BROOKLYN — The following sentences were written by this correspondent in late September 1993 and appeared in the Phoenix newspaper at that time.
“For the first time in a public setting, officials from Forest City Ratner Companies and their consultants revealed their plans for the Atlantic Center site.
“Forest City also revealed its desire to expand the project site to include space across Atlantic Avenue from Sixth Avenue west to Flatbush, where they hope to build an office tower over the open Long Island Railroad Tracks. These officials even talked about their vision of a new subway and rail complex.”
This correspondent did not realize, nor did hardly anyone else at the time, that this “public setting,” which was held at the YWCA on Third Avenue on Sept. 21, 1993, was, in part, the first chapter in the book now known as the Atlantic Yards.
Those comments made about the Atlantic Yards were not just passing remarks. This paragraph also appeared in the story:
“When talking about an office tower across from the project [Atlantic Center], Paul Travis pointedly brought up the subject of a federal courthouse complex. The site, above the open rail yards, is one of the five candidate sites for such a structure, and it was clear that this is where Forest City would like for it to go.”
(Obviously, the Yards site was not chosen for the federal courthouse, nor was it later chosen for the state courthouse. The court community wanted these courts close to the legal center in Downtown Brooklyn.)
There were other comments at this meeting 16 years ago that suggested the future course.
“Calling Flatbush Avenue the ‘spine of Brooklyn,’ Stan Eckstut, a consultant to Forest City, also said that the Atlantic Center area is the ‘center of Brooklyn’.”
This old history is produced here to counter the argument that some opponents of the Atlantic Yards have made. These opponents say the proposal doesn’t belong where it is planned; that the area is not part of “Downtown.”
“Downtowns” seem to go where they want to go — just look at the 150-year history of the evolution of Downtown Brooklyn. But even then, there were other solid pieces of evidence that Downtown Brooklyn was heading west of Flatbush Avenue to finally join the lonely Williamsburgh Bank building.
The building of the Atlantic Terminal, long planned, was one of those. More revealing was the office building built on top of the terminal for the Bank of New York, the first office building built west of Flatbush since the Williamsburgh structure.
Equally revealing, if not more so, are the plans for a major culture center around BAM, plans still evolving. One does not create such a complex in the middle of nowhere.
The lesson to learn from this more than three-year experience is that two years were lost by opponents yelling loudly, “Not in my back yard.” Only too late in the process were reasonable options advanced by others; only too late were efforts made to affect changes. These were efforts best made right from the beginning.
Can this happen again somewhere else? Sure. It could happen in Sunset Park in the next 10 years. For sure, it will happen in Coney Island where major development will clearly happen.
The complexities and size of Gowanus may work against a single major development kind of thing. To bring order to Gowanus, City Planning will have to do its job; the department is now doing a major rezoning project.
© Brooklyn Daily Eagle 2006
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