16 PM

Overview of the eastern edge of the Ratner development...

http://www.pbase.com/nyguy/image/36882150/medium.jpg

The western edge, including the arena footprint...

http://www.pbase.com/nyguy/image/36882179/medium.jpg

Atlantic Yards development borders...

http://www.pbase.com/nyguy/image/36884479/medium.jpg

http://www.pbase.com/nyguy/image/36884498/medium.jpg

NewYorkYankee

November 28th, 2004, 03:42 PM

I really hope that this gets built, I love the stadium and the high rises. It will help Brooklyn economy, (IN MY OPINION), maybe Ratner could tell the owners of the businesses not selling that they can move into the bottom portion of the buidlings...?? Just a thought. I dont know.

NoyokA

November 28th, 2004, 08:32 PM

Ratner should've secretly ben buying these properties long before he announced his Atlantic Yards Plans, ala Disney and Disney World.

NewYorkYankee

December 1st, 2004, 10:36 PM

Efforts To Preserve Buildings In Downtown Brooklyn Pay Off

NOVEMBER 30TH, 2004

NY1

An effort to protect the history of Downtown Brooklyn is making progress – one building at a time. It's a story we first told you about earlier this year. Brooklyn reporter Jeanine Ramirez has an update.

An art deco skyscraper built in the 1920s and an 1890s Renaissance-inspired former telephone company building are two treasures in Downtown Brooklyn that have been rescued now that the Landmarks Preservation Commission has designated them city landmarks.

Community activists and preservationists are hoping to protect many other historic structures in the area that may be destroyed under the city's Downtown Brooklyn rezoning plan.

"You can see Democracy at work, because there's been a hue and cry from a lot of community groups from our elected officials throughout this whole process of hearings, we've been very vocal and people have been listening," said Meredith Hamilton of the Brooklyn Heights Association.

The Landmarks Commission is considering giving landmark status to two other buildings both former department stores on Fulton Street: a Romanesque Revival style structure was known as Offerman's and a neo-Classical building called Namm's. The Landmarks Commission says a decision should come in the next few weeks.

But there's still a lot more work to be done. The groups have put together a list of 28 buildings in the area that they would like to see preserved.

Buildings such as a 1892 Romanesque structure with terracotta arches and Roman brick.

"I actually used to live in downtown Brooklyn and I walked around and was astonished by the high quality of the architecture. You just have to look up to see the details," said Lisa Kersavage of the Municipal Arts Society.

"We've got all of this architectural character, all of this high quality work that was built by the best architects for the most important commercial clients in Brooklyn when it was its own city," said Kent Barwick of the Municipal Arts Society.

The city's $100 million rezoning plan aims to add office buildings and help stop companies from heading to New Jersey for more affordable space. But that plan requires demolition. This group wants to create a commercial historic district before that happens.
"We're hoping for a kind of grouping of buildings on Fulton Mall so that even though you may have some very big modern office development, you still have, for part of the mall, a sense of the historic main street downtown Brooklyn," said Hamilton.

Even though they've made some progress, activists know they need to push forward.

"It's not that we want to get two or four or six, we want to see these streets be transformed," said Barwick. "We want the upper stories to be as vital and as valuable as the ground floors are."