A Stadium Grows In Brooklyn

The preliminary design completed by the developer Bruce Ratner and the architect Frank Gehry, proposes 17 buildings along Atlantic Avenue east of downtown Brooklyn. The buildings would add 6,000 residential units housing roughly 15,000 people and transform the Brooklyn skyline, according to an article appearing in Tuesday's editions of The New York Times. The $3.5 billion project would also create 1.9 million square feet of office space.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority will begin examining the plans Wednesday as part of a proposal by Ratner to buy and develop the Atlantic Avenue rail yards. No other group has yet announced plans to make a bid to meet Wednesday's deadline.

The proposal calls for the city and state to contribute $100 million each in subsidies for site improvements.

``Hopefully this will be a model for other large-scale developments to be done again in the boroughs as they were in the '50s and '60s,'' Ratner told The New York Times. ``It is in some sense like Columbus Circle, where residential meets the office district and the cultural district, and it can handle this kind of density.''

Gehry has named the tallest proposed building, ``Miss Brooklyn.'' Rising sixty stories or 620 feet from the corner of Atlantic and Flatbush Avenues, it would be Brooklyn's tallest building.

The project would be built in stages, beginning with the area closest to the proposed arena, but could be completed as early as 2011.

A portion of the site would be built on a platform spanning LIRR rail yards. Another portion would need to be acquired via eminent domain. Some local residents are unhappy about this development, but community leaders, politicians, and developers are largely behind the project.

If anyone is wondering whether Kelo has anything to do with this project, the answer is yes. New York has long entertained a Kelo style development standard so those homes that need to be acquired from private owners and shifted to the Ratner development group, Kelo is all too real. Many states will entertain public-private development deals to promote development in underutilized areas. New York is no exception.