FCR's fudge: Laurie Olin is (maybe) on sabbatical

The New York Observer followed up my post todayon Laurie Olin's apparent departure from the Atlantic Yards project by getting a statement from Forest City Ratner spokesman Joe DePlasco (the "dark genius," as I once dubbed him):
"Laurie Olin has been involved from the beginning of the design process and he will be involved in the end. The eight acres of open space will be built as part of Phase 2 of the project, which has always been the case. Mr. Olin has completed preliminary work on that and will be involved going forward."

Reasons for skepticism

Does that mean Olin is currently involved? No.

Do the statements that Olin will be involved "in the end" and "going forward" mean he'll be designing the eight acres of open space? Not necessarily. Maybe he'd just show up for the ribbon-cutting.

Is Olin on sabbatical, which implies that some level of a retainer and/or consulting relationship? Maybe. However, if so, why does his web site describe his involvement as 2003-2008 rather than ongoing? (Click on graphic to enlarge.)

Olin's statement

Sure, it's possible that his role has been suspended rather than ended. If so, however, why did his office provide me with a statement that used the past tense regarding the relationship with the developer?

The statement: "OLIN completed a master plan for Atlantic Yards that we believe was a serious response to the many issues raised regarding this portion of the City of New York, and the great need for large amounts of affordable housing with adjacent well-designed, environmentally-responsive public landscape. We enjoyed a supportive and appreciative relationship with the owner/developer, the architects and the City of New York public officials. The current economic turmoil points to the truth that plans of such scope almost inevitably are realized over several economic cycles and must both be able to endure as well as be flexible to change."

As a world-famous landscape architect with a host of successful projects (Bryant Park, etc.) on his resume, Olin presumably can speak as candidly as he did last year, when he accurately predicted that the project couldn't be built in the announced decade. Let's see what more he says.

Landscape architect Olin leaves AY project (updated), predicts "other architects and other hands"

It's time to update the FAQ on the Forest City Ratner web site which says, "The award-winning landscape architect Laurie Olin, who also designed the public spaces for Battery Park City, is designing the publicly accessible open space at Atlantic Yards."

No longer, apparently.

The web site for the Olin Studio suggests that Olin's work on Atlantic Yards has concluded.

(Updated 11:50 a.m.: Olin's office sent me a statement (I first inquired last week): "OLIN completed a master plan for Atlantic Yards that we believe was a serious response to the many issues raised regarding this portion of the City of New York, and the great need for large amounts of affordable housing with adjacent well-designed, environmentally-responsive public landscape. We enjoyed a supportive and appreciative relationship with the owner/developer, the architects and the City of New York public officials. The current economic turmoil points to the truth that plans of such scope almost inevitably are realized over several economic cycles and must both be able to endure as well as be flexible to change.")

(Updated: While I originally wrote that it wasn't clear why Olin had left, and suggested a number of possible reasons, including a potential penalty for having gone off-message regarding the project's timetable and the role of other architects, the statement above indicates that the issue is financial. But it's clear, as I originally wrote, that the eight acres of promised open space are so far in the future--in an unscheduled Phase 2--that there's no need to keep him on board for now. )

So the news certainly diminishes one of the selling points for the project: Olin's role. And it means that Forest City Ratner should stop promoting Olin's role, as on its web site (right).

Gehry's role, and timetable issues

Olin's departure, along with comments he made last year and in a new book, raises questions about whether architect Frank Gehry really would design the whole project, as the developer insists, or, or whether Gehry would depart as well.

Also, in the book Olin again predicts--as evidence has borne out--that the project would take much longer than initially anticipated, though he remains optimistic that it would turn out well.

(Click on graphics to enlarge.)

Olin's old web site

At right is a screen shot from the Olin Partnership's web page from earlier this year, which suggests an ongoing role for the landscape architect. (All emphases are added).

It states:
In collaboration with Forest City Ratner and Gehry Partners, Olin Partnership will design the open space to become a destination for the surrounding neighborhoods, reconnecting them across the gap left by the existing railyard. The newly designed open space will contain elements such as lawns, gardens, recreational courts, playgrounds, cafes, and a green roof for the basketball arena.

As seen in the screenshot, Olin erroneously claims that the footprint would be 24 acres, rather than 22 (though 24 was used in a few very early documents), and that the project "is located in central Brooklyn, New York over an existing rail yard."

The project couldn't be built in its entirety over the 8.5-acre rail yard. But he's correct that it's not Downtown Brooklyn, which is a Forest City Ratner claim.

Olin's new web site

Now take a look at Olin's new web site, which debuted about three weeks ago. It indicates that Olin's role in the project lasted from 2003 through 2008.

It uses the past tense and describes Olin's role as master planner and conceptual designer:
In collaboration with Forest City Ratner and Gehry Partners, OLIN was integrally involved in master planning the site to help minimize the impact of the proposed towers in this mostly mid-rise neighborhood, and to create essential pedestrian connections across the gap formed by the existing open rail yard. By reconnecting the streets and neighborhoods, the new landscape replaces the rail yard with a public open space that reclaims and renews a part of the city for public use and enjoyment. OLIN also developed the concept design for seven acres of street-level parks and plazas weaving through the site, as well as a four-acre green roof on the arena.

An ongoing project

Contrast the web site's treatment of Atlantic Yards (2003-2008) with the segment devoted to the Benjamin Franklin Parkway in Philadelphia (2003-in Progress).

A curious valedictory

Also, the landscape architect's new book, Olin: Placemaking, offers a couple of curious clues about Atlantic Yards.

For one thing, Olin again goes off-message and predicts that multiple architects, not just Gehry, would design the project, and that it would take longer than anticipated.

For another, the absence of any AY designs, except an oddly obscured rendering of the arena block, suggests that Olin's work may have been revised and/or has been muzzled by his client. After all, Olin renderings, albeit more than two years old, still appear on the Atlantic Yards web site.

Changing cities

Cities, Olin says reasonably enough in an undated discussion with the poet Michael Palmer, "are dynamic, constantly changing, constantly evolving, being added to and torn down and adjusted."

Only at the end of that 12-page interview, which opens the book, does Olin touch on Atlantic Yards, a project otherwise neither mentioned nor explained in Olin: Placemaking. "We all get partial versions of what we set out to do," he declares, noting that, with the Washington Monument, "the architect didn't get what he wanted. he wanted a colonnade, with inscriptions and statues, and it wasn't realized. All that happened was the shaft, and it's perfect."

"I discovered recently that in 1939 Claude Levi-Strauss wrote that the city is not an architectural problem--he called it a cultural landscape. it came to me that there is a kind of ecological analog in cities. They are like forests; they are these chunks of habitat. And things get done in pieces and chunks. San Fancisco got built in bit and fragments; there was a plan but only a piece of the plan got done. We had a plan for Mission Bay, but only a piece of it has been executed."

(At right, an Olin rendering of Atlantic Yards.)

Little pieces

Palmer interpolated a clarification: "The Beaux-Arts plan never got realized, but you see little pieces of it, you mean."

"Yes," replied Olin. "And the city's richer for those pieces. It can produce chaos. It can produce bad things as well as good. Usually it's better that enough of something gets done and then it's abandoned. Economic cycles prevent all these grand plans from ever happening. That's why I'm not worried about some of the criticism of our Atlantic Yards project. I know that, by the time it finally gets done, conditions will be different, with other architects and other hands involved, and it will be richer for that."

(Emphasis added. Photo from University of Pennsylvania Gazette.)

If he's not worried about some of the criticism, does that mean he's worried about the rest of the criticism?)

"We all get partial versions of what we set out to do. And that accumulation of partiality I find wonderful."

"Other architects and other hands"?

In his reference to "other architects and other hands," Olin has again gone off message.

Remember, in February 2007, Olin told the New York Observer, "Various architects who have specialized in doing residential towers will probably be brought in to be the architect of record anyway, even if design architects like Frank Gehry or other personalities give image and shape to them."

He also said the project would take 20 years rather than the announced ten--a prediction that has gained credibility in the last year-and-a-half, despite efforts by the Empire State Development Corporation to discredit it in the ongoing lawsuit over the project's environmental review.

Olin's statement last year drew a sharp response in the Observer from Forest City Ratner's now-departed Atlantic Yards point man:
“Laurie has his views,” countered Jim Stuckey, executive vice president of Forest City Ratner. “We don’t believe it is going to take 20 years. We expect that it will take 10.” He added, “Frank Gehry will be the architect on every one of them.”

A very odd rendering

In a book that contains more than 300 pages and hundreds of images of Olin projects, the last image (right) in the pages of Olin: Placemaking is the most puzzling. Unlike those in the rest of the book, this rendering is not identified.

Brooklynites will identify it as a view of the Atlantic Yards arena block--notice the scattered typography using the letters of "Brooklyn"--and then emerge perplexed.

For one thing, none of the green space pictured--the roofs of towers?--is publicly accessible. For another, the streets nearby, including the streets outside of the project footprint, seem nicely repopulated with trees, even as some 86 trees have recently been removed.

What's missing

Olin's most ballyhooed role in Atlantic Yards, to design--not just "concept design"--the eight acres of open space promised for Phase 2, is not portrayed in this book. There's no timetable for Phase 2, slated to include eleven towers. There are no penalties, so far, for not beginning Phase 2. There are no current renderings of Phase 2.

And there are no new renderings of the open space, though the developer is recycling (and distorting) renderings in Forest City Ratner promotional brochures (right).

Indeed, a July 2007 feature article in the University of Pennsylvania Gazette, a publication from the landscape architect's own university, explained that a "non-disclosure agreement between [Forest City Ratner] and the Olin Partnership prevents the display of site plans and drawings in this story."

Other projects

By contrast, several of Olin's other recent projects appear in the book as renderings:

• The University of British Columbia--University Boulevard Competition, from 2005
• Syracuse Connective Corridor Competition, from 2006
• United States Embassy, Berlin, in progress
• University of California Berkeley--Southeast Campus Master Plan, in progress
• The Presidio of San Francisco--Main parade Ground, in progress

Remember, Atlantic Yards open space designs were supposed to appear this year in the magazine Landscape Architecture, but haven't.

Showing scale

Interestingly, Olin devotes a dozen pages in the new book to the Comcast Center in Philadelphia (right), and has no qualms about showing us what the 56-story building looks like in full,

Such a view eschewed by Forest City Ratner in its Atlantic Yards promotional brochures.

The politics of landscape

A recent profile of Olin, a 10/6/08 Houston Chronicle article headlined Hermann Park: a landscape jewel, suggests Olin is politically savvy. However, regarding Atlantic Yards, he's taking way too much credit:
"Landscape architecture is one of the most political things you can do," Olin tells his University of Pennsylvania students. Year after year, the statement shocks them. They plan to design gardens, campuses and parks. What's political about that?

And who could oppose the sorts of landscape designs that Olin is known for? The first stage of his master plan for Houston's Hermann Park — a larger, prettier lake, a neater reflecting pond, more trees and bathrooms and smarter parking — has been met with rapture. Bryant Park, once a headquarters for Manhattan muggers and drug dealers, is now one of New York's jewels, thanks to Olin. Assigned to make the Washington Monument less vulnerable to terrorists, he also made the approach to the obelisk better-looking and more momentous.

But design makes up only a part of landscape architecture, Olin tells his students. It's not just the trees, plants and land forms that are complex, changing, and require long-term cultivation. It's also the fundraising, the constituents and the bureaucracies. A good landscape architect has to be both a designer and a political animal.

White-haired and charming, Olin excels at both sides of his business. In courting Brooklynites suspicious of the Atlantic Yards development [right], it's usually Olin who takes the lead, not his frequent collaborator, Frank Gehry. Gehry is perhaps the most famous architect in the world, but at public forums on the project, he mainly sits quiet. Olin does the talking.
(Emphasis added)

Taking the lead?

The article doesn't exactly explain why Brooklynites might be suspicious, nor does it note that Olin apparently has left the project. As far as I know, Gehry and Olin have appeared publicly at exactly one event, a 2005 session geared to architects.

Meanwhile, one big community concern is the potential for indefinite interim surface parking. Olin himself prepared an alternative plan that combined temporary open space with such parking. I discovered that plan through a Freedom of Information Law request. It has not been implemented.

The AY Monologues

Olin did appear with Gehry in a May 2006 New York Times video I dubbed The AY Monologues." Rather than acknowledging a host of legitimate concerns, the landscape architect suggested that Brooklynites were frightened of change.

"I can’t think of a major project that either of us have ever worked on, that at the beginning there isn’t opposition of some sort, because change is threatening to people," he said. "Because we’re optimists who believe that we might be able to, through our work, make the world better. But that means you believe in change. And if you believe in change there are people who are frightened of it or resistant. So there’s always going to be some opposition to our work. And the more ambitious the scale, the more daring the project, the more upset some people will always be."

Maybe he now realizes that "some of the criticism" has some grounding.

Another distortion in the latest "liar flier"

Last Monday, I wrote about Forest City Ratner's latest promotional brochure, pointing to a rendering of the Atlantic Yards arena that seemed to have been cropped in a very curious manner.

Here's another.

At right is a spread from the flier emphasizing the provision of affordable housing and the project's "eco-friendly nature."

The rendering is long on foreground, short on background. Project towers--some of them planned to be 30, 40, and 50 stories, are cut off, with only half-a-dozen floors visible.

The main image of the project is... trees.

The original rendering

The graphic in the brochure was cropped from the rendering at right, produced by landscape architect Laurie Olin. It's misleading itself, because it doesn't show the full towers, some of which would be 30, 40, and 50 stories tall.

But at least it shows some 16 stories. The trees are there, but they're not the dominant image.

LEED for Neighborhood Development: AY's "selection," density, and other curiosities

In the realm of Atlantic Yards, it's a relatively small fib (or lingering error), but it's still worth noticing. The latest Forest City Ratner promotional brochure claims:
Atlantic Yards also has been selected as part of LEED's [Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design] Neighborhood Development Pilot Program, which encourages compact development, proximity to transit, access to public spaces, mixed use, affordable housing, and pedestrian- and bicycle-friendly design.
(Emphasis added)

I wondered how exactly AY had been "selected," given the prospect for some neighborhood-unfriendly features like indefinite interim surface parking, given that AY open space isn't due until Phase 2 (which has no starting point), given that expected shadows nixed planned solar panels on a nearby building, and given that Phase 2 would include most of the affordable housing.

Registered, not selected

It wasn't selected. A look at the U.S. Green Building Council's (USGBC) LEED for Neighborhood Development web page shows that Atlantic Yards is one of 239 "Registered Pilot Projects," most of which have not yet been evaluated as certified--and none of which have been "selected."

Sophie Lambert, Director, LEED for Neighborhood Development, confirmed to me, "Atlantic Yards is not part of the smaller Focus Group of ND pilot projects." (That includes some 60 projects.) "Thus, they technically should write 'registered' rather than selected. Many projects make this error, however, since at the very beginning pilot projects were going to be selected."

She's right; a 2007 LEED document stated, "Up to 120 projects in total will be selected to be a part of the pilot program."

Admirable goals, but not all fit AY

LEED for Neighborhood Development is the first national standard for neighborhood design (FAQ) and clearly an improvement on simply viewing buildings in isolation. (LEED notably omits historic preservation.) As the Pilot Version Rating System explains:
Unlike other LEED products that focus primarily on green building practices, with relatively few credits regarding site selection and design, LEED for Neighborhood Development places emphasis on the design and construction elements that bring buildings together into a neighborhood, and relate the neighborhood to its larger region and landscape.

Working with USGBC in partnership are the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU) and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).

Credits are given for projects meeting various elements of the program, under the broad categories of Smart Location & Linkage (e.g., Brownfield Redevelopment, Reduced Automobile Dependence), Neighborhood Pattern & Design (e.g., Diversity of Housing Types, Walkable Streets), and Green Construction & Technology (e.g., Energy Efficiency in Buildings, Reduced Water Use).

Clearly, many elements of Atlantic Yards would gain credits, such as a location near a transit hub, stormwater retention, and low-flow toilets. However, as noted below, AY likely wouldn't get credits in certain sub-areas and, in others, the checklist doesn't quite address the challenges posed by this project.

Projects must submit documentation to be certified; a minimum point total is required, while higher scores gain silver, gold, or platinum LEED certification.

Density: 7-70 units/acre

It's curious that while the program encourages density, its definition is rather gentle, according to the Pilot Version Rating System: Build any residential components of the project at an average density of seven or more dwelling units per acre of buildable land available for residential uses.

That's the minimum. The highest number of points is for projects that achieve 70+ units per acre. Now, greater density, on the whole is a good idea. The question is whether Atlantic Yards is too dense, as urban planners like Ron Shiffman have pointed out.

After all, Atlantic Yards, approved at 6430 units over 22 acres, would be 292 units/acre. However, under the rating system, the ratio would be even higher, since several acres assigned to the planned arena would not be available for residential uses.

Reduced parking footprint

Projects also get points for locating off-street surface parking lots at the side or rear of buildings, also using no more than 20% of the total development footprint area for surface parking facilities, with no individual surface parking lot larger than 2 acres. (Atlantic Yards, at least in the phase of interim surface parking, would have a parking lot larger than that.)

Also, bicycle and/or carpool parking spaces equivalent to 10% of the total automobile parking for each non-residential and multifamily building on the site would have to be required.

Atlantic Yards would probably qualify; still, the checklist doesn't address the fact that AY would contain far more parking than appropriate, given the proximity to a transit hub.

Community involvement?

In several areas of the checklist, it would be interesting to see if Atlantic Yards gains points. For example, Community Outreach and Involvement has the following requirements:
Meet with immediate neighbors and local public officials to solicit input on the proposed project during the pre-conceptual design phase,
AND
Host an open community meeting during conceptual design phase to solicit input on the proposed project,
AND
Modify the project design as a direct result of community input, or if modifications are not made, explain why community input did not generate design improvements,
AND
Work directly with community associations and/or other social networks of the community to advertise public meetings and generate comments on project design,
AND
Establish ongoing means for communication between the developer and the community throughout the design, construction, and in cases where the developer maintains control of part or the entire project, post-construction.

Would the well-orchestrated 8% project scaleback be submitted as an example of community input?

Other missing LEED for ND elements

Atlantic Yards likely wouldn't get points for several other elements of the checklist, including Building Reuse and Adaptive Reuse, Minimize Site Disturbance During Construction (protect trees to provide habitat and promote biodiversity), Solar Orientation (create optimum conditions for the use of passive and active solar strategies), and Light Pollution Reduction (minimize light trespass from site).

Also, curiously enough, the rating system doesn't address the issue of superblocks; I'd think that the creation of superblocks, as with AY, might lead to a subtraction of points.

Contact info?

It's also worth noting that, while the developers of many projects registered in the pilot program provide contact information in the master list, Forest City Ratner has not done so for Atlantic Yards.

FCR's parent company, Forest City Enterprises, does provide contact information for its two other registered projects, The Yards in Washington, DC, and Stapleton, in Denver. Is the omission of an AY contact an oversight or an unwillingness to tout the project?

The latest FCR "liar flier": recycled paper, recycled promises, new distortion

Probably the most curious aspect of the latest Forest City Ratner promotional brochure (aka "liar flier"), reproduced in full below, is that it contains a distortion of an already distorted image.

(The flier, which I picked up yesterday at the Atlantic Antic, is the eighth such flier, by my count; the seventh is here, with links to its predecessors. Click on graphics to enlarge.)

Keep in mind that the rendering at right of the arena block, released in May, doesn't really present the view from Flatbush Avenue. Rather, the perspective both to the south and above ground; this airborne view of Flatbush minimizes the 150-foot height of the arena and shows the cars as specks on the ground. (Frank Gehry as Frank Abagnale?)

Remember, in his criticisms last April of renderings for the Hudson Yards, New York Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff could have been addressing Gehry's Atlantic Yards renderings.

A "delirious pileup of forms"

Now consider the cropped version of the Gehry rendering, which appears on the back cover of Forest City Ratner's latest brochure.

While the brochure designers could have shrunk the entire rendering to make it fit in the space allotted, they chose not to do so. Nor did they choose to crop more of the area at the top.

It looks like relatively more was cropped from the bottom than top. The effect is to show a "delirious pile-up of forms" (to quote Ouroussoff when more effusive about the project, in his 7/5/05 appraisal) but not to provide much context.

Where are the cars along Flatbush Avenue? They're gone. Where's the fourth tower? Gone. There's even less context than before.

(Fun fact: a May 2008 press release from a Forest City Ratner p.r. agency states:
Credit Line: Gehry Partners, LLP
NOTE: These images may not be cropped or altered in any way.)

The brochure: cover

The front and back cover repeat the deceptive "vision for Downtown Brooklyn" claim at the heart of the Atlantic Yards p.r. effort. The images include a Laurie Olin sketch of trees outside a building maybe 12 stories, a view of the arena, a construction workers, and white man and black woman--a couple, or just friendly neighbors?--hanging out in harmony amidst greenery.

Note that, unlike its slick predecessors, this brochure is printed on recycled paper.
Second and third pages

On the second page, the brochure quotes a reliably effusive Daily News editorial from 6/24/08 (though it was posted a day earlier), the one that incorrectly claimed the project had been "approved up and down by the city and state." On the third page, it repeats a promise of 15,000 construction jobs--which would be job-years--without pointing out how long it might take to deliver such jobs. (Also note that economist Brad Humphreys points out that the choice is not between these construction jobs and no construction jobs.)

Forest City Ratner has apparently stopped promising office jobs, though it still claims the development "will serve as an economic engine."
Fourth and fifth pages

The centerfold continues to promise affordable housing while only about eight stories of a tower and a seemingly large piece of open space. Though on page four it notes that the demand for affordable homes "grows more urgent every day," it says nothing about the probability that such homes would be provided within the announced ten-year timetable.

The "eco-friendly" project is aimed to have LEED certification, though viable buildings are being demolished, and, to quote architect Carl Elefante, "the greenest building is one that is already built.”
Sixth and seventh pages

These pages tout the Barclays Center, billed as "a new community arena," though the developer would gain all the benefit of the naming rights, even as nominal public ownership is used in an effort to obtain tax-free bonds.

At the Atlantic Antic, FCR, DDDB, & CBN

The Atlantic Antic yesterday featured a wide array of vendors and organizations, but I of course went looking for those involved in the AY fight. I spotted a van bearing the Barclays Center logo promised community assistance. It has New York plates.


The van for the Nets still comes from Jersey, understandably. (In either case, it may not be so easy to reach them.)

The Forest City Ratner booth was busy enough when I stopped by, but that was when the Brooklyn Steppers drummers were doing their thing. (NLG has a photo of the popular basketball hoop; AY/Nets trinkets are awarded in exchange for baskets.)

I was told the arena would open in 2011; that's a change from the last street fair I attended, the Brighton Jubilee, when I was told 2010, but I still think that 2012 is a more realistic best-case scenario.


On the other hand

Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn was touting its October 18 Walk Don't Destroy fundraiser and reminding people that some people think Newark's new Prudential Center is a viable home for the Nets.


The Council of Brooklyn Neighborhoods offered some basketball satire.



CBN touted the UNITY plan.

At the Atlantic Antic, another FCR/Nets presence

The Atlantic Antic, the borough's largest street festival, will be held Sunday October 5, and Brooklyn's leading developer and the associated Nets will be the lead sponsors. Last year, as far as I can tell from the press release, Sovereign Bank was at the top of the list; in 2006, Sovereign Bank was the top sponsor.

FCR to CB 8: evasive and disingenuous on project timing, jobs, bridge opening

Forest City Ratner's announcement in May that Atlantic Yards was moving ahead generated several questions from Brooklyn Community Board 8, which got back a response that is often evasive, vague, and disingenuous.

According to the letter, sent July 18, the developer is unwilling to commit to a start date for Phase 2 nor to commit to opening the arena only when reconstruction of the adjacent Sixth Avenue bridge is complete. The developer offers a highly-qualified pledge for interim open space and, in asserting project’s benefits, likely overestimates the number of permanent jobs in Phase 1 by a factor of two.

The letter, from Senior VP Scott Cantone, was sent to CB8 Chairman Robert Matthews and cc’d to various public and elected officials. CB8 has not yet publicly responded.

(I've added bolding for emphasis in several places.)

Timetable

The first question involved the timetable:
1. Besides signing an anchor tenant for the B1 building, what other dependencies must be met for the remaining buildings in Phase 1 to be built... What is the timetable for resolving these dependences?

The response:
The completion of buildings in Phase 1... is dependent on factors typical to any large-scale development, such as:

• completing acquisition of the site
• finalizing project documentation and agreements with the Empire State Development Corporation
• securing financing; and
• finalizing agreements with the City of New York for affordable housing programming.

We are progressing in all these areas, and intend to begin construction on the building on the Arena Block according to the schedule outlined in the press a few weeks ago: The Arena and the first of the residential buildings are expected to be completed simultaneously. The next Arena Block residential building is expected to go into construction 6 months later, and the final residential building is expected to begin 6 months after that.

However, it is hardly typical that the acquisition of a site depends on eminent domain, which in this case has been contested in court. Also, the towers depend on the arena, and right now there’s no financing for the arena. That’s probably why Cantone did not pledge any start date.

What about Phase 2?

As I’ve reported, there’s no start date for Phase 2, and CB8 wanted to know more:
2. The City and State funding agreement don’t specify a deadline for the construction for Phase 2, but most of the public benefits associated with the project are dependent on Phase 2. Is Forest City planning to commit to a start date for Phase 2, and agree to remedies for the community if the start date is not achieved?

The response:
FCR intends to start Phase 2 as soon as possible. However, the tremendous public benefits that come immediately with Phase 1 should not be overlooked.

Having ignored the question, Cantone switched the subject and ignored the question of remedies:
The completion of Phase 1 will bring hundreds of affordable housing units for low- and middle-income families, representing 30% of all residential units constructed on the Arena Block. The Arena itself will be a major civic facility for Brooklyn. Furthermore, Phase 1 will generate over 3000 new, permanent jobs as well as significant new tax revenues for the City and State, and it will include significant public amenities, such as the Urban Room (which includes approximately 10,000 square feet of publicly accessible space) and the new entryway into the subway.

However, the Urban Room and subway issue would serve the arena and the buildings as much as any surrounding community, including that in CB 8. The Arena would not be “for Brooklyn” if it’s rented for $100,000, even if the developer, as per the Community Benefits Agreement, makes it available ten times a year for community groups. (FCR has since said the rental price would be lower.)

And the benefits would hardly come immediately if the developer has a 12+ years to build Phase 1 and there's no anchor tenant for Building 1.

3000 new permanent jobs?

Cantone’s pledge of 3000 new jobs is doubtful, so let’s do some math.

Building 1, with 650,000 square feet of office space, at 250 sf per job (the measure used by the city and state), could accommodate 2600 jobs. However, the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC), in an analysis of an earlier configuration, calculated a 7 percent vacancy rate (182), which would mean 2418 jobs. NYCEDC also suggested that only 30 percent of the jobs would be new to New York, rather than moved from Manhattan. That would mean only 725 new office jobs at Atlantic Yards.

According to a memo from the Empire State Development Corporation, there would be 453 arena jobs; however, as the New York Observer reported in 2005, the arena jobs (400 in that article) would be subject to union rules and may be filled with current employees. Let’s estimate 60% new jobs from 453: 272.

According to the ESDC memo, there would be one building services job for every 20 units; at 1500 units (which represents 1.5 million square feet, the minimum over 12 years in City Funding Agreement), that means 75 building services jobs. At 2000 units, that would be 100 jobs.

Parking is 92 jobs at full buildout of 3670 spaces; but there would only be 2346 spaces in Phase 1; that same ratio, 63.9%, yields 59 jobs.

There would be 91,000 gsf of retail space in Phase 1; at 300 gsf per job, according to the ESDC memo, that means 303 jobs.

So my calculation for the total number of jobs for Phase 1 would be 1434 (725 + 272 + 75 + 59 + 303). There could be a few more building service jobs, potentially more new office jobs, and also some spinoff jobs, but for now, Cantone should be asked for details rather than taken on faith.

Worker numbers?

CB 8 asked:
3. Demolition of buildings in the Phase 2 site was claimed to have been necessary to create construction staging and worker parking areas during Phase 1. Now that only the arena and one building are going to be built in the first stage of Phase 1, how has your estimate of the peak number of workers at the site changed? What percentage of those workers are you now projecting will drive to the site?

(Note that CB8 only includes in its boundaries Phase 2.)

The response:
As mentioned above, the scope of Phase 1 has not changed from what was approved as part of ESDC’s General Project Plan. However, the schedule has been delayed approximately two years as a result of litigation. The number of construction workers on the site will remain generally the same as was disclosed in the Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) for both Phase 1 and Phase 2.

Well, the scope may not have been changed, but the developer has said nothing about Site 5, the site now occupied by Modell’s and P.C. Richard. So “generally the same” may contain some leeway.

Staging needs

CB 8 asked:
4. Since the construction of B1 and the cluster buildings in Phase 1 will be delayed, how has your assessment of the amount of space required for staging changed? Are you considering the use of the areas of the Phase 1 site adjoining the arena and the first residential building for staging and worker parking instead of using some or all of the Phase 2 site? If the unbuilt areas of Phase 1 won’t be used for staging, how will the space be used?

Cantone replied:
The staging areas identified in the FEIS remain the same. The construction of both the Arena and the LIRRR railyard, which will be undertaken as part of Phase 1, requires the use of Block 1129 for staging. At the time the Arena opens, we anticipate a portion of the Phase 2 site will continue to be used for development, construction staging or other project uses to support the development of the platform over the LIRR new yard, the construction of the residential buildings, and the open space that is part of Phase 2.

He didn't mention that a significant portion of the Phase 2 site would be used for interim surface parking.

Buildings as buffer

CB 8 asked:
5. The Atlantic Yards FEIS refers to the buildings around the arena as a buffer for locating the arena in a residential neighborhood. With only one residential building slated to be complete at the time of the arena opening, that buffer will not be in place at that time. In addition, due to the changes in the construction timetable, the impact of the arena on the residential and commercial areas around the project, (including the arena’s radical swings from dormancy to intense activity), will no longer be compensated for by the residential high density of the ring buildings. The one residential building proposed to be complete at the time of the arena opening is roughly the same number of residential units as the number of units displaced b the project as a whole. Please detail how you plan to prevent the arena from affecting the residential and commercial areas around the project adversely during the extended buildout of the project.

Cantone responded:
In the event that any of the development sites that surround the Arena (Buildings 1-4) are not in construction by the time that the Arena open, FCRC will create temporary public open spaces between the Arena and the surrounding streets; however, we anticipate that construction of Phase 1 will be complete or underway at the time of the Arena opening.

The pledge for temporary open space seems iffy, given the broad scope of “in construction.” Even if there were temporary open space, it wouldn’t arrive until the arena opens, at least three years down the line.

Displacement issues

Cantone also took issue with the claim that the building would contain roughly the same number of residential units as the number displace:
This is factually incorrect. The proposed residential building will offer approximately 300 residential units.

He’s correct. Chapter 4 of the FEIS, Socioeconomic, states
The proposed project would directly displace 171 residential units housing an estimated 410 residents.

It also states:
[I]t was estimated that the study area contains approximately 2,929 households that are potentially at risk of indirect residential displacement.

However, the study doubts that the total is at risk from the project, citing ongoing gentrification, because new housing units could relieve market pressure, and because most of the at-risk households would be more than a half-mile away. I wrote in July 2006 that one of the reasons--that the housing would be similar--was bogus.

New open space?

CB 8 asked:
6. What is the open space plan for Phase 1 across the new timetable you have recently released. Will there be any open space added to the project in Phase 1 to compensate for the loss of the arena roof as open space?

Cantone repeated the answers about the Urban Room and temporary open space, adding:
As noted above, in the event that a development site on the Arena Block is not in construction or needed for other project purposes by the time the Arena is completed, FCRC will create temporary open spaces that will persist until such site is needed for development or construction activities.

Actually, Cantone first said that open space would be created if a development site is “in construction” but here he's added a broad qualifier: “needed for other project purposes.” That gives the developer a lot of leeway.

Bridges open?

Question 7 confirmed plans for indoor parking. The final question from CB 8 concerned bridges:
8. Will the Carlton Avenue and 6th Avenue bridges be complete and open when the arena is opened?

Cantone responded:
Both the Carlton Avenue and the 6th Avenue bridges are anticipated to be open when the Arena opens.

An ESDC spokesman told me last November, “Forest City Ratner tells us that while the arena might be able to open without the bridge in operation, the goal is to have the bridge open in coordination with the arena's opening."

Note that “anticipated” is a weasel word. The Carlton Avenue bridge is undergoing reconstruction and surely would be finished before the Sixth Avenue bridge is addressed. At the current timetable, the Sixth Avenue bridge should be open by early 2011, providing a good chunk of time before the basketball season begins in October--but there can always be snags.

Who's in charge?

Local public officials and community boards surely would not want the Sixth Ave bridge closed during an arena event, since the traffic problems could be ruinous. But Forest City Ratner certainly wouldn't want to miss an arena opening at the beginning of the basketball season: there are suites to sell and a naming rights contract to fulfill.

In that case, there might be significant tension between the interests of the developer and the interests of the public.

Brutally weird: in new book on Brooklyn, departed Stuckey spins for AY, sans rebuttal

On the heels of Marc Eliot’s awkward, not-quite-oral history, Song of Brooklyn, comes another from Florida-dwelling sports book author Peter Golenbock, In the Country of Brooklyn: Inspiration to the World, with another distorted view of Atlantic Yards, courtesy of former Forest City Ratner executive Jim Stuckey, whose self-serving statements go unrebutted.

For example, Stuckey claims that the developer has spent its own money on land acquistions and infrastructure that the city has paid for; he asserts that the "legislature" approved the project; and he suggests that New York will turn into Detroit unless the city "steps up" and helps projects like Atlantic Yards move forward.

And, in a master stroke reminiscent of his work spinning the New York Times, he claims that the critics, not the developer, are creating a deceptive picture.

Overstuffed and unbalanced

This lengthy (nearly 700 pages) book is both overstuffed (the interviews could be trimmed) and skewed, showing a distinct legacy from the author’s Brooklyn Dodgers’ oral history, Bums. (Of 46 interviewees, only three are women and none, as far as I can tell, are under 40.

While the Dodgers and early/mid-20th century left-wing politics get a good airing, the institutional causes of Brooklyn’s post-WW II decline get scant notice, and the impact of historic preservation and immigration on the post-1960s revival get mostly ignored (except for the singular case of Soviet Jews).

Rap music? South Asian and Arab Muslims? Caribbean-Americans? Not here, except for a mention of Shirley Chisholm’s protege [updated] and an interview with Richard Green of the Crown Heights Youth Collective.

While telling the story of Brooklyn is inevitably impossible, Golenbock pretty much punts on the present-day borough, telling the story of the 1980s through the 21st century via only nine people, two of them developers.

Worthy nuggets

Interviewees like author Pete Hamill and DJ Cousin Brucie Morrow are predictably good; even better are Daily Worker sports editor Lester Rodney, a crusader for sports integration, and historian John Hope Franklin, the first black “hired at a major white college" (and incoming history chair, to boot, at Brooklyn College), who was stymied in his attempt to find housing in Brooklyn.

Old-timers (and the voluble Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa) portray a rougher Brooklyn: corrupt street cops, race battles at schools, and even the struggle to get a free table at Lundy’s.

No counter-evidence

There’s a neat trick to these oral histories: you can bulk up a book with testimony rather than analysis, and it’s easy to disregard counter-evidence. There’s also no obligation to fact-check the interviewees even on basic information, so, when one recalls that 1851 East 32nd Street meant “we weren’t far from Red Hook,” the Florida-based author doesn’t tell us that the location is close to Kings Plaza and rather far from Red Hook.

Rival author Eliot, who comes off as Woodward and Bernstein compared to Golenbock, achieved some counterpoint by popping in quotes from secondhand sources. Golenbock, when it comes to Atlantic Yards and Coney Island, sups at the feet of Stuckey and then Thor Equities' Joe Sitt.

So that means that readers of this book get the Atlantic Yards story from Stuckey (right), once president of the Atlantic Yards Development Group, with an assist from Borough President Marty Markowitz and a mention from one project supporter.

(Photo from PBS Newshour.)

Layers of weirdness

The most brutally weird thing in the Atlantic Yards chapter is not that Golenbock relies solely on Stuckey. It’s not that the interview occurred just two weeks before Stuckey’s mysterious departure, which might have given the author some pause. It’s not that Stuckey, whose FCR bio deemed him "an accomplished musician, capable of playing ten instruments," doesn't mention his musical prowess.

And it’s not even that Stuckey, who like other interviewees supplied personal photos, agreed to share with the world a picture of his teenage self (and future wife) at his high school prom. (Click to enlarge--the scan is from a pre-production galley.)

No, it's that Stuckey, famous for his November 2005 claim to a credulous New York Times reporter "It's Orwellian, almost," regarding critics' charges of little transparency, claims that “the opposition to this project hopes if they say something enough times, people will believe it.”

It’s Orwellian, almost.

"Atlantic Yards" and O'Malley

Golenbock makes the fundamental error of periodically backfilling Brooklyn history with the term “Atlantic Yards,” which didn’t exist until it was announced by Forest City Ratner in December 2003.

And he more than once repeats the canard that Walter O’Malley wanted to move the Brooklyn Dodgers to the same site as Atlantic Yards, though the actual location was across Atlantic Avenue.

(It makes me wonder: if the New York Times hadn’t stonewalled a request for a public correction, maybe authors like Golenbock would get it right.)

So that leads to passages like this, about a Brooklyn man named Abram Hall:
[S]o in the fall of 1987 he returned to his Brooklyn roots, first settling in Fort Greene near the Atlantic Yards, where Walter O’Malley had wanted to move the Dodgers...

Or this quote from Markowitz:
I didn’t know about the role Robert Moses played in not letting the Dodgers build a new ballpark at the Atlantic Yards.

(Later in the interview, Markowitz more accurately says it was “opposite” where O’Malley wanted to build.)

Dubious logic re Prospect Heights

Hall “remembers when his Prospect Heights neighborhood was a slum,” and thus is among those rooting for Ratner.
Those of us who lived here when Prospect Heights was a crime-ridden empty area remember what it was like. We knew where we wanted Brooklyn to go based on where we started. But the people who moved in just ten years ago, they liked it the way it was, and they don’t want it to change. But this is a snapshot. It is not the end of the movie.”

But many question claims of blight when the area already began to recover.

Hall may not be the most reliable witness; for example, in describing the Brooklyn Marriott, he shows a dubious grasp of the hotel business:
It has a very low vacancy rate. For some strange reason a lot of people who come to the city don’t want to stay in Manhattan, but they don’t mind staying in Brooklyn.

Hall asserts that people in black and Hispanic neighborhoods like Bushwick and Bedford-Stuyvesant are “100 percent for” Atlantic Yards. That picture is complicated by the opposition of East New York City Council Member Charles Barron, who’s interviewed extensively in the book but not asked about Atlantic Yards.

Basic errors

Golenbock’s grasp of Atlantic Yards is shaky. No, 50% of the housing would not be for low- and middle-income residents; that’s 50% of the rentals.

No, the Public Authorities Control Board didn’t vote its approval in February 2007, and that was not “the same time” Ratner sold the naming rights to Barclays Bank. No, the parent company in Cleveland is not named “Forest City Developers.”

Stuckey’s grand sweep

The Stuckey chapter begins by describing his work on the MetroTech complex as a representative not of Forest City Ratner but of the city's Public Development Corporation, precursor to the Economic Development Corporation.

Golenbock describes Stuckey as a “magician” in both finding a developer (FCR) to build MetroTech, which would help keep Polytechnic University in Brooklyn, and attracting tenants to the complex. Unmentioned: the significant subsidies that accomplished the magic.

Stuckey, for years a resident of Staten Island, talks about his life growing up in Brooklyn’s Sunset Park:
There were all sorts of fights between the Puerto Rican gangs and the white gangs. It was very much a West Side Story kind of situation. Unfortunately, I was not always a spectator, but I don’t want to glorify it.

Stuckey's empathy

He links his youthful experience in making friends across racial and neighborhood lines to his work on the Atlantic Yards Community Benefits Agreement, a link, perhaps to an author enamored of the Jackie Robinson example, to the book's subtitle:
I think deep down inside, how my empathy for the less well-off led me to make sure some of the local groups--predominantly African-American and Caribbean-American groups, will be involved in the job growth and the development of the Atlantic Yards project... I look back and wonder how maybe those years were very formative in my understanding how important it is today to do a community benefit.

Or maybe it was strategy.

Markowitz and hoops

Stuckey claims Markowitz wanted any pro team:
If you go back to when Marty became borough president in 2002, one of his promises was to bring a professional sports team to Brooklyn. When he first called, he wasn’t partial to whether it was baseball, basketball, hockey, or soccer.

Actually, Markowitz, in March 2002, announced he wanted to bring an NBA team to Coney Island.

Spinning the creation story

As for the location for an arena, Stuckey says it was unresolved; in doing so, he merges the project’s name into the location:
The idea of doing it at the Atlantic Yards was not necessarily a front-burner idea on anyone’s plate. And then, as much as Marty pushed, Bruce agreed that we would look into this.

Well, consider Forest City Enterprises’ executive Chuck Ratner’s version of the creation story:
We saw that land sitting there for this last 10 years, realizing it would be a great opportunity if somebody could turn it on.

Who pays for the "fair deals"?

As for eminent domain, Stuckey asserts:
We worked diligently to make fair deals, buy people’s homes and businesses so what’s left, predominantly, that has to be condemned are vacant lots and abandoned buildings, chop shops, places like that.

Well, not really. And many of the "fair deals" are based on the public's money, via the city’s $100 million contribution, we now know.

Approval by the legislature?

As for public approval, Stuckey says:
Ultimately we had to be approved in the state process, but we had to have the city planning people help us with design. We had to negotiate a business deal with both the state and the city. We had to get approved by the Public Authorities Control Board [PACB], the governor, the legislature--assembly and senate.

Well, the “three men in a room” PACB consists of representatives of the Governor, the Senate Majority Leader, and the Assembly Speaker. No legislative vote was taken.

A sop to critics

Golenbock does offer a sop to critics:
While researching Jim Stuckey’s interview, I saw that the opposition to the Atlantic Yards project was fierce and constant. I read Stuckey a laundry list of the major complaints: the project is too big; it will bring too many people to the area; there isn’t enough low-income housing in the project; the character of Downtown Brooklyn will change too dramatically; the area will become too much like Manhattan; Bruce Ratner will make too much profit; the project tears down too many landmarks; the public schools will become too crowded; Ratner has tricked everyone using sleight of hand; the tax giveaways are too great; the centerpiece of the project, Frank Gehry’s sixty-five-story building, is ugly; the residents were never consulted; blacks will we driven out of central Brooklyn; who wants a basketball team anyway?; and finally, the only reason Ratner is doing this is for the money. I could hear Stuckey let out a long sigh when my recitation was completed.

Well, as a laundry list, it can sound incoherent, and some of those criticisms are far more valid than others. What they need is a closer look, but it sounds like Golenbock didn’t even come to Brooklyn for the interview.

Had he visited, he might have cited the issue of eminent domain for a private developer and the bypass of the city’s land use review, essentially turning Atlantic Yards into a private rezoning.

Stuckey’s response: I’ve heard all of those too. And we obviously have responded.

The "beauty" of working at FCR

He goes on to defend “the beauty of working here at Forest City Ratner,” where those at the campany can make a difference in a city that needs to grow, that faces a housing crisis in the midst of growth.

Does the “beauty” include having Stuckey’s presence scrubbed from the FCR web site, with no thank you, after his departure?

Opponents newcomers?

Then he gets to the point:
And then you have to also look at the fact that the ones who get hurt traditionally are the poorer people, the minority populations. In fact, if you were to look at the demographics in Brooklyn, and if you were looking at the people lobbing the criticism, largely they are the wealthier people who have lived in the neighborhood less than ten years--most less than five years.

Well, some are, but testimony at the DEIS hearing showed a lot of long-time Brooklynites.

Defending density

Stuckey defends building density near public transit, which is of course logical--the question is how much density. Critics like planner Ron Shiffman warn that the project exceeds the carrying capacity of the area.

Stuckey’s financial deception

Stuckey continues:
Now layer on top of that the fact that in order to build this, we had to spend a tremendous amount of money to acquire properties, to acquire condemnation, and on top of that, we have had to spend about $600 million on infrastructure, building platforms, relocating rail yards, doing subway connections, doing new sewer and water mains, rebuilding bridges over Sixth Avenue and Carlton Avenue--it’s going to cost $50 million alone just to clean up the dirty soil there. So before you put a shovel in the ground, you have close to a billion dollars in cost between the infrastructure and the land. So the basic economics demands you do a certain density if you're going to build there at all.
(Emphasis added)

Hold on. Who’s “we”? The city has contributed $100 million for land and $105 million for infrastructure. The state is contributing $100 million for infrastructure. The city is paying for rebuilding bridges, subway connections, water mains.

In a May 2006 radio interview, Stuckey offered a similar formulation, but used “one” rather than “we”:
In order to develop on the site, one has to spend $600 million on infrastructure before you could put a shovel in the ground for a residential building or for the arena. You have to build railyards, you have to build subway connections, the platform, retaining walls, you have to relocate sewers. It’s $50 million alone just for the cost of cleaning up the environment. The site today is not a very clean site. You put all that together, as well as you look the cost to assemble land, you get close to $900 million.

In a July 2006 radio interview, he said:
There are $650 million worth of public infrastructure that has to be built before the first shovel goes into the ground to build a single affordable housing apartment or the arena or any other part of this project. There’s another $350 million of cost, of money that we would have spent on acquiring land to avoid condemnation. A billion dollars before you start. I think that’s a very significant investment. That does deserve to make a profit. It is, after all, America.

Again, he suggested that the developer was spending the money.

“Not a shred of truth”?

On a page of the book that includes a picture of Stuckey and his wife celebrating their 33rd wedding anniversary, the interview continues, spinning furiously:
So while it’s easy to make the developer the target--it’s a TV story line: corrupt officials, big developer, overdevelopment--we can all write that script. We’ve seen it on TV a million times. But when you peel back the onion, there’s not a shred of truth to it. Everyone knows the hundreds of meetings I’ve been to.

At very few were critics allowed to ask questions.

They can’t dispute that I’ve gone out into the community more than two hundred times. They can’t dispute the fact I’ve made two city council presentations ...

But the city council has no vote, because the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP) was bypassed, for a state process.

I’ve gone to community board meetings where we had support from more than nine hundred people from three community boards.

What’s he talking about? Maybe the joint meeting of three CBs at the Klitgord Auditorium in November 2004, where the crowd was highly divided (and supporters got preference, according to DDDB).

Later, Community Board 6 voted that it could not support the project in its current form, while CBs 2 and 8 filed testimony expressing strong objections to or concern about the plan.

But the opposition to this project hopes if they say something enough times, people will believe it.

Or, perhaps, that's Stuckey's tactic.

Brooklyn = Detroit?

Stuckey continues;
Well, the fact is, it’s not true. Unless the city steps up, unless the people step up and do this, then this city is a goner, it’s dead. It will become the next Detroit or Pittsburgh or Buffalo or other cities where people see there is no growth and decide to leave. If companies don’t have workers who can live in the city they are going to go to cities where they can get cheap labor. This is not rocket science. You can see how strongly I feel about this.

Actually, New York has no chance of becoming the next Detroit, a city based on one industry, with no public transportation, and which is not exactly the country’s cultural and financial capital.

The question of where to place “workforce housing” is a pressing one, but it's a citywide challenge. Atlantic Yards remains mostly a luxury housing project.

And when Stuckey talks about whether “the city steps up,” he’s certainly not endorsing an open bidding process or ULURP, either of which might have delivered a project that gained more public support and delivered affordable housing earlier.

Listening to whom?

Stuckey asserts:
These criticisms are not the community view. Polling shows that close to 70 percent of the people in both Brooklyn and New York City as a whole support this project.

Actually, the highly questionable poll from Crain’s was 60%, though it went up to 71% after people were read some rather favorable statements about the project.

Though the poll was misleading, Golenbock's treatment of Atlantic Yards is worse. In fact, it's brutally weird.

FCR's Russian outreach: "Everything is Better in Brooklyn"

At the Brighton Jubilee on August 24, Forest City Ratner's booth distributed bilingual Russian/English fliers (below; click to enlarge) touting the Atlantic Yards project, including 15,000 union construction jobs (that's actually job-years, and it's hardly clear that will "mean jobs for Brooklynites") and 38% affordable housing (without acknowledging how long that might take or who exactly might be eligible).

Almost everything is translated, except the phrase at the bottom of each brochure, just above the www.atlanticyards.com web address. In English, Forest City Ratner proclaims, "Bringing it to Brooklyn."

In Russian, my Russian-speaking friend explains, the text promises, "Everything is better in Brooklyn." In English, I don't think they could get away with that.

Both sides of the flier

"Maximum" private participation: will the Urban Room become ADT Plaza?

Architect Frank Gehry, developer Forest City Ratner, and the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC) have long called it the "Urban Room," publicly-accessible open space. (See more here and here.) It looks like we should start calling it the ADT Plaza.

While ADT Plaza is not described explicitly as the "Urban Room" on the Barclays Center web site, it would include several elements tagged to the Urban Room.

First, consider how the ESDC describes a large, at least 10,000-sf publicly accessible atrium that would serve as a dramatic gateway to the arena and provide a place for people to congregate... [I]t would serve as an entrance to the office space and hotel in Building 1, the restaurant and cafe, the arena (its ticket booths would be located here), and a new access point to the subway via an underground connection....The Urban Room would serve as its own destination when programmed with small concerts, cultural events, art shows, and readings that would be open to the public... The second level mezzanine of the Urban Room would be accessed externally by a grand stoop at the corner of Atlantic and Flatbush Avenues or internally by a stair and an elevator.
(Emphasis added)

Enter ADT

Then consider the description on the Barclays Center web site:
# 365-day meeting place
# The Primary entrance for the venue
# Direct elevator, escalator and stair access to the subway station
# Pedestrian access in and out from Flatbush & Atlantic Avenues
# Access to the Team Store
# Prime location adjacent to Venue Box Office
# Views directly into the Venue Bowl
# Jones Soda Shoppe

It would be named for "ADT Security Services, a unit of Tyco International, the largest provider of electroni