No Land Grab

CN: Brooklyn has proved itself a resilient city and borough over several centuries. Assuming Atlantic Yards gets built to its full scale, how fundamentally would Brooklyn be changed?

FM: The old part of Brooklyn would never be the same, that’s for sure. The visual profile would alter 100 percent. The scale of this thing is hard to convey to people. We can call it gigantic, or super-colossal, but these words have devalued meanings. What I tell people is that this thing is so big, so out of scale, that it will place so much pressure upon an already barely adequate infrastructure, will suck so much electricity, will produce so much garbage, will cast so much shadow, and divert so many cars onto your neighborhood streets, that you will probably want to move. It’s as simple as that.

Would Brooklyn adapt? I go back to what I said about the coalescing identity. Yes, Brooklyn has survived big physical interventions, like the Brooklyn Bridge, which did, for better or worse, put an end to an older Brooklyn, maybe even more than consolidation did. Consolidation—Brooklyn’s incorporation into New York City—coincided with a massive wave of immigration that completely altered Brooklyn’s ethnic profile and that basically created the “nostalgic Brooklyn.” Then, great demographic shifts occurred—not without much pain—after World War II. It’s amazing to think that the poet Marianne Moore, fearing for her safety, moved out of Brooklyn in 1967, and that Harvey Lichtenstein took over a moribund BAM in 1969. The one seems symbolic of Brooklyn at its nadir, the other seems symbolic of Brooklyn’s regeneration.

I think as we study it more and more we’ll come to see that the decline and the renewal were all jumbled up, and the decline may have been more like birthing pains. So, yes, Brooklyn is resilient. But the changes that forced Brooklyn to adapt have been in the nature of overwhelming social and demographic forces. There are no such forces at work with Atlantic Yards.

And it’s not just Prospect Heights. I look at Greenpoint—Williamsburg, too, of course, but I have a soft spot in my heart for Greenpoint—and I literally break down in tears. Again, the scale of the new building in the rezoned areas—where there’s only the L train in one part of it and only the G train in another part of it—is so absurdly big that it defies all reason, except to make a handful of people who are already rich grow even richer.

CN: You have suggested that incremental development, like the development that has gone on for the last several decades in Park Slope and Prospect Heights, may be best for Brooklyn. However, covering over a rail yards is a major capital project. Could that occur without massive intervention from either the government or a mega-developer like Forest City Ratner?

FM: Forest City Ratner can’t do what it wants to do without a lot of help from government—government that has conveniently abdicated its oversight role, and that will be spending nearly $2 billion of our money to help out Forest City Ratner. In any redevelopment of the yards, government would have to get in on the act; there’s no way around that, and it isn’t a bad thing. The MTA’s RFP [Request for Proposals] for the yards clearly stated that it was willing to sell off the site in increments. Nowhere is it written that the yards have to be decked over all at once, and in fact in other such projects it hasn’t always been done all at once.

That said, I have to admit something. The Atlantic Yards plan has scared me into redefining “incremental.” I could possibly get on board with the Extell plan [ed: an alternative plan for the site], which would build above the yards and nowhere else, depending on the specifics of the design. At least democracy wouldn’t be thrown out the window.

I hear people say “cities have got to change” or “change or die.” What the hell does that mean? Does it mean anything at all? This is what it means to me: If you keep cities in constant churn, you make more work and more money, for lawyers, bankers, and developers.

CN: Do you think that the arena was added to the project for political reasons? For example, was it hoped that the arena would strike a chord among Brooklynites, drawing support to a project that they might otherwise oppose?

FM: Absolutely. It was a political masterstroke. It even worked with me before I looked closely at what was going on. I’m a huge NBA fan. I thought, man, I’ll get season tickets and walk to the games!

CN: Tell us a bit about the history of the site of the proposed Atlantic Yards project.

FM: There have been yards on at least part of the site since the 19th century. But the present depressed yards date from around 1910 and were considered a major improvement to the surrounding area. This was because it partly hid the trains from view, partly muffled the noise, and eliminated grade crossings.

The yards were adjacent to the handsome old Flatbush Terminal, a building I was sorry to see go. At its height, that terminal handled 70 percent as many passengers as Grand Central Terminal, and more passengers than any of the fabled stations along the New Jersey waterfront. The electrification of rail operations, the depressing of the yards, the new terminal, and the relocation of BAM from Montague Street to its present location near the yards are not coincidental phenomena.

CN: Assume that the area around Vanderbilt Yards had not fallen under the wrecking ball of urban renewal – that, say, the Flatbush Terminal and Fort Greene Market had not been demolished. Is it possible to envision what the neighborhood would look like today?

FM: It’s hard to say—there are a lot of variables. Would the meat market still be operating as such? Would it, for example, have had any of the potential for gentrification that the Gansevoort Market in Greenwich Village had? The terminal was a lovely building in horrendous condition. I don’t know if it could have been restored as historic railroad stations across the country have been restored. The depressed yards would still be there, doing their “border vacuum” thing as Jane Jacobs put it – a physical barrier dividing Park Slope and Prospect Heights from Fort Greene.

Urban renewal made a mess of the area, that’s for sure, exacerbating the border vacuum problems it already had. One thing is for certain: We would have been spared the Atlantic Center.

CN: If you had a magic wand, what would you build on the Atlantic Yards site? What would be your dream project?

FM: In my dreams, different parts of the site would be sold to different developers who could build whatever they wanted, subject to strict height limitations and thorough environmental review. I’d like to see something like energy consumption guidelines—green buildings and the like. If we want affordable housing, and we should, then just make it a requirement, or set aside some parcels for Atlantic Commons-type development. (Yes, I know it’s not as easy as all that, but you asked me to dream.) I’d like to see development take place around publicly accessible squares—not plazas, not parks, not “open space,” but squares. Then one day you might be able to take a continuously joyous stroll from Park Slope to Fort Greene.

In short, my dream would be for development that would ensure that this oldest part of Brooklyn continues to present a strong vision of low-rise urbanity, that might one day be seen as being as truly remarkable in its way as the skyscraper urbanism of Manhattan.