Workers will now toil on the Barclays Center around the clock, seven days a week to ensure that the $1-billion arena will be ready for Jay-Z’s grand opening concerts next summer.
Neighbors of the Prospect Heights arena were quick to notice the stepped-up construction schedule, thanks to ear-splitting noise between 10 pm and 6 am on Atlantic, Flatbush and Fourth avenues, and Pacific Street, where roadwork is underway in hopes of reducing traffic to the 19,000-seat arena.
Construction is also going full-blast to repair the shuttered Carlton Avenue bridge, install new sewer lines and prepare the site’s rail yard for a massive upgrade. City rules require that the work be done at night, when traffic is lightest.
As if that weren’t enough, truck deliveries to the site were pushed back to 6 am, and a staging area inside of the Atlantic Yards footprint is active 24 hours per day, according to residents.
Taken together, residents near the project are left with one massive headache.
“It’s noisy and loud,” said Milagros Barreto, who lives on Dean Street. “I can hear the work clearly from my house.”
John Carruthers, who lives on Pacific Street, said the noise is keeping him and his 14-year-old daughter up at night.
“She ends up going to sleep late and wakes up tired,” he said. “It’s pissing me off,”
Project spokesman Joe DePlasco said that the pace of construction “will continue through the arena opening, but he denied that the work was ramped up to keep the project on schedule.
The arena is set to open next September with a series of concerts by the rap superstar, Jay-Z, the Brooklyn native formerly known as Shawn Carter.
