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December 6, 2006
Letter from NIMBY-land
A new waterfront development has our laissez-faire columnist gasping in horror.
Metropolis
By Philip Nobel
There's nothing like falling in love with your backyard to rock your world view:
Even in slightly more fragile Brooklyn, I’ve never complained about the things that tend to get built when big money changes hands and politicians find themselves rallying under the flag of economic development. Have you noticed the total absence of screeds here against the Frank Gehry–Bruce Ratner plans for Atlantic Yards? That’s because I think it’s fine. And until recently I lived only a few blocks away.
Then I moved. And now I have a backyard. And it backs up to a perfectly scenic truck lot. And across the street from that there’s nothing but a few hundred yards of empty blacktop and a low warehouse between me and the Buttermilk Channel, with leafy still-in-limbo Governors Island beyond, and then the open harbor. From my roof I can see the Statue of Liberty, close. And when the Queen Mary 2 pulls in it blots out the sky. When they make their calls at the new cruise-ship terminal, you can see the top levels of even the lesser Princess-line boats over the high garden fence—the one I’m sure in the spring will be thick again with morning glory, our local kudzu.
Posted by lumi at December 6, 2006 6:44 AM