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June 13, 2008
A High Stakes loss near Yards
The Brooklyn Paper
By Sarah Portlock
Considering reports that service was slow, it seems like the only thing that High Stakes Cheese Steaks had going for them was that Bruce Ratner was planning on building a basketball arena down the street.
Has Bruce Ratner’s failure to build Atlantic Yards claimed its first victim?
High Stakes Cheese Steaks, a perfect-for-pre-game fast-food joint on Flatbush Avenue at Dean Street, closed last week, 18 months after it opened in anticipation of the controversial construction project that was supposed to create 1,500 construction jobs annually over 10 years. Yet construction of the arena, which was once slated to be done by 2007, has not even begun.
Instead, the bright orange lunch spot — with its one menu item, Philly cheese steaks — quietly closed. Experts said the joint would likely still be open if the Nets were playing home games across the street, but the still-unbuilt arena is only partly to blame.
NoLandGrab: Sad. It would have made sense for High Stakes owners to check out Atlantic Yards Report's continuing criticism of the developer's overly optimistic timeline. Just yesterday, Deputy Mayor for Economic Development Robert Lieber let spill that he thought that Atlantic Yards would be "under construction by the end of 2009."
Posted by lumi at June 13, 2008 5:56 AM