April 28, 2007: Vol. 30, No. 17
Past issues
The Paper in print
RSS feeds
Print edition (PDF)
Email Alerts- The current issue
- Neighborhood Map
- Bay Ridge
- Bensonhurst, Dyker Heights
- Brooklyn Heights
- Downtown, DUMBO
- Carroll Gardens
- Cobble Hill, Red Hook, Boerum Hill
- Fort Greene
- Clinton Hill, Crown Heights
- North Brooklyn
- Williamsburg, Greenpoint, Bushwick
- Park Slope
- Prospect Heights, Windsor Terrace, Greenwood Heights
- GO Brooklyn
- Brooklyn Cyclones
- Not Just Nets
- Police Blotter
- Perspective
- Parenting
- Politics
- Transit
- Media archive
- The Brooklyn Bride
- Brooklyn Boom
- Classifieds
- Merchant news
- About The Paper
- RSS Feeds
-
Ratner’s wrecking ball hits, protested
for The Brooklyn Paper
Enlarge this imageSimilar stories
Print this story
digg
del.icio.usDeveloper Bruce Ratner began demolition of three more buildings within the Atlantic Yards footprint this week, days after dozens of opponents called for the developer to call off his wrecking ball until pending litigation is resolved.
Protesters gathered on Monday morning at 191 Flatbush Ave., to complain that the demolitions would create blight in and around Ratner’s proposed 16-tower, arena, residential and office complex — especially if the lawsuits are successful and the project is never built.
“We say to Gov. Spitzer, we need you now!” said Councilwoman Letitia James (D–Prospect Heights). “This community was forced to file lawsuits because [of the lack of] government oversight.”
The rally came three days after a federal judge ruled that Ratner could start knocking down buildings in the footprint, despite several cases still percolating through the court system.
Last Friday, Justice Joan Madden rejected opponents’ request for a restraining order that would have barred demolitions until a May 3 hearing in one of the cases.
Up to 15 structures are slated to fall in the next few months, the first steps towards completing an arena for the Brooklyn-bound New Jersey Nets by Opening Day in the fall of 2009.
Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn spokesman Daniel Goldstein said Ratner’s decision to move ahead with the demolitions was “deeply troubling.”
“It has yet to be shown that [Ratner’s] Atlantic Yards project passes legal muster,” said Goldstein, whose group is one of 26 plaintiffs in a case that charges the state’s environmental review of the project was incomplete, and must be redone.
“The demolitions are an affront to the community the developer purports to benefit,” Goldstein added.
Councilwoman James and others are convening a community planning session this Saturday at the Hanson Place United Methodist Church to devise a new alternative to Atlantic Yards.
Such a “charette” session in 2004 created an alternative to Ratner’s Atlantic Yards, but that so-called “Unity” plan was rejected by state officials in what critics say was a rigged process that greased the wheels for Ratner.
“We’ll have to live with this development for years to come, so it should reflect our values, not the values of a developer with friends in high places,” James said.
A Ratner spokesman, Loren Riegelhaupt, responded to an e-mail request for comment from The Brooklyn Paper. His response? “We have no comment on the lawsuit or the demolition,” Riegelhaupt wrote.
©2007 The Brooklyn Paper
Enter your comment below
By submitting this comment, you agree to the following terms:
You agree that you, and not BrooklynPaper.com or its affiliates, are fully responsible for the content that you post. You agree not to post any abusive, obscene, vulgar, slanderous, hateful, threatening or sexually-oriented material or any material that may violate applicable law; doing so may lead to the removal of your post and to your being permanently banned from posting to the site. You grant to BrooklynPaper.com the royalty-free, irrevocable, perpetual and fully sublicensable license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, perform and display such content in whole or in part world-wide and to incorporate it in other works in any form, media or technology now known or later developed.
