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June 11, 2009
Gehry or not, Brooklyn needs this arena
The Brooklyn Paper, Editorial
Indianapolis knock-off or no, the Brooklyn Paper is gung-ho for Bruce Ratner's arena.
Bruce Ratner’s bid to save his Atlantic Yards basketball arena by simplifying its design was predictable, but for our part, we’ll stick with consistency: Whatever serious reservations we’ve had about the larger Atlantic Yards project, the plan for the arena — though no longer the grandiose one envisioned by Frank Gehry — still merits support.
Consistently wrong, that is.
The arena remains what we have always said it is: a fundamentally vital civic project in the right place at the right time.
Um, wrong place (Brooklyn's most-congested intersection), wrong time (when actual vital things, like schools, mass transit and city services are being slashed).
Now the timing better fortifies our long-held position. In the current economic climate, it would be foolhardy to walk away from both the economic development opportunity and heightened civic identity offered up by the arena and the Nets.
Now here's where it gets silly. Did the Brooklyn Paper miss the big news from the State Senate hearing two weeks ago, you know, the bit where the city's Independent Budget Office declared the arena a money-loser for the taxpayers? Now that's an economic development opportunity.
Read on to hear how Brooklyn won't be whole without its very own mediocre pro franchise, how Frank Gehry's arena design was like ladies' undergarments, and the caveats. And boy, are there caveats.
Posted by eric at June 11, 2009 11:57 PM