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May 9, 2010
A Tower Grows at Flatbush and Myrtle
The Wall Street Journal
by Anton Troianovski
A high-rise called Toren hovers over Brooklyn's jumbled cityscape like a sci-fi robot elevated on a platform of dimpled, zigzagging metal panels.
"It's like something from outer space," says Deborah Johnson, who walks past the new apartment tower on the intersection of Flatbush and Myrtle a few blocks from the Manhattan Bridge on her trip home from work.
...Up the street is Forest City Ratner's Atlantic Yards project. "Over time it's going to mature and it'll be a different kind of place," Mr. Duffy says of the stretch of Flatbush occupied by Toren.
But some are nervous. Standing at Toren's base, Manhattan attorney A. Mason says, looking upward, "The reason I chose to live in Brooklyn is because it does not look like that."
NoLandGrab: Of course, Toren doesn't look like that, either. In one of the classic marketing-brochure fantasy shots of all-time, BFC Partners issued a rendering showing the building surrounded by green lawns, rather than in its true locale, shoehorned among other high-rises smack up against chaotic Flatbush Avenue.
Posted by eric at May 9, 2010 10:10 PM