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September 28, 2011
Beyond the Hype of Jay-Z's Brooklyn Nets Announcement
Huffington Post
By Norman Oder
Fueled by hype that began last Friday -- "Cultural Icon Shawn 'Jay-Z' Carter" would make a "significant announcements" regarding the Barclays Center arena in Brooklyn and the "borough's future NBA team," the media turned out in droves Monday for a heavily-managed press conference in Brooklyn across from the under-construction arena.
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But there were reasons to look deeper. Malcolm Gladwell, in a Grantland essay on the NBA lockout coincidentally published the same day, pointed to the enormous profit the team and arena owners -- Mikhail Prokhorov and Bruce Ratner, mainly -- stand to make.
Michael Galinsky, co-director of the documentary Battle for Brooklyn, which portrays the not-so-seemly machinations behind the project, stood outside the event trying to get the press to recognize that the developer's promises of jobs and housing have come to little.
He got few takers, but those of us listening to developer Ratner noticed that, while making vague promises of jobs at Atlantic Yards -- where 16 promised towers have yet to be built -- he proudly offered statistics about jobs in the malls nearby he developed -- projects completely unrelated to Atlantic Yards.
Posted by steve at September 28, 2011 10:50 AM