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March 10, 2009
He’s Brooklyn’s OTHER borough president
The Brooklyn Paper reporter Mike McLaughlin asks the Bronx Beep what he thinks about the Bruce Ratner megaproject in his own backyard.
Brooklyn is one borough with two presidents. Our borough is home to not only Borough President Markowitz, but also Bronx Borough President Earl Brown.
The borough of Kings found itself with a double dose of presidents when Brown, then the deputy borough president, ascended to the northernmost borough’s top job after President Obama named Bronx Beep Adolfo Carrion to be his urban affairs czar.
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MM: As a Prospect Heights resident, you’re smack dab in the middle of the biggest development project of Brooklyn. What do you think of Atlantic Yards?EB: I have mixed emotions on it honestly. Certainly having lived in Brooklyn my entire life, it was great to see smoothing happening there [at the rail yards], because it was a wasted resource and an eyesore. It needed to be redeveloped. I was very happy to see over the past 15 to 20 years a good portion of the Atlantic Terminal Urban Renewal Site was finally developed with housing and commercial development. But the portion on the Prospect Heights side needs development. Having a sports franchise {the New Jersey Nets basketball team} come is an interesting addition, too, especially since Atlantic Yards was supposed to be the home of a new Ebbets Field. There a lot of issues the city has to work through. One of them is traffic. I’m not sure the environmental impact statement adequately addresses the traffic concerns. Anyone who’s driven through Flatbush and Atlantic avenues knows how crazy it gets during rush hour. And now thousands of more people are projected to come through.
MM: What about the scope of the project?
EB: The scale might be a little too large for Prospect Heights and Fort Greene. Putting a Midtown-sized development in the middle of residential low-rise Brooklyn will be a permanent change the community.
NoLandGrab: Bronx BP Brown has most of his facts right, except for this crazy double whammy myth: "Atlantic Yards was supposed to be the home of a new Ebbets Field."
- It's the "VANDERBILT YARDS." "Atlantic Yards" is Bruce Ratner's brand name for the entire project.
- Dodgers' owner Walter O'Malley wanted to build a new ballpark ACROSS THE STREET from the VANDERBILT railyard. Unfortunately, Bruce Ratner has already built the Atlantic Center eyesore on that site.
Posted by lumi at March 10, 2009 6:23 AM