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June 11, 2006
Letters to the Editor, New York Times
New York Times
BRUCE RATNER
Building a Mistake
To the Editor:
Re "Skyline for Sale" [June 4]:
Nicolai Ouroussoff makes excellent points but doesn't go far enough. More than the skyline is for sale at Brooklyn's Atlantic Yards development; what has also been sold is a streetscape that is perhaps the most congested in Brooklyn even before a basketball stadium is plopped there.
What we have here is a long-discredited return to the urban mega-projects that destroyed downtown neighborhoods across America in the last half of the 20th century. We might expect a developer to act like a developer, but why are public servants repeating the mistake?
Michael Whiteman
Brooklyn
The Architect as Distraction
To the Editor:
It was somewhat heartening to read Mr. Ouroussoff's criticism of government with regard to the Atlantic Yards project. Frank Gehry is being used by Bruce Ratner as a lightning rod, to attract criticism and spare public discussion of what appears to be a classic back-room sweetheart deal, which will put hundreds of millions of the public's money into the pockets of a single developer.
Tony Daniels
Brooklyn
Posted by amy at June 11, 2006 2:04 PM