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Instant Skyline Added to Brooklyn Arena Plan
By DIANE CARDWELL
Published: July 5, 2005
The massive building plan surrounding a new Nets arena east of Downtown Brooklyn will include a ridge of a half-dozen skyscrapers as high as 60 stories sweeping down Atlantic Avenue, along with four towers circling the basketball arena, according to new designs completed by the developer Bruce C. Ratner and the architect Frank Gehry.
Gehry Partners, LLP
With 17 buildings, many of them soaring roughly 40 to 50 stories, the project would forever transform Brooklyn and its often-intimate landscape, creating a dense urban skyline.
The project, the largest proposed outside Manhattan in decades, would include much more housing than originally announced in 2003, growing to about 6,000 units from 4,500, according to a plan made available to The New York Times. But the real impact would be in the size and density of the buildings, which are taller and bulkier than once envisioned.
With 17 buildings, many of them soaring 40 to 50 stories, the project would forever transform the borough and its often-intimate landscape, creating a dense urban skyline reminiscent of Houston or Dallas.
The project would be built in phases, starting with the blocks around the arena, then the apartment complexes along Dean Street at the Vanderbilt Avenue end, and finally the northern stretch of housing along Atlantic Avenue. The arena is planned to open for the 2008-9 basketball season, said James P. Stuckey, an executive vice president at Forest City Ratner Companies, with the entire project completed as soon as 2011.
The project will come before the Metropolitan Transportation Authority tomorrow as Mr. Ratner makes a formal proposal to buy and develop the Atlantic Avenue railyards.
When it was first announced, the project drew attention primarily to the basketball arena for the Nets. At the time, the return of a major league team and a design by a world-renowned architect led many supporters in the borough to hail a plan intended to heal the old wounds left by the Dodgers' departure after the 1957 season and herald, in metal, glass and brick, a Brooklyn reborn.
But the design of the full plan shows that the arena itself is dwarfed by the scope and ambition of the development. Stretching over 21 acres from Fourth to Vanderbilt Avenues between Atlantic Avenue and Dean Street, the development would create 1.9 million square feet of office space and housing for roughly 15,000 people in an area where small businesses and multifamily houses now coexist with vacant land, automotive shops and empty industrial buildings. An alternate plan would cut the office space to roughly 429,000 square feet, and add 150 to 200 hotel rooms and 1,300 additional apartments.
The $3.5 billion project is conceived as a way to create a new neighborhood and a transition between a growing business district, the resurgent cultural zone around the Brooklyn Academy of Music and the gentrifying residential areas surrounding them. Reflecting that, Mr. Gehry's preliminary design aims to create the look of a contemporary city that grew up naturally over time, he said.
The project still faces significant hurdles, although there is far less organized political opposition than that which faced the defeated West Side stadium plan. Most of the necessary city and state officials support it, and critics are largely centered in the immediate vicinity.
Mr. Ratner, who is the development partner of The New York Times in building its new headquarters in Midtown, needs approval from the transportation authority to buy its land. Bids are due to the authority tomorrow, and although no other suitor has yet surfaced, some who are opposed to the project said an alternate proposal may be in the works.
In addition, the winning project would undergo an environmental review, and would need zoning changes and approval by the state Public Authorities Control Board, directed by Gov. George E. Pataki and the Senate and Assembly leaders, which recently scuttled Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's plan for a Jets stadium on the West Side of Manhattan. The Senate majority leader, Joseph L. Bruno, and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver have indicated that they would not block the arena project.
And although Mr. Ratner has been steadily negotiating to buy privately owned properties within the Brooklyn development zone, he may face court battles in his efforts to acquire some land by eminent domain and with critics who have threatened to sue. Opposition is strong among some residents of the quiet surrounding neighborhoods, who say that they have been denied a role in the planning process. They accuse state and city officials of giving Mr. Ratner unfair concessions and charge that the development will strain public services and destroy their quality of life.
The plan calls for direct subsidies of $100 million each from the city and state for site improvements to the area.
If approved, the development, in combination with the city's recent moves rezoning Downtown Brooklyn and the borough's northern waterfront for larger office and residential complexes, stands to remake much of a borough that is the equivalent of the fourth-largest city in America.
"Hopefully this will be a model for other large-scale developments to be done again in the boroughs as they were in the 50's and 60's," Mr. Ratner said. "It is in some sense like Columbus Circle, where residential meets the office district and the cultural district, and it can handle this kind of density."
The preliminary designs, which Mr. Gehry refers to as "a sketch," show a new megalopolis rising over what is now mostly a collection of rail beds and three-to-six-story buildings, crowding out the clear, signature views of the clock atop what would no longer be Brooklyn's tallest building, the 512-foot Williamsburgh Savings Bank Tower. At the corner of Atlantic and Flatbush Avenues, an office, hotel and residential tower dubbed Miss Brooklyn by its designer would soar 620 feet, roughly 60 stories, balanced by a new 40-story tower across Flatbush Avenue at Fourth Avenue.
Miss Brooklyn would be the tallest of four mixed-use towers ranging from roughly 35 stories that would surround the arena like turrets on a castle, Mr. Gehry said. Traveling east, the design calls for a block of apartment buildings, roughly 33 to 47 stories, with gardens and walkways, between Sixth, Carlton and Atlantic Avenues and Pacific Street.
At the eastern edge of the development, seven apartment buildings, ranging from about 20 to 40 stories, would rise over a two-block area bounded by Dean Street and Atlantic, Vanderbilt and Carlton Avenues.
Pacific Street would disappear in that area, subsumed by gardens, walkways, a reflecting pool that could become a skating rink in winter and an open field that designers determined gets the most sun on the site throughout the year. In all, the project would provide at least 4,500 rental apartments, with half reserved for low- and middle-income residents, and 1,500 market-rate condominiums in a neighborhood where brownstones sell for well over $1 million.
Although the fanciful shapes Mr. Gehry has designed at this point are preliminary, he said, he plans to work with a variety of materials and designs so that the development seems more like an organic city, and less like a single-vision project like Rockefeller Center.
"It's big and so we're trying to design it as a good neighbor, which is hard to do when the buildings you're building are bigger than the ones around you," he said. "No one's had an opportunity in a long while to build a new urban complex of this density in the city," he added. "By breaking it down and making it look like a city it has a sense of belonging and a sense of choice. You're not saying everybody's got to live in the same thing. And that's something that's quite Brooklyn."
Of course, not everyone feels that way. Many residents, including some who have organized into a group called Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn to stop the project, fear their tree-lined streets where neighbors lean out of windows to chat with those below will be overrun by arena visitors and choked by car traffic.
"Our fear is that towers breed towers," said Jon Crow, a graphic designer who was working at a community garden whose organizers have clashed with Mr. Ratner in the past.
He added: "Office towers, high-rise towers, sports arenas, that's not a community. Brooklyn doesn't want to be Manhattan. If we wanted Manhattan, we'd live there."
Instant Skyline Added to Brooklyn Arena Plan
By DIANE CARDWELL
Published: July 5, 2005
The massive building plan surrounding a new Nets arena east of Downtown Brooklyn will include a ridge of a half-dozen skyscrapers as high as 60 stories sweeping down Atlantic Avenue, along with four towers circling the basketball arena, according to new designs completed by the developer Bruce C. Ratner and the architect Frank Gehry.
Gehry Partners, LLP
With 17 buildings, many of them soaring roughly 40 to 50 stories, the project would forever transform Brooklyn and its often-intimate landscape, creating a dense urban skyline.
The project, the largest proposed outside Manhattan in decades, would include much more housing than originally announced in 2003, growing to about 6,000 units from 4,500, according to a plan made available to The New York Times. But the real impact would be in the size and density of the buildings, which are taller and bulkier than once envisioned.
With 17 buildings, many of them soaring 40 to 50 stories, the project would forever transform the borough and its often-intimate landscape, creating a dense urban skyline reminiscent of Houston or Dallas.
The project would be built in phases, starting with the blocks around the arena, then the apartment complexes along Dean Street at the Vanderbilt Avenue end, and finally the northern stretch of housing along Atlantic Avenue. The arena is planned to open for the 2008-9 basketball season, said James P. Stuckey, an executive vice president at Forest City Ratner Companies, with the entire project completed as soon as 2011.
The project will come before the Metropolitan Transportation Authority tomorrow as Mr. Ratner makes a formal proposal to buy and develop the Atlantic Avenue railyards.
When it was first announced, the project drew attention primarily to the basketball arena for the Nets. At the time, the return of a major league team and a design by a world-renowned architect led many supporters in the borough to hail a plan intended to heal the old wounds left by the Dodgers' departure after the 1957 season and herald, in metal, glass and brick, a Brooklyn reborn.
But the design of the full plan shows that the arena itself is dwarfed by the scope and ambition of the development. Stretching over 21 acres from Fourth to Vanderbilt Avenues between Atlantic Avenue and Dean Street, the development would create 1.9 million square feet of office space and housing for roughly 15,000 people in an area where small businesses and multifamily houses now coexist with vacant land, automotive shops and empty industrial buildings. An alternate plan would cut the office space to roughly 429,000 square feet, and add 150 to 200 hotel rooms and 1,300 additional apartments.
The $3.5 billion project is conceived as a way to create a new neighborhood and a transition between a growing business district, the resurgent cultural zone around the Brooklyn Academy of Music and the gentrifying residential areas surrounding them. Reflecting that, Mr. Gehry's preliminary design aims to create the look of a contemporary city that grew up naturally over time, he said.
The project still faces significant hurdles, although there is far less organized political opposition than that which faced the defeated West Side stadium plan. Most of the necessary city and state officials support it, and critics are largely centered in the immediate vicinity.
Mr. Ratner, who is the development partner of The New York Times in building its new headquarters in Midtown, needs approval from the transportation authority to buy its land. Bids are due to the authority tomorrow, and although no other suitor has yet surfaced, some who are opposed to the project said an alternate proposal may be in the works.
In addition, the winning project would undergo an environmental review, and would need zoning changes and approval by the state Public Authorities Control Board, directed by Gov. George E. Pataki and the Senate and Assembly leaders, which recently scuttled Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's plan for a Jets stadium on the West Side of Manhattan. The Senate majority leader, Joseph L. Bruno, and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver have indicated that they would not block the arena project.
And although Mr. Ratner has been steadily negotiating to buy privately owned properties within the Brooklyn development zone, he may face court battles in his efforts to acquire some land by eminent domain and with critics who have threatened to sue. Opposition is strong among some residents of the quiet surrounding neighborhoods, who say that they have been denied a role in the planning process. They accuse state and city officials of giving Mr. Ratner unfair concessions and charge that the development will strain public services and destroy their quality of life.
The plan calls for direct subsidies of $100 million each from the city and state for site improvements to the area.
If approved, the development, in combination with the city's recent moves rezoning Downtown Brooklyn and the borough's northern waterfront for larger office and residential complexes, stands to remake much of a borough that is the equivalent of the fourth-largest city in America.
"Hopefully this will be a model for other large-scale developments to be done again in the boroughs as they were in the 50's and 60's," Mr. Ratner said. "It is in some sense like Columbus Circle, where residential meets the office district and the cultural district, and it can handle this kind of density."
The preliminary designs, which Mr. Gehry refers to as "a sketch," show a new megalopolis rising over what is now mostly a collection of rail beds and three-to-six-story buildings, crowding out the clear, signature views of the clock atop what would no longer be Brooklyn's tallest building, the 512-foot Williamsburgh Savings Bank Tower. At the corner of Atlantic and Flatbush Avenues, an office, hotel and residential tower dubbed Miss Brooklyn by its designer would soar 620 feet, roughly 60 stories, balanced by a new 40-story tower across Flatbush Avenue at Fourth Avenue.
Miss Brooklyn would be the tallest of four mixed-use towers ranging from roughly 35 stories that would surround the arena like turrets on a castle, Mr. Gehry said. Traveling east, the design calls for a block of apartment buildings, roughly 33 to 47 stories, with gardens and walkways, between Sixth, Carlton and Atlantic Avenues and Pacific Street.
At the eastern edge of the development, seven apartment buildings, ranging from about 20 to 40 stories, would rise over a two-block area bounded by Dean Street and Atlantic, Vanderbilt and Carlton Avenues.
Pacific Street would disappear in that area, subsumed by gardens, walkways, a reflecting pool that could become a skating rink in winter and an open field that designers determined gets the most sun on the site throughout the year. In all, the project would provide at least 4,500 rental apartments, with half reserved for low- and middle-income residents, and 1,500 market-rate condominiums in a neighborhood where brownstones sell for well over $1 million.
Although the fanciful shapes Mr. Gehry has designed at this point are preliminary, he said, he plans to work with a variety of materials and designs so that the development seems more like an organic city, and less like a single-vision project like Rockefeller Center.
"It's big and so we're trying to design it as a good neighbor, which is hard to do when the buildings you're building are bigger than the ones around you," he said. "No one's had an opportunity in a long while to build a new urban complex of this density in the city," he added. "By breaking it down and making it look like a city it has a sense of belonging and a sense of choice. You're not saying everybody's got to live in the same thing. And that's something that's quite Brooklyn."
Of course, not everyone feels that way. Many residents, including some who have organized into a group called Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn to stop the project, fear their tree-lined streets where neighbors lean out of windows to chat with those below will be overrun by arena visitors and choked by car traffic.
"Our fear is that towers breed towers," said Jon Crow, a graphic designer who was working at a community garden whose organizers have clashed with Mr. Ratner in the past.
He added: "Office towers, high-rise towers, sports arenas, that's not a community. Brooklyn doesn't want to be Manhattan. If we wanted Manhattan, we'd live there."
