Watch the new slideshow about the interim parking planned for Atlantic Yards. Click here to visit AtlanticLots.com
Atlantic Yards or Atlantic Lots?
Video of Rally Against Demolition for Parking
Governance Video
Watch a slideshow
Click here to watch a pop-up slideshow of images, maps and siteplans of the proposed Atlantic Yards project.
Atlantic Yards would:
Contain the same amount of development as 23 Williamsburgh Savings Banks
Generate over 20,000 new vehicle trips every day with no plan to avoid gridlock
Contain affordable housing that won't be affordable to average Brooklynites
Potentially be built without significant input from New Yorkers
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Recent Comments
- "After, Atlantic Yards?" I'm
15 weeks 1 day ago - Brooklyn Speaks & Notice "Brooklyn Matters" showings -May 1 etc
17 weeks 5 days ago - Brooklyn growth for 2010 not 1910
21 weeks 5 days ago - Effective Action Needed From Brooklyn Speaks, BHA, etc.
23 weeks 2 days ago - There are huge problems with
47 weeks 3 days ago
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: THOUSANDS CALL ON GOVERNOR TO CHANGE ATLANTIC YARDS PROJECT
April 2, 2007
Nearly 6,000 New Yorkers have written to Governor Eliot Spitzer calling for major changes to the Atlantic Yards project. The letters were sent from the BrooklynSpeaks.net website or as replies to a mailer sent out to households surrounding the project. Many of the letters included personal notes which will be excerpted on the BrooklynSpeaks.net website over the forthcoming weeks. They will be delivered to the offices of the Empire State Development Corporation next Wednesday, April 11th.
“It’s an extraordinary response,” said Michelle de la Uz, executive director of the Fifth Avenue Committee. “Brooklyn is truly speaking up.”
The Atlantic Yards project was approved by the state’s Public Authorities Control Board in December, but according to media reports the new administration is conducting a review of the project.
Note: the time of delivery of the postcards and letters has been updated since the original post.
The main problem with this project is that it divides Park Slope and the Park from the west of the borough, Fort Greene, and Downtown.
This project is like a huge curtain wall, segregating communities. One day, the Navy Yard will be redeveloped, too, and the Slopers will be cut off from that. There is something to be said about a walkable, in-scale Brooklyn.
It is time to unite Brooklyn over the old tracks' gash, not create a mountain range on top of them.
No offense, but this project is reminiscent of 'the other side of the tracks' divisions plaguing our nation since the Civil War.
In addition, while the pictures I've seen of Gehry's Bilbao Guggenheim are spectacular, he does seem to be suffering from his popularity, and his more recent projects seem to be washed out over-extensions. They just don't seem to be inspired, interesting, or good looking.
Bilbao residents don't like the museum, either, but looking at this plan it is plain: this project is too clunky, monstrous, big, bulky. The architecture itself evokes danger, as if it is about to tumble down, crushing the neighborhoods, that cool outer-borough vibe, and smaller-scaledness of Brooklyn, 'the city of gardens,' beloved.
It is time to go back to the drawing board, and get some other architects, and to break the project up with some boulevards and parks and public gathering spaces for music and play.
Think Paris of the Beaux Arts era. Heck, think the Pompidou Centre with its public gathering space. Who was that by Rodgers or Foster? Think of the Washington, D.C. of L'Enfant, Olmsted, and Burnham. I'd even take the 1809 Randel Commission dividing Manhattan (then NYC) into a grid over this BK-ATL project. At least one can walk a grid. Who did Millenium Park in Chicago?
Boot these developers and their over-extended over-hyped architects with eminent domain. This project is the great wall of Brooklyn, without the grace.