The Atlantic Yards site last month.Photo: AP
It has begun. As you read this, Bruce Ratner’s bulldozers should be moving in on a defenseless bus depot on the eastern edge of the Atlantic Yards site. Depending on your point of view, this is either an uplifting bit of symbolism or the rough equivalent of Bambi’s mother getting shot by hunters. For the Daily News, which seems capable of looking at the multi-skyscraper megaproject only through the prism of basketball, everything’s coming up roses: “The Brooklyn Nets arena has finally got game,” its coverage begins. Naturally, the ever-indignant Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn takes a different tack.
The first of today’s several (by 9:05 a.m.) Daniel Goldstein press releases condemns “premature … demolition of one building for the developer’s ‘Atlantic Yards’ project in Prospect Heights and Park Slope, Brooklyn.” Goldstein, of course, is indulging in a bit of rezoning himself: It takes a certain stretch of imagination to place Atlantic Yards in Park Slope. His main point, however, is that Ratner can’t yet legally finish what he’s started, so the demolition is a scare tactic aimed at the area’s thirteen eminent-domain holdouts, including Goldstein himself. It’s a wrecking ball that’ll have to make its way through federal court.
Developer Gets the Ball Rolling on Nets Arena Construction [NYDN]
Wishful Digging [DDDB]
