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June 11, 2009
It came from the Blogosphere...
Gothamist, No More Frank Gehry At Atlantic Yards At All
According to the Times, DePlasco also "conceded that the announcement issued last week 'should’ve been clearer.' But, he added, Mr. Gehry’s master plan for the development and his guidelines remain in place." Whatever!
...Flashback to the February 2, 2004 issue of the New Yorker, where in a Talk of the Town piece by Ben McGrath, FieldofSchemes.com's Neil deMause predicted, "I’d guess it’s probably fifty-fifty the arena gets built entirely...I wouldn’t be shocked if five years from now we’re still arguing the logistics."
Brownstoner, Ratner Cans Gehry For Good
Yesterday Forest City Ratner made official what everybody already knew: Architect Frank Gehry, his name having been prostituted to sell a sham project to the public, will have nothing to do with the design of any of the buildings in the Atlantic Yards footprint.
...But don't cry any tears for Gehry: The Times reports that he's already been paid "tens of millions of dollars" for his work up to this point.
Brownstoner, Quote of the Day
The final dots that need to be connected are left unconnected by Ourossoff. Bait-and-switchers don't just bait-and-switch once, it is a pattern. And if Ratner's Gehry bait-and-switch is stunning, so is the bait-and-switch on "affordable" housing, "publicly accessible open space," job creation, commercial space, reneging on a contract with the MTA, and changing the project timeline from 10 years to, unofficially "decades" and officially 6 years to build just the arena according to state financing documents. Atlantic Yards itself is a monument to bait-and-switch.
— by DDDB in Ratner Cans Gehry For Good
The Back Page [NY Post blog], No Brooklyn, no LeBron for Nets
Less than a month ago, Ratner told The Post that groundbreaking would take place in September and the Nets could play in Brooklyn by the 2011-12 season.
Now, the timetable for the project's completion is 24-29 months, down from the 30 months predicted for the Gehry project. So the Nets would be in a new Brooklyn arena for the start of the 2012-13 season.
Daily Intel, Frank Gehry Completely Out at Atlantic Yards
According to the Times, even supporters of the project are turning sour on it.
The Architect's Newspaper Blog, Gehry Officially Gone
While this is unsurprising news, it highlights just how challenging the project will be going forward, from the prospective of design, and also reaffirms a frequent criticism of Ratner’s project, that the developer has no interest in building anything but the arena.
Who Walk In Brooklyn, Bonus!
Atlantic Yards Report notes a certain type of alchemy, or as Caz Dolowicz might put it, how the New Jersey Nets turn bullshit into bigger bullshit (with apologies to all Bovine-Americans...)
Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn, Gov. Paterson Is Worried About the Lobbyists
As you probably know there is a big mess going on up in Albany right now. What did Governor Paterson say to persuade Senate lawmakers to open the chamber doors and get to work? The Times reports:
The governor also made one of the more unusual pleas for sanity, imploring lawmakers to “think of the lobbyists,” explaining that they had worked hard “to persuade legislative leaders and legislators of issues.”
Is this a serious comment? Though he is known for his sense of humor, he wasn't joking.
So this Governor, who is about to let the money-hungry MTA bail out Bruce Ratner and give him a sweeter sweatheart deal for the 8-acre Vanderbilt Rail Yards, is more interested in the welfare of lobbyist types who have been pushing deals, such as this one with Bruce Ratner, than the taxpayers and transit riders who will lose out if he lets his MTA rubberstamp Ratner's New Deal.
Plan NYC, Many Locals Upset About Design Changes at Atlantic Yards
Posted by eric at June 11, 2009 5:27 PM