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

[RJW]

RJW, your point is valid, imo. You might, however, have picked a better example than Picasso, who was something of a chameleon, like the architect Saarinen. You could, for example, have picked Dali: all that slickly-rendered surrealist crap.

Thanks and yes - I think your point is also valid - one of Picasso's "things" was widely varied styles while Dali does make a better illustration of crap.



Poor criticisms aside, I appreciate the contributions of all of the artists cited.

[Alonzo-ny]

I wrote those critisms at speed as i was running out of internet time and as a response to whoever claimed i claim to know how everyone measures a great building but there are very few who measure it by the amount of people who walk through its doors. For example a ugly office building has a few thousand entering every day but does that make it great, no. And as for the gehry arguement, i think he's overhyped and repeats himself although i do like his maggies center which is diffirent from most of his designs and i like it and you all should get a picture of it in here and check it out. I am officially bored of this arguement and am going to agree to disagree and those are my last comments on this matter.

[kliq6]

9 days left in the exclusive talk period, ratner has not raised his bid yet by a buck. Deadline in Saturday the 10th

[lofter1]

And as for the gehry arguement ... although i do like his maggies center which is diffirent from most of his designs and i like it and you all should get a picture of it in here and check it out.

Maggie's Dundee is located in front of Ward 32 at Ninewells Hospital. It commands stunning views down the Tay Estuary and across to North Fife.



More pics: http://www.galinsky.com/buildings/maggiescentre/

[Alonzo-ny]

Pretty small but its a good building, Dundee is where is study architecture in scotland where ill be returning to in a week after my working holiday in NY

[lofter1]

O.K., the Whole Paper Is Basically an Ad

By MICHAEL BRICK
Published: September 3, 2005
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/03/ny...ard.html?8hpib

One possibility is that Walt Whitman would be proud. A newspaper-shaped thing has taken the name The Brooklyn Standard in homage to the paper that published Whitman's Brooklyniana series in the 1860's, and people are eager to see the next issue.

This newspaper-shaped thing is focused on Brooklyn, printing the word Brooklyn 17 times on its front page, a display of loyalty stronger than Whitman himself showed with lines like "Manhattan faces and eyes forever for me."And its content is divisive in a way Whitman might recognize from feuds with bosses at The Brooklyn Eagle over his Free Soil Party views. But while Whitman was taking a stand against the expansion of slavery, the editors of the new Standard have embraced more self-serving causes.

The publication is paid for by Forest City Ratner, the company promoting a proposed $3.5 billion arena project for downtown Brooklyn, and most of the articles, well, promote a proposed $3.5 billion arena project for downtown Brooklyn.

To counter the impression that it is trying to fool anyone, The Standard avoids calling itself a newspaper, instead proclaiming itself "a Forest City Ratner Publication."

Efforts at transparency end there. The Standard is printed on newsprint, folded like a tabloid, laid out to look like a newspaper and distributed alongside real newspapers. Hawkers hand it out by subway stations, and its masthead is full of people with newspaper-sounding jobs like executive editor and photographer.

Articles by writers of obvious bias are consigned to pages marked Editorial and Op-Ed. In that space, an article in the first issue was signed by Bruce Ratner, namesake of the development company behind the arena project, known as Atlantic Yards. Another article was about him. In it, the Rev. Herbert Daughtry described a talk Mr. Ratner gave to schoolchildren and said Mr. Ratner was "relaxed, smiling and seated on a child's chair, in his customary humble, winsome manner."


Damon Meadow handing out The Brooklyn Standard at a newsstand in a photograph taken by Patti Hagan.


Ting-Li Wang/The New York Times
Patti Hagan, an opponent of a proposed $3.5 billion arena project in downtown Brooklyn. Ms. Hagan looks forward to the next edition of the paper so she can learn more about the project.

The first issue also published letters to the editor from politicians who have endorsed the arena project, including Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Marty Markowitz, the borough president. Both men enlivened their prose with exclamation points. Mr. Markowitz used three.
If The Standard were a real newspaper, a writer named Edward-Isaac Dovere would be its young, indefatigable reporter desperate for the soothing paternal approval of the front page (and generally despised by the other reporters; names could be named here, but won't). Mr. Dovere scored two front-page bylines in the debut issue by staying focused on stories promoting a certain $3.5 billion arena project for downtown Brooklyn.

The Standard's goals have been no great mystery to opponents of the arena project. The authors of No Land Grab, a Web site with an unmistakably forthright name, wrote last month that "it has become fashionable for Brooklynites to use The Brooklyn Standard to line their hamster cages and use as 'brown matter' for composting bins."

Other arena opponents consider The Standard a valuable resource. Patti Hagan, a leader of the Prospect Heights Action Coalition, said she saw a young man hawking the paper this month and ran toward him, only to find that he had the old issue. This was a disappointment. Ms. Hagan already has that one. If you call her, she can read aloud from a copy she keeps on her desk.

"I keep it right in front of me because I need to refer to it, and I've underlined it and I've memorized it; I've got total recall of this thing," Ms. Hagan said. "Every time they put something like this out, you learn more."

Ms. Hagan said she awaited the next issue "with bated breath."

Some fear she will be disappointed. Daniel Goldstein, another opponent of the arena project, said he did not expect a second edition.

"Their intention was to advertise their project," Mr. Goldstein said. "They're not in the newspaper business."

Still, there is talk of the next issue: The directors of an arts group called Rooftop Films wrote and publicized a letter rebuffing overtures from the development group to appear in The Standard. This turn of events seemed a setback for The Standard, but it worked out well for the film group.

Rooftop Films' audience mirrors a mix of professionals and hipsters who present the vocal opposition to the arena project, and news of the group's rejection of The Standard made the front page of the local weekly, The Brooklyn Papers, last month.Joseph DePlasco, a spokesman for Forest City Ratner, which is the development partner of The New York Times Company for its new headquarters building, said a new issue of The Standard would be published in September. He said readers could expect more overviews of the project, letters from supporters and dates of future hearings.

"We'll still try to do it in a colorful, hopefully engaging way," Mr. DePlasco said, adding that the publication is meant to complement the developer's other efforts to promote the arena project.

How proud Whitman would be is an open question.

Though the new Standard invokes the legacy of the old Brooklyn Standard and the subsequent Brooklyn Standard Union, Mr. DePlasco said it "would be presumptuous of us to suggest what Whitman would have thought."

Mr. Goldstein, one of the arena opponents, hazarded a guess.

"I think he'd probably say he prefers free verse to free propaganda," he said.

As the dispute between the arena's supporters and opponents amounts in some ways to a clash between low-rise brownstones and large-scale public works, Whitman himself gave a hint of his views right in the pages of Brooklyniana.

"Several of the churches are noble buildings, and the new Academy of Music is a sufficient success in an architectural point of view outside," Whitman wrote. "But, after all, there are private rows of buildings in some of the choice streets of our city that transcend any single public edifice among us that we know of."

[NoyokA]

Brooklyn Papers:

‘NIMBY’ Bloomie films TV ad in Fort Greene

By Jess Wisloski
The Brooklyn Papers

If it’s in Brooklyn, build away. Just don’t build it anywhere near Mayor Mike’s backyard.

Despite promoting the largest economic development projects in Brooklyn for city approval in the past year, including the Atlantic Yards housing and arena development, and an Ikea big-box store in Red Hook, the mayor continues to say he might not like the projects so much if it was his quality of life that was in jeopardy.

In a surprise visit to Fort Greene Aug. 24 to film a re-election campaign commercial, Mayor Michael Bloomberg expressed surprise at how close Forest City Ratner’s proposed 19,000-seat arena and 17-tower residential complex was to Brownstone Brooklyn.

And, upon finding out the proximity of the 60-story Frank Gehry designs for a futuristic cityscape would be to some of the borough’s most cherished six-story brownstones, a resident says the mayor told him that if he lived there, he wouldn’t be so keen on the project, either.

Michael Decker, who lives near the Mexican restaurant Pequena, on South Oxford Street between Lafayette Avenue and Fulton Street, where Bloomberg was filming his commercial, said he called some of his neighbors about the mayor’s presence on the block.

The neighbors, all members of the Fort Greene Association, and two who are involved with the anti-Ratner arena group Develop-Don’t Destroy Brooklyn (DDDB), asked the mayor about his support of the Atlantic Yards project.

“[His comment] was in regard to our opposition to the project,” recalled Decker, “and I believe what he said was, ‘If I were in your position, I’d feel the same way,’” recalled Decker, a member of DDDB.

The mayor’s not-in-my-backyard, or NIMBY, message sounded much like comments he made the day after the City Council approved rezoning to allow the construction of an Ikea big-box store in Red Hook last October.

Talking to reporters about the Ikea project, Bloomberg said candidly, “I happen to be a supporter of [the Red Hook Ikea plan]. But I think if I lived there, I don’t know whether I would be, quite honestly.”

Lucy Koteen, an organizer for DDDB and member of the Fort Greene Association, said the site, a tiny Mexican restaurant, seemed to have been location-scouted for the Spanish-language commercial, but pointed out that the area, unlike the surrounding neighborhoods of Prospect Heights, Bushwick and Park Slope, doesn’t have a very large Hispanic population.

“I thought, ‘Those don’t look like the usual Pequena people.’ Pequena is the yuppie place; it’s a nice place, but they have a lunchtime special with margaritas,” she pointed out.

“There were two Spanish-looking men, playing dominos at a table outside the restaurant as a backdrop,” she said with a laugh. “[Bloomberg] spoke in Spanish from his teleprompter.”

Afterwards, she, Decker and another neighbor approached the mayor, and brought up the Atlantic Yards project, which would begin two blocks from the restaurant.

“We told him this community did not want it, and that those people who were behind the project were not from the community, and that over 40 groups with deep roots in the neighborhood opposed it,” Koteen said.

“They started walking, and [Bloomberg] said, ‘Gee, I don’t know what to tell you, I wouldn’t be happy about it if it was in my neighborhood either,” said Koteen.

Mayoral spokesman Jordan Barowitz could not confirm the statement.

“I asked about that from someone who was with the mayor all day, and she doesn’t recall that conversation,” he said.

“I believe he was sympathetic to the individuals who lived in the area, but as the mayor’s reiterated, this proposal means tens of thousands of jobs, and thousands of units of affordable housing,” he said.

Koteen agreed that the mayor seemed sincere.

“He showed real concern in that he was listening,” she said.

Decker said it was “funny” that of all neighborhoods, Bloomberg chose Fort Greene to film a campaign commercial.

“He’s using our beautiful neighborhood as a backdrop in re-election commercials,” said Decker, “while carelessly supporting a developer’s land-grab that will irreparably damage this very community.”

[kliq6]

have to admit an di may be killed on this bored and by people who know me bu ti am actually against the ratner plan, its not what Brooklyn needs, i like extell bid but they have no chance. The MTA will award this low bid from ratner

[bkmonkey]

what does brooklyn need?

[krulltime]

City releases forecast for Brooklyn arena


by Julie Satow
September 06, 2005

The proposed Nets basketball arena in Brooklyn would generate $28.5 million in revenue for the city over 30 years, according to a report released today by the Independent Budget Office.

The revenue falls short of the gains forecast by an earlier study sponsored by Forest City Ratner, the developer of the 18,000-seat basketball arena and other buildings over the Atlantic Yards, according to opponents of the project.

and state would each contribute $100 million to the construction of the arena. After those payments, the state would still gain $70.5 million and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority would get a $7.9 million boost.

“How sweet a deal is Ratner getting and how raw a deal is the public getting? Very sweet and very raw,” says Daniel Goldstein of Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn, a group that opposes the proposed 21-acre development.

The MTA, which owns the rail yard, is negotiating with Forest City Ratner over the development. The deadline for the negotiations is Saturday.

The report also found that the arena would generate about $7.5 million in new city taxes annually, mostly from sales taxes. The projections are in 2005 dollars.


©2005 Crain Communications Inc.

[TonyO]

NY Times
September 7, 2005

Offer Is Doubled by Developer to Build Arena in Brooklyn

By CHARLES V. BAGLI
Under pressure from a rival bidder for the Atlantic railyard in Brooklyn, the developer Bruce C. Ratner has agreed to double his initial offer to roughly $100 million for the right to build a glass-walled basketball arena that would anchor the largest private development in the borough's history, people on both sides of the negotiations said yesterday.

The higher bid means that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which owns the yard and is perennially in need of cash, would get an extra $50 million to spend on the transportation system. The agency would also get a new, upgraded train yard on land to the west of the existing 8.3-acre yard, which is at the intersection of Atlantic and Flatbush Avenues.

The board of the transportation agency could hold a special meeting as soon as Tuesday to approve the deal, according to two executives involved in the talks, who asked not to be identified because of the continuing negotiations.

The $555.3 million arena, which would be a new home for the Nets and the most expensive arena in the country, is one element of a $3.5 billion development of 6,000 apartments as well as stores, office space and parks that would transform the area. Much to the dismay of some residents and critics of the project, two of the 15 towers planned for the 21-acre site would rise above the Williamsburgh Savings Bank, currently the tallest building in Brooklyn, and dwarf much of the surrounding neighborhood.

The transportation agency and the developer declined to comment on the latest offer.

Also yesterday, the New York City Independent Budget Office released a report stating that the arena would generate a modest but positive fiscal impact for the state and the city. After a significant public investment, which includes a $200 million subsidy, tax-exempt financing and numerous tax breaks, the arena would create an estimated fiscal surplus of $107 million over 30 years, or $28.5 million for the city alone, the budget office estimated.

Supporters and opponents of the project immediately seized on the report to buttress their arguments.

Mr. Ratner's company, Forest City Ratner, said in a statement released yesterday that it was pleased that the budget office had concluded that the arena was a "win-win" situation for the city and the state.

"As we have said all along," said James P. Stuckey, the company vice president overseeing the project, "Atlantic Yards is about more than basketball. It's about affordable housing and jobs and creating a development that complements the borough and the surrounding communities."

Critics contended that large development projects rarely live up to the extravagant claims made in economic reports used to justify them.

Forest City plans to build 6,000 apartments, with half of the 4,500 rental units reserved for low- to middle-income residents. Also, Forest City recently promised to pursue the development of an additional 600 to 1,000 apartments for low- to moderate-income residents.

The project has evolved over the last two years, with the value of construction rising to $3.5 billion from $2.5 billion, while the cost of the arena jumped to $555 million from $435 million.

Daniel Goldstein, a spokesman for Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn, a neighborhood group that opposes the project, said that the report showed that supporters had exaggerated the benefits of the project to taxpayers. Both he and City Councilwoman Letitia James, who represents the area surrounding the site, noted that the budget office said the city would see a surplus of only $28.5 million above its investment in the project after 30 years.

"It's not much of a surplus, less than a million dollars a year," Ms. James said. "Given all the negative impacts, I don't think it's worth the public investment."

Ms. James said that the Ratner project would add to traffic congestion at an already busy intersection and prompt the removal of longtime residents and businesses through condemnation.

Ronnie Lowenstein, director of the Independent Budget Office said that unlike most stadium projects, the proposed 18,000-seat basketball arena for the Nets would generate new tax dollars largely because the franchise would relocate to Brooklyn from New Jersey.

"We expect that many of their fans will spend their entertainment dollars here rather than there," she said.

Ms. Lowenstein said she acknowledged the limitations of doing a strict economic impact analysis for the arena alone. She said it was hard to estimate the increased number of jobs and spending for the entire project, although she believes the proposed housing would have a positive effect.

Mr. Ratner, a partner with The New York Times Company on its new headquarters building in Midtown Manhattan, had been under considerable pressure to raise his offer ever since the Extell Development Company offered $150 million for the development rights in July. Extell won support from some local groups because it proposed a smaller project and did not require that the state condemn some adjoining properties. But the transportation authority ultimately rejected the Extell bid, giving Mr. Ratner until Saturday to come up with a better offer.

The developer estimated that the value of his original bid was worth $329 million because he would build a larger, more modern railyard. Transportation agency officials said they were unsure whether the Extell bid included the cost of building a new railyard.

Under the new deal, Mr. Ratner will still build a new yard.

Janel Paterson, a spokeswoman for the city's Economic Development Corporation, said the project "would clearly result in increased revenues, especially when the surrounding development is taken into consideration."

[krulltime]

Report: Large windfall from Nets arena doubtful

September 7, 2005

The proposed New Jersey Nets arena in Downtown Brooklyn would provide the city and state with a net surplus of $107 million over 30 years, according to a report out today by the city's Independent Budget Office. That's not much more than the $100 million the government would give to developer – and Nets owner – Bruce Ratner to build the arena and redevelop the area around it. When the arena opens, the report also concluded, it will provide $7.5 million in annual tax revenue to the city.


City Independent Budget Office Report


Copyright © 2003-2005 The Real Deal.

[kliq6]

Ratner set to Net MTA deal



By PETE DONOHUE
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

MTA officials are expected to approve as soon as Wednesday a deal to clear the lane for the Nets to play in Brooklyn, transit sources said yesterday.
Developer Bruce Ratner has sweetened his offer to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority for rights to develop its railyards in downtown Brooklyn, where his company, Forest City Ratner, wants to build an arena for the Jersey-based team.

MTA board members yesterday were told to come to a special meeting Wednesday where one source expects the board to approve a deal with Ratner, who owns the Nets.

The board didn't accept Ratner's initial offer at a July meeting but voted overwhelmingly - 12-to-1 - to negotiate exclusively with his company instead of a rival bidder.

Ratner since has upped his initial bid of $50 million to the $100 million range and has offered improvements on a few other fronts, sources said.

"It's a better deal," said one source.

The arena is the centerpiece of Ratner's $3.5 billion vision that also calls for 6,000 apartments and other development over 21 acres.

In his July bid, Ratner also pledged to build a new facility for Long Island Rail Road trains that use the yards, as well as other improvements.

Opponents contend the project will overwhelm the neighborhood with traffic and overtax local city services.

[NoyokA]

Star-Ledger:

Nets close in on their Brooklyn property
Saturday, September 10, 2005
BY MATTHEW FUTTERMAN


Nets owner Bruce Ratner and the Metropolitan Transpotation Authority appear to have reached a deal that would allow Ratner to buy the nine-acre rail yard in downtown Brooklyn for the Nets' proposed arena.

The two sides have been locked in exclusive negotiations for six weeks and had until today to reach a deal. Earlier this week, Ratner doubled his original offer for the rail yard to $100 million. While neither side would comment on the negotiations, the MTA set a special board meeting for Wednesday to consider Ratner's proposal. The state agency usually only makes such a move after it has reached a deal.

Ratner is planning a $550 million arena designed by architect Frank Gehry at Flatbush and Atlantic Avenues in downtown Brooklyn. The arena, which would be the most expensive building of its kind in the country, would also be the centerpiece of a community of thousands of apartments and office buildings to be built during the next decade.

The Nets plan to move to Brooklyn for the 2008-09 season.

[Citytect]

Awesome!
What's Ratner's next obstacle after purchasing the land?