I could safely presume that in no other time in this city’s history would an attack, like the one we suffered on 9/11, be so casually and tacitly put on a back-burner that’s hardly even burning. While a war rages in two countries and our military’s body count rises, the memory of the attack (the very impetus for the war) is quickly diminishing. In the days immediately following that infamous day, security was such that one couldn’t so much as fly a kite in New York City without the risk of it being shot down by an F-16 (that is, if the Air Force didn’t happen to be on an another training exercise). Millions upon millions were rapidly pumped into the city’s coffers for ostensible security concerns; and, just as rapidly, this appears to have been replaced with another “security” concern: building construction.
One could scarcely roam through this city in the course of a day without encountering several major and sundry building projects. Along its roads and bridges, through its tunnels and byways, travelers inevitably observe those hard-hatted men in orange vests nonchalantly swarmed around a sudden and ill-defined work site. But of all the building projects within the five boroughs which comprise this city, the Atlantic Yards Building Project in Brooklyn is the most massive and most vaguely ambitious of them all. As Dana Rubinstein of the Brooklyn Paper puts it: “The tortuously drawn out development of the Atlantic Yards project never fails to offend, amuse and plain old befuddle onlookers.”
Deriving its name from the Atlantic Avenue rail yard, where the project is centered, the construction will mainly encompass the Prospect Heights, Park Slope and Fort Greene sections of Downtown Brooklyn with a developmental mix of 16 commercial and residential buildings…some reaching skyscraper status. The project’s centerpiece will be the Barclay Center, reserved as the new home of the New Jersey Nets (while the NY Giants continue playing in New Jersey). Bruce Ratner, real estate tycoon and financial wizard, is the driving force for the Atlantic Terminal Urban Renewal Area (ATURA). There’s apparently no stopping Ratner’s building mania that somehow manages to evade the respective red tape of construction legalities and formalities before bulldozing another old building here, announcing another construction zone there, and ignoring the ordinary New Yorker everywhere. (Yet, I can’t help wondering: Where did the money, supposedly slated for security due to a supposed enemy threat, really go?)
atlanticyards.com/html/footer/im…
Tags: Big Apple Sauce, construction
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January 13th, 2008 at 6:57 am
Excellent post. I noticed similar construction-like projects when I lived in the Bronx.