When it comes to construction, Brooklyn needs Bob Vila, not Bruce Ratner.
For years now, Ratner has forced his suburban blight on the Borough of
Kings, using Brooklyn as his personal strip mine, ripping out its streets
and small buildings to make way for his behemoths that turn their backs
on what’s left of the neighborhoods they invade.
It’s been said that Ratner’s plan for Downtown Brooklyn is to
Manhattan-ize it — as if the skyscrapers he foresees are the only
things that define a city.
But the fact is Ratner is trying to create a new suburbia, smack dab in
the middle of the city, by using suburban ideals to create the “New
Brooklyn.”
Don’t believe me? Take a look at some of his other projects.
•Atlantic Center Mall: The epitome of the suburban mega-mall gone
bad in the middle of the city, complete with parking (for a fee). It’s
back is literally turned on Fort Greene, where there are no entrances
for local residents, who have to walk around the complex and onto Atlantic
Avenue. All this for the pleasure of shopping at the Department of Motor
Vehicles and the Empire State Development Corporation, in office space
created and paid for with our tax money after several mall merchants failed,
ostensibly because of Ratner’s poor design and promotion.
•Metrotech: A suburban business campus, self-sufficient right down
to the nearby hotel and airline ticket office. Employees who work there
eat in tasty, inexpensive corporate cafeterias because the campus’
design makes it impractical to walk over to Montague Street or Fulton
Mall or even Willoughby Street. Stores located on its center “park”
don’t survive because the campus’ fortress-like perimeter discourages
foot traffic on the streets that used to be there. And nightlife is nonexistent.
Remember Casey’s Cafe? Neither do I.
Now, Ratner wants to do the same thing with his proposed Atlantic Yards
compound (and presumably in the overlapping Downtown Plan district) where
he’d again close streets and construct skyscrapers up to 600 feet
tall that would by design separate the complex from the neighborhoods
of Fort Greene and Prospect Heights.
Ratner’s plan, designed by Frank Gehry, would again have a “park”
in its middle, and it will probably get as much use as the one at Metrotech
— which means very little.
In the meantime, a neighborhood that was developing just fine on its own
gets condemned.
I was inside 24 Sixth Ave. on Saturday. It’s the former Spalding
factory, recently turned into condos. Close to 100 people live there in
large studio apartments. One of those residents, Stuart Plesser, showed
me his plans to add walls in his 1,500-square-foot, exposed-brick and
wood-columned apartment. Those plans are now on hold, as he waits to see
if his new home will be torn down.
Last year, for his television show “Home Again,” Bob Vila showed
how he restored and then converted to residential use a former spice factory
on Water Street in DUMBO, another hot neighborhood which, over the past
10 years, has been reconstructed from the inside out.
DUMBO’s conversion from manufacturing to both housing and office
space, has taken place without the clearing of blocks, removal of streets
or insertion of suburban-style complexes. Instead, the neighborhood has
been re-born rather than rebuilt.
In time, the same thing would happen around the Atlantic Avenue rail yards,
with or without Ratner. In fact, the rebuilding of the area — from
within — had already begun. Just ask Stuart Plesser.
Ratner’s vision, as designed by Gehry, just isn’t Brooklyn.
It has no place in our low-rise urban landscape.
Maybe Ratner needs a new architect, someone who would appreciate the things
Brooklyn already has to offer and those that deserve to be preserved.
Maybe he should put in a call to Bob Vila.
Or, he could just take off and find another city to strip mine.
Vince DiMiceli is senior editor and production manager of The Brooklyn
Papers. E-mail: Production@BrooklynPapers.com.
