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April 5, 2008
This Is Not a Sidewalk Bag
The New York Times
by Guy Trebay
This article mostly covers what went on inside Thursday's Brooklyn Museum of Art event honoring Bruce Ratner, but does take notice to the protest outside.
Here, then, at the gala opening of the Takashi Murakami retrospective at the Brooklyn Museum on Thursday, an evening of unseasonal chill and spitting rain, was the obligatory chorus of protesters on Eastern Parkway, raising voices against the developer Bruce C. Ratner, who was being honored that night for his support of the arts at the annual Brooklyn Ball.
To those on one side of the museum’s new glass-walled addition, Mr. Ratner is a deep-pocketed patron and, as the museum’s director, Arnold Lehman, said, “a nice boychick from Cleveland, Ohio.” To those at curbside on Eastern Parkway, he was viewed less benignly, as Satan. Most developers are.
“Atlantic Yards is truly going to make a lot of people miserable,” said one protester, Eleanor Price, referring to Mr. Ratner’s $4 billion plan to refashion downtown Brooklyn into a commercial wonderland of shops, a basketball arena and fanciful buildings by Frank Gehry. “They’re using eminent domain to get rid of a lot of people and to close businesses,” Ms. Price said. “Where are they going to go?”
NoLandGrab: Perhaps it's useless to mention yet again, but could The Times's editors get it straight that the proposed Atlantic Yards project is located in Prospect Heights, NOT in downtown Brooklyn?
Posted by steve at April 5, 2008 7:47 AM