« For Former Opponent of Atlantic Yards, a Smaller-Scale Battle | Main | Haunts »
September 24, 2012
Nets arena opening, Brooklyn braces for arenapocalypse
Field of Schemes
by Neil deMause
The Barclays Center is a bit of an anomaly among recent “downtown” sports facilities: Rather than being built in an underdeveloped area with the hopes that it will kick-start development (or on the fringes of a slowly developing area with the hopes that it will capitalize on interest there), the Nets arena is jammed into a crease between three boiling-hot Brooklyn neighborhoods: Park Slope, Prospect Heights, and Fort Greene. It’s one reason why so many residents are worried about what the nightly influx of 18,000 ticket buyers (and nightly outflux of the same, likely many of whom will have partaken of the arena’s champagne bars and beer taps) will mean for the surrounding blocks. Already, rents and sale prices of land near the arena are way up, reports the Times, and the state liquor board has granted about 40 new liquor licenses to businesses near the arena over the past year. (The promised housing that was to accompany the arena has yet to arrive, though given that most of the “affordable” units wouldn’t actually be that affordable anyway, it’s hard to say how much of a loss this is.)
Whether the flood of new thirsty patrons materializes, and whether they end up taking people’s parking spaces and puking all over their brownstone stoops as some fear, remains to be seen: A busy arena like Barclays certainly can have more impact than, say, a 10-games-a-year football stadium, but as sports economist Brad Humphreys predicted to me earlier this year, “A lot of existing bar and restaurant owners in the area are going to be unhappy when they actually lose business,” thanks to all the spending opportunities inside a modern arena.
Posted by eric at September 24, 2012 2:24 PM