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April 11, 2011
Nets Future Brooklyn Home Starts Taking Shape
WNYC Radio
by Arun Venugopal
The Barclays Center, the 18,500 seat arena at the center of the still-contentious Atlantic Yards project, is slowly taking shape in Brooklyn. Last week, the New Jersey Nets management announced September 28, 2012, as the opening date for the arena — the team's future home in Brooklyn.
...For some residents, the construction of the Barclays Center represents a mix of day-to-day nuisances and long-term concerns.
Edwin Barreto lives next to the construction site and wishes the arena had been located further out in Brooklyn, perhaps closer to Red Hook. He's been frustrated by the loss of parking spaces, but is even more worried about what will happen, once the arena opens and thousands of outsiders start streaming into the neighborhood.
"What's going to happen too is all those people that go in there and drink that beer, they're going to be coming out here, peeing all over the corners, peeing on people's cars," said Barreto. "I've seen it happen in Newark."
NoLandGrab: Putting an arena in Red Hook, with its dearth of transit access, would've made a bad idea even worse. Mr. Barreto is wrong about that, and let's hope he not right about the other thing — though we fear he is.
Related coverage...
Atlantic Yards Report, Arena: "good for Brooklyn, bad for the neighborhood"?
The article closes thusly:
His friend, Sean Carnegie, walking to his son's basketball practice, saw pros and cons in the location of the arena.
"All in all, it's cool," said Carnegie. "It's good for Brooklyn, bad for the neighborhood."
The choice of a this as a closing quote implies that the reporter considers this a legitimate summary.
Indeed, it captures some of the ambiguity: those closest to the arena site will bear the brunt of its impacts, while those farther away, to the extent it fits their pocketbooks, may avail themselves of sports and entertainment events.
Still, it's unlikely that the man-on-the-street assessment of "good for Brooklyn" factors in the elements of a full cost-benefit analysis, including direct subsidies, tax breaks, and the absence of (or delays in) promised project benefits.
Posted by eric at April 11, 2011 10:01 AM