By Dennis Holt
Brooklyn Daily Eagle
BROOKLYN — The hearts of readers of the New York Times who are also opponents of the Atlantic Yards proposal must have sunk last Friday when they turned to page B-5.
There, by reporter Andy Newman, was a story on whether the proposed new building, “Miss Brooklyn,” at 620 feet, should be taller than the Williamsburgh Bank building, at 515 feet. Borough President Marty Markowitz, for the first time, said it shouldn’t.
The story was speculation on what that might mean and several cynical comments were made by various people, but no one stepped forth with the most telling observation and the reason for sinking hearts.
When people start talking about how tall a building should be, not whether the building should be at all, the argument against the project is lost. And that argument also ignores the real world.
In terms of the Atlantic Yards proposal, the height of new buildings is far less important than how many buildings there should be. Debating how tall buildings should be is easy; debating the number of buildings is very difficult.
In the same space, a project of 12 buildings is more manageable than one of 16. So far to my knowledge, no one has asked the developer about the economics of 12 buildings rather than 16. Can a case be made that by adding four stories to each of 12 buildings the number of buildings can be reduced?
These are the kinds of questions and the kinds of issues that should have been broached sometime ago, not how many cars will go through a given intersection in plan A versus plan B. Opponents of the plan, whose numbers grew over the years, never became a serious part of possibly serious discussions because they didn’t want to be.
In fact, now is the time for responsible leaders in Prospect Heights and Fort Greene to start thinking about the communities’ role in the next 10 to 20 years. There should be a Citizens Advisory Committee, such as the one for Brooklyn Bridge Park: the neighborhoods should and can play an important role in the evolution of the Atlantic Yards project, but only if they want to.
But since people are getting interested in the height of Miss Brooklyn, let’s address that issue here.
The height of Miss Brooklyn should be determined by whether what is happening in Brooklyn is rebuilding the old Brooklyn or whether a new Brooklyn is being built. If it is the latter, then Miss Brooklyn should be the tallest building in Brooklyn — it should be the signature structure of all that has come and will come.
Why should the tallest building in Brooklyn continue to be a building that for almost 80 years was a mistake? It was supposed to lead to new change, but the Depression put an end to that. It stood alone and almost aloof. It should no longer signal what Brooklyn is all about.
A lot of lessons have been learned about the saga of the Atlantic Yards project, and more are in store that cannot now be predicted. Many of those lessons have been under the radar but are critical nonetheless.
© Brooklyn Daily Eagle 2006
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