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November 21, 2007
Putting the Atlantic Yards Arena in a Secure Place
This piece should have run in the paper, instead of the Times's City Room blog, but despite a few more details on the distance of the setback of the arena, and what amounts to a mea culpa on reporter Andy Newman's part, the "cone of silence" persists.
Here are some excerpts, but, since the article is a must read and sort of hilarious to boot, you die-hards might want to head on over and read it in its entirety.
After some digging by Norman "The Mad Overkiller" Oder, Newman kept noodging Forest City Ratner spokesperson Loren Riegelhaupt for some real answers as to just how close the planned arena would be to Atlantic and Flatbush Avenues:
Mr. Riegelhaupt confirmed that this meant that at all points, the arena would be set back at least 20 feet from the street.
Is that to say, he was asked, that at its closest point the arena would indeed be set back 20 feet from the street, or could “at least” mean 25 feet, or 50 feet, or more?
Mr. Riegelhaupt was initially unable to answer. The problem was that the location of the arena falls under the rubric of a “security issue,” a phrase that brings a magic cone of silence crashing down onto even the most innocent-seeming inquiry. Somehow the planned location of an 18,000 seat basketball arena had become as classified a piece of antiterror information as, say, the structural vulnerabilities of a bridge.
NoLandGrab: For the record, the Times should at least run a correction in the paper and an addendum to the original article, which cited the distance at "about 75 feet back from Atlantic Avenue and about 150 feet from Flatbush Avenue."
Posted by lumi at November 21, 2007 6:33 PM