By Kit Dillon 9/21/12 1:48pm

An Arena Grows in Brooklyn

Will anyone be wrapping about "blue and white, blue and white, blue and white" any time soon? (Kit Dillon)

The Barclays Center: Built for a Bank, Not for Brooklyn or the Nets

Welcome to the grand opening of the Barlcays Center—through the Calvin Klein VIP entrance, past the American Express box office and into the Geico atrium—the sometimes home of the Brooklyn Nets. Because in truth, this is the bank’s home and everybody else are its guests. Today it is the press corps’ turn, and we have been welcomed in the grandest of style. Fresh orange juice, hot quiche and chocolate-covered strawberries abound, though none of the twee Brooklyn food that will soon be sold at the very Brooklyn concession stands.

As one reporter mentioned to another, “Remember the good ol’ days?” Would that be when Brooklyn had a team or when journalists could afford their own meals, or even a few sweet years ago, when this was still a hole in the ground, neighbor fought neighbor and the banks were booming?

Barclays and its backers are certainly aiming for a fond nostalgia at the corner of Flatbush and Atlantic. Read More

By Matt Chaban 9/13/12 12:49pm

An Arena Grows in Brooklyn

7 Photos

Barclays' Branding Slam Dunk

Just How Bad Are the Giant Ads All Over the Barclays Center?

We were actually expecting a lot worse, really. Preliminary renderings showed a giant blue crest and the Barclays name emblazoned beside it, not unlike the huge logos atop the Staples Center in L.A. (and the neighboring Nokia Theater). Instead, the photos revealed yesterday by the WCBS chopper show a small, even diminutive logo that barely dominates the large white roof atop the new SHoP-designed arena. Read More

By Kim Velsey 8/27/12 7:43pm

Atlantic Yards

What weathering steel looks like up close.

Barclay’s Arena Rusted-Out Look Not a Huge Hit With Everyone

Now that the finishes touches are being put on Barclay’s Arena, it has become apparent to neighbors and passers-by that the building will not be getting a coat of paint to cover its rusty exterior. Because it’s supposed to be that way. While this is old news to most neighborhood opponents—who zealously perused construction designs—it has surprised some others.

“I thought they were going to paint it,” commented one man to The New York Times, which has a story about the structure’s rusty surface. Read More

By Matt Chaban 8/06/12 1:40pm

five ring circus

Race for the prize? (Getty)

Dan Doctoroff Is Not Wistful for Olympic Bid He Says Helped City, Even If Maybe It Didn’t

Dan Doctoroff, Olympic dreamer, got to attend an opening ceremony for the games this summer, even if it was not the one he had hoped for. It was from London, where Mr. Doctoroff was taking in the 2012 summer Olympics, that he fired off an email to his friends declaring “feelings of ‘what might have been’ are curiously absent.”

The Times got a hold of this email, where the former deputy mayor for economic development and current head of Bloomberg LP goes on to say that even without them, the Olympic bid was good for New York. Read More

By Matt Chaban 6/19/12 1:49pm

An Arena Grows in Brooklyn

Notice the two towers just the left of the arena in Frank Gehry's original design for Atlantic Yards. Not officially part of the project, but on the horizon? (FCR)

Brooklyn Nets a Mega Mall: Forest City Mulls What’s Next for Atlantic Terminal and Atlantic Center

It could be the biggest thing to come to Atlantic Yards since Barbara Streisand and Justin Beiber announced they would be playing concerts at the Barclays Center this fall. While everyone (but the neighbors and former neighbors) is looking forward to the opening of the new arena, Forest City Ratner now has its eyes trained across the street, to the two malls it owns there.

Once work on the arena is complete, the difficult task of moving forward with the adjoining apartment buildings lies ahead. But as interest in the area’s retail has boomed in anticipation of the new 18,000-seat venue, Forest City Ratner has also accelerated plans to redevelop the Atlantic Center and Atlantic Terminal malls.

“It’s an obvious opportunity,” MaryAnne Gilmartin, Forest City’s executive vice president, told The Observer. “One of the many things we think about is the impact the arena will have, and how we can help create a holistic neighborhood at Atlantic Yards from there.” Read More

By Kim Velsey 5/29/12 10:33am

Procrastination

Is affordable housing too hard for developers to handle?

Megaproject Developers Promise To Get Around To Affordable Housing Someday

In a move that should shock no one, the developers of Atlantic Yards and Willets Point are dragging their feet when it comes to building the affordable housing components of their projects, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Atlantic Yards, crying “bad market,” has repeatedly delayed breaking ground on the 2,250 low- and middle-income units that were a major part of pushing the project through.

And Willets Point, promising another 1,750 affordable units, may finally have a development deal, but it will be a long time before any housing goes up. Housing is scheduled for the third stage of construction, long after the large retail center and hotel are finished. Read More

By Matt Chaban 4/30/12 12:42pm

THERE GOES THE NEIGHBORHOOD

A match made in Heaven—by which we mean Brooklyn.

Just What Park Slope Needs: a Hooters

Much attention has been paid to the changes the Barclays Center has wrought on the surrounding brownstone neighborhoods: eminent domain evictions, property values both falling and rising, construction noise, a starchitect fight and a rat tsunami. Yet nothing could have prepared the borough of kings and kombucha for this: Hooters “desperately” wants to open an outlet near the new Nets arena. Read More

By Nitasha Tiku 4/04/12 9:15am

Secret Weapons

Seth Pinsky

Let’s Make a Deal! How Mike’s Mild-Mannered Closer Seth Pinsky Got the City Building Again

Imagine, if you will, the landscape of New York City 15 years hence. A drive to Citi Field in Willets Point takes you past a pleasant if overpriced cluster of residential buildings, rather than seedy chop-shops. Roosevelt Island is home to a sprawling $2 billion applied-sciences campus spinning out an army of developers to populate ping-pong-table-clad start-up clusters from Dumbo to Union Square. On Manhattan’s far West Side, the rezoned stretch of Hudson Yards offers millions of square feet for office space, housing and retail and 14 acres of open public space. You can already see traces of a more built-up, scrubbed-down New York in Luna Park’s freshly-painted Scream Zone, the first new roller-coasters Coney Island has seen in 80 years, and the rapidly-metastasizing arena at Atlantic Yards, which will soon play home court to the rebranded Brooklyn Nets.

It’s hardly a scenario Seth Pinsky could have imagined in September 2008, when Lehman Brothers collapsed just seven months into his tenure as president of the New York City Economic Development Corporation (EDC), a not-for-profit arm of the Mayor’s office charged with fostering economic growth across the five boroughs.

At the time, Mr. Pinsky was a 36-year-old former lawyer and investment analyst, only a few years removed from a private sector gig refinancing real estate deals for the big banks as an associate at Cleary Gottlieb. He had one big win under his belt—jump-starting the World Trade Center redevelopment project—but he didn’t have “a political bone in his body,” as one insider put it. “People kept saying to me, ‘Wow, you’re the head of the Economic Development Corporation? We’re in an economic meltdown!’’ Mr. Pinsky told The Observer.

“At the time it meant, ‘You must be really crazy.’” Read More

By Michael Ewing 2/13/12 5:28pm

An Arena Grows in Brooklyn

With trees.

Barclays Boondoggle: Will the New Nets Arena Be a Parking Nightmare?

The issue of parking and traffic is always a problem in New York. If you aren’t renting a space for an exhorbitant price, then chances are that you are driving around the block a few dozen times. (Unless you are in the Bronx, then you just park wherever on the street.) But no other borough likes to hoot and holler over traffic more than Brooklyn.

The construction of the Barclays Center is no exception, the Post reports: Read More