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September 26, 2012
COMMUNITY COMMENTARY: A Farewell to Terrorism — and a Welcome to Drunk Drivers
by Alan Rosner (co-author of a white paper on arena security and terrorism issues published in 2005)
The Barclays Center will be opening in a matter of days. Different critics who had different thought experiments regarding how Atlantic Yards would play out will now get to see it all happen in real time. I wish us, especially those living nearby, the best.
With this post for NoLandGrab today I’m closing the book on my thought experiment — institutional responses to Atlantic Yards in a post-9/11 environment. It seems the Barclays Center will be opening with Department of Homeland Security approval. Writing about this just after the 11th anniversary of 9/11 feels as surreal as seeing the design for the original Frank Gehry all-glass arena trotted out just three years after the attack, with plans to site it a scant 20 feet from the curb.
Interestingly, shortly after the Gehry hoopla, there was a major delay at Ground Zero. The plans for redevelopment had to be redone to relocate the Freedom Tower further away from the street and remove all street level glass, replacing it with stainless steel.
Well, that’s Manhattan. Here in Brooklyn, despite a post-Gehry redesign, the street-level glass stays, and the Atlantic Avenue side of the arena gets cantilevered outwards, making it twelve feet closer to the street. Go figure… be happy. We missed having Mayor Bloomberg's (and Dan Doctoroff's) Olympics, but we’ll soon have our circus opening… the 1%’s gift for public spectacle and their own profit, per usual, at our expense.
So time to move on, say, to thinking about how the absolute scale of alcohol sales at the arena — regardless of the hour such sales end — will effect our surrounding communities.
Consider: arena liquor sales will supply local streets with a wave of energized, above- or near-over-the-legal-limit drivers with ample opportunities to purchase more alcohol going to their cars. The ongoing surge of liquor license applications, happening for good reason, makes the problem worse. Size, or more politely, scale, matters.
So will the NYPD and Forest City Ratner increase the number of random sobriety checkpoints and make a concerted effort to publicize that they will enforce drunk driving ordinances as strictly as they will parking violations? And will our local elected officials and community groups hold city officials & the NYPD to their public safety responsibilities to keep drunk driving to a minimum? Stay tuned….
For the record… beyond the relocation of One World Trade Center, the City of Newark, since 2007, has closed local streets for every Prudential Center event due to fears of terrorism. Meanwhile, last year my homeowner’s insurance renewal, for the first time, had a mandatory terrorism rider. We predicted this in 2005, and while currently cheap, the Feds can stop underwriting terrorism insurance in 2017, at which point local redlining issues very well may come into play.
Posted by eric at September 26, 2012 12:47 PM