A, C and G lines need to be connected with D, M, N, R, B, Q, 2, 3, 4 and 5 at Atlantic Av.
A, C and G lines need to be connected with D, M, N, R, B, Q, 2, 3, 4 and 5 at Atlantic Av.
That might not be so bad after all.Quote:
Originally Posted by kliq6
Different developers and different architects will make it more diverse in appearance instead of having a uniform look to it.
Carroll Gardens/Cobble Hill Courier
01/26/2007
Gehry to unveil new and improved Miss Bklyn
By Stephen Witt
“Miss Brooklyn,” the cornerstone of Frank Gehry’s vision for the Atlantic Yards project, is undergoing major plastic surgery.
Gehry let his secret out at last week’s Brooklyn Museum press conference announcing the $400 million, 20-year naming rights deal between England-based Barclays Bank and Bruce Ratner’s Nets basketball team to call the proposed Brooklyn Arena Barclays Center.
Originally, “Miss Brooklyn” was a mammoth 600-foot, 60-story structure at the Flatbush/Atlantic Avenue intersection, dwarfing the borough’s current tallest building – the Williamsburgh Bank Building at 512 feet high and 34 stories.
However, Gehry’s hopes to create a new borough landmark were dashed in a last-minute deal to approve the 22-acre arena and 16 skyscraper project.
“Miss Brooklyn – she’s gone. She’s a new one now. I have a new Miss Brooklyn. I haven’t showed it yet and she’s better,” said Gehry, one of the world’s pre-eminent architects.
“I’ve always loved a reason to start over again and I did it,” he said.
Gehry also let out how the building got its name.
“Miss Brooklyn got named when one of my guys was bringing the model from LA to New York and they had to buy a seat on the airplane, and when they sold the seat they needed a name so he said, ‘call her Miss Brooklyn’ and it stuck,” said Gehry.
Gehry also took umbrage to critics who charge the Atlantic Yards project is the “Manhattanization of Brooklyn.”
“It will be the Brooklynization of Brooklyn not the Manhattanization. Things are changing and growing, and people are attracted to the center — the cities, and whether you like it or not it’s happening here,” said Gehry.
I just can't wait for Goldsteins house to be demolished!
New and improved. Hope she's slim.Quote:
Originally Posted by Stern
But to get the square footage in slimly, there'd have to be TWINS. Where did the square footage go?
I know that feeling.Quote:
"I’ve always loved a reason to start over again and I did it,” he said.
Interesting story.Quote:
“Miss Brooklyn got named when one of my guys was bringing the model from LA to New York and they had to buy a seat on the airplane, and when they sold the seat they needed a name so he said, ‘call her Miss Brooklyn’ and it stuck,” said Gehry.
This is obvious and shouldn't have to be pointed out. If critical Brooklynites were truly loyal to their borough they'd see its truth. As it is they're kneejerk bozos.Quote:
Gehry also took umbrage to critics who charge the Atlantic Yards project is the “Manhattanization of Brooklyn.”
“It will be the Brooklynization of Brooklyn not the Manhattanization."
Of course that's what it is. The issue here is whether that is a good thing or a bad thing. My sense is that it will be a big plus for the City as a whole, and for the site on which it is a built, but definitely a big minus for many of the charming low-scale neighborhoods that surround the site. How one weighs these pluses and minuses is a matter of perspective.Quote:
Originally Posted by Stern
Maybe the Bostonization of Brooklyn.
Manhattanization is hyperbole.
So let's see ... building skyscrapers is "Manhattanization." Shanghai, Mumbai, Istanbul, Seoul, London and Riga are being Manhattanized.
All except Riga have also built subways. Was that also Manhattanization?
When Brooklyn converts its waterfront to parkland, is that also Manhattanization?
If Brooklyn becomes a successful business center, will that be JerseyCity-ization?
If something nice is done with the Gowanus Canal or Newtown Creek, will that be Amsterdamization?
They should banish the Brooklyn Academy of Music to Manhattan where it belongs. Appeals too much to hipsters like the ones in Manhattan.
Huge Arena Project Looms Over Brooklyn
By DAVID B. CARUSO
Associated Press Writer
January 28, 2007, 9:53 AM EST
NEW YORK -- When Jill Baroff steps through the gate of her little yellow townhouse, she sees the Brooklyn of storybooks.
Families tend brownstone buildings they've nurtured for decades. Children skip by speaking a half-dozen languages. Down the block, tough guys rub shoulders with authors and artists at an eclectic tavern that predates Prohibition.
In a few years, however, she may see a half-mile strip of skyscrapers designed by celebrity architect Frank Gehry, a flashy new arena for the NBA's Nets and hordes of basketball fans hunting for parking and a cheap sports bar.
It will be like a slice of midtown Manhattan, she says, right across the street from the century-old, wood-frame house on Dean Street that she bought in 1983.
"I really can't imagine what's in store for us," Baroff said. "We live in this little haven, and if this gets built, I think it will destroy that. ... Will anybody be able to remain here? Anyone who is of the neighborhood?"
Change has been coming fast in Brooklyn, but maybe nowhere more so than in the 22 acres that make up Atlantic Yards -- the $4 billion megadevelopment of 16 skyscrapers planned by New Jersey Nets principal owner Bruce Ratner.
Much of it will rise on land now occupied by an unloved open rail yard, shabby industrial buildings and blocks of automotive businesses. Mayor Michael Bloomberg has heralded their replacement as "the most exciting private development Brooklyn has ever seen."
State officials have approved the project, leaving only lawsuits by residents standing in the way of the wrecking crews in a borough that has found itself suddenly wealthy, fighting homogenization and struggling to remain affordable.
In addition to the 18,000-seat arena, Atlantic Yards will contain office suites, a hotel, 6,400 apartments and a 500-foot glass tower. It will contain nearly 8 million square feet of floor space -- the equivalent of more than three Empire State Buildings.
The project's size dismays residents who love the village-like feel of the adjoining neighborhoods, and worry about the deadening effect skyscrapers have on residential street life.
But Atlantic Yards has its champions, especially those left behind by the borough's already spreading gentrification.
Under a deal signed by Ratner's development company, at least 2,250 of the new rental apartments will be offered at reduced prices to families living on low or middle incomes. At least 600 condominium units will be available at reduced prices to families that meet income guidelines.
Opponents of the project note that many of the price-controlled units aren't scheduled to be built until the later stages of the construction, and might not be available for a decade or more.
Still, the long odds of landing one of them in a housing lottery haven't stopped prospective tenants like Gabriel McQueen from dreaming big.
A native of Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuyvesant section, the 29-year-old firefighter recently gave up trying to find an affordable apartment close to his old neighborhood and moved an hour away to Far Rockaway, on the Queens seashore.
"I had lived in Brooklyn all my life. I grew up in Bed-Stuy and I never wanted to leave it. This was like the hardest thing for me to do, to come out here," he said.
With a little luck, he said, Atlantic Yards could be his ticket home.
"I think Brooklyn needs this," McQueen said.
The Brooklyn Paper has taken it upon itself to release information about Barclays as a bank that profited from slave money. In an effort to raise public ire about the Barclays/Ratner deal.
What is so ironic about this is the editors of the Brooklyn Papers cannot see how they themselves are exploiting this unfortunate history for their own cause.
If Barclays had not given money to a project that the Brooklyn Paper opposes, would the paper have brought up the issue? Barclays past would have been the same regardless of giving money to Ratner.
Of all of the countries, industries, businesses, banks that profited from African slavery, its disingenuous and exploitive to point out one with the intent to expressly gain support for a cause that has nothing to do with slavery.
Blood money: Nets arena to be named after bank founded on slave money
U.S. was founded by slave owners.
Says more about the Brooklyn Paper's objectivity or the lack thereof as a newspaper than anything else.
NY Sun
Bloomberg's Budget Doubles Subsidy For Atlantic Yard
By ELIOT BROWN
January 30, 2007
The city has doubled its direct subsidy for the Atlantic Yards project, adding an extra $105 million to the proposed development.
The added subsidy, which brings the city's direct contribution to $205 million, was disclosed in Mayor Bloomberg's preliminary budget last week.
"The additional funding is for infrastructure improvements, several of which would have been required with or without the construction of the Atlantic Yards Development," a spokesman for the mayor's office, John Gallagher, told The New York Sun via e-mail.
In 2005, the city and the Empire State Development Corporation agreed to a memorandum of understanding with the developer of the Brooklyn project, Forest City Ratner Companies, in which both governmental parties committed $100 million. A provision in the agreement allowed for further subsidy "for extraordinary infrastructure costs relating to the mixed use development."
A spokeswoman for the state agency said it has no plans to change its $100 million commitment.
A spokesman for Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn, which opposes the project, Daniel Goldstein, said the city's move was unwelcome, though not unexpected. "As long as they can convince the public it's only $100 million, they'll do that," he said.
Forest City Ratner did not return several calls seeking comment.
Council Member Letitia James, whose district includes Atlantic Yards, was upset by the budgeting for additional funds, her chief of staff, Kate Suisman, said. Ms. James has been an outspoken opponent of the project, but Ms. Suisman said she did not think the added $105 million would derail the passage of the mayor's proposed budget.
A former president of the Boerum Hill Association, Jo Anne Simon, said she opposes many aspects of the project, though infrastructure could be a good thing. "This is part of the problem," she said. "Of course there are needs for infrastructure, but I don't know why this amount of money and what it's going to go for."
Has anyone found a breakdown of exactly what public money is paying for and why the city add another $100 million?
This may be a good investment in light of a report in the Times that stated the city is flush with a 3.9 billion surplus because of the surging real estate market.