« Bookshelf: The Battle for Gotham | Main | Mail's In (Nets April Edition) »
April 2, 2010
Finally, the Nets have a prayer! New arena to have ‘meditation’ room
The Brooklyn Paper
by Stephen Brown
Call it Zen and the art of basketball!
The Brooklyn Paper has learned that the Barclays Center will be the first sports arena to feature a meditation chamber — an intriguing element that is one of the few unreported details of the widely covered home of the future Brooklyn Nets.
The concept was envisioned by the Rev. Herbert Daughtry, the fiery pastor of the House of the Lord Pentecostal Church on Atlantic Avenue, who has played a behind-the-scenes role to acquire various “community benefits” from developer Bruce Ratner.
This meditation room appears to be one of them.
“The idea is to say to people there are values in reflection, contemplation,” explained Daughtry, who gave the convocation at the groundbreaking ceremony for the arena last month.
“Whenever you’re in the arena, you can go to meditate.”
Daughtry suggested that the “meditation room” was a watered-down version of what he initially wanted in the arena: a chapel.
“I got plastered for that,” he said. “You can’t use public funds for religious purposes.”
NoLandGrab: Public funds? Didn't Bruce Ratner famously say that "this isn't a public project?"
Additional coverage...
Atlantic Yards Report, Brooklyn Paper gets all excited about Daughtry's "meditation room" (aka "atrium")
Norman Oder pours a little cold water on The Brooklyn Paper's story.
That link goes back to the Brooklyn Paper's coverage, which neglected to point out Daughtry's claim that the project site was a "long-neglected, rodent-infested, garbage-strewn strip of geography." Nor did the Brooklyn Paper's coverage of the state Senate oversight hearing last May point out Daughtry's regular heckling.
An "atrium" and the CBA
Daughtry has previously (as reported) called it an "atrium," but the Community Benefits Agreement (CBA) says "Meditation Room."
Posted by eric at April 2, 2010 10:47 AM