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February 26, 2007

Brooklyn’s Team-to-Be Hasn’t Found Welcome Mat

The NY Times
By William C. Rhoden

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Three hours before the Nets were scheduled to play the Knicks in New Jersey yesterday, Rev. Clinton Miller sat in his office at the Brown Memorial Baptist Church in the Fort Greene section of Brooklyn.

Miller wanted to talk basketball, not Knicks-Nets basketball, but the business of basketball. Specifically, he wanted to talk about the Nets' move to Brooklyn for the 2009-10 season.

The Nets are coming to Brooklyn as part of the $4.2 billion Atlantic Yards development. The project, by Forest City Ratner, was unveiled in 2003. Forest City Ratner is also the development partner in building the Midtown Manhattan headquarters for The New York Times Company.

The revitalized Atlantic Yards would include residential and office towers and a basketball arena for the Nets. A substantial portion of subsidized housing will be for families at different income levels, but only about one-seventh of the project's roughly 6,000 units will be affordable for tenants making less than half the median income for the New York City area.

This move has been the political and cultural hot-button issue of a sprawling Brooklyn community. There is significant support for the project and significant opposition. There is also determined neutrality, with everyone angling for a slice of a multibillion-dollar pie.

Miller said that he had not committed. ''I haven't supported it and I haven't really opposed it,'' he said yesterday afternoon. ''I've criticized the lack of transparency, from the beginning.

''I haven't personalized, I haven't attacked anybody. I've just tried to stay in the middle of the road. I've never been opposed to it, because I've never wanted to take myself away from the opportunity to negotiate.''

Miller's is a moderate voice in a choir of passionate voices who have either screamed ''Yes'' or No'' to the Nets' move.

Miller is also part of the basketball fabric of the community. He was raised in Crown Heights. He played basketball at Bishop Loughlin High School and was elected captain in 1985. Then he played at Division II Southern Connecticut State University. After graduating, he taught high school in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, then attended Yale Divinity School. After an apprenticeship at Abyssinian Baptist in Harlem, he became pastor at Brown Memorial six years ago.

''I am part of the basketball fabric,'' he said. ''I love the game. I still play. But ultimately, this has less to do with basketball and more to do with real estate.''

The controversy surrounding the Nets' impending move to Brooklyn confirms my suspicion -- that it will not give the Nets the identity they have lacked virtually from the time they entered the N.B.A.

No one seems to be talking about how great it is to have Brooklyn's first real professional team since the Brooklyn Dodgers. The talk centers on who will benefit from the team's economic presence and who will lose. The Nets, as a focal point for a diverse community, have already become a polarizing force rather than the unifying entity that a sports team can be.

''Even when the Knicks are not doing well, it's still a ticket to get,'' Miller said. ''The Nets went to the championship two years in a row and the place wasn't sold out. They're still searching as a franchise for an identity.''

But who represents the community in this tug of war? And what, precisely, is the community?

''This neighborhood is unlike any neighborhood in America,'' Miller said. ''It's already diverse and I feel that gentrification should happen organically; it shouldn't be expedited by megadevelopment.''

Fort Greene's diversity is a plus as well as part of a broader problem. At least one community organization that supports the project receives funds from the developer as part of a Community Benefits Agreement. Brooklyn United for Innovative Local Development, a job-training group known as Build, receives funds from Forest City Ratner.

Miller said he spoke with Ratner about Barclays Bank's plan to donate $2.5 million to refurbish basketball courts in the community, a contribution that Miller and other critics say is not substantial enough.

''Ratner promised to approach representatives of Barclays to meet with five of us,'' Miller said. ''Three elected officials and two preachers.''

Gentrification is hardly a Brooklyn concern alone, but the Nets' move has crystallized the issue.

''If you bring 6,000 units of housing, most of which will be market rate, from the perspective of being a pastor of working-class people, that knocks a lot of our members out of the neighborhood,'' Miller said.

Many of his members have moved -- some to Long Island, some to the Poconos.

''They just can't afford to live here,'' Miller said. ''Some can afford to because they have brownstones, but they've been made an offer they can't refuse.''

Last night, the Nets defeated the Knicks, 101-92, to win a battle in the standings. The Nets' continuing quest to win people's hearts will require a much greater fight.

Posted by lumi at February 26, 2007 9:49 AM