OK, Frank Gehry considers himself a "do-gooder, liberal," and let's take him at his word, though his powers of discernment--describing his patron Bruce Ratner in such an uncomplicated way--might be challenged.
In the documentary Sketches of Frank Gehry, the protagonist told his friend, the director Sydney Pollack, how much the latter had influenced him:
You won’t remember this, but years ago, when we first met, you talked to me about filmmaking. I was struggling with the world I was confronted with, which was a commercial world, they weren’t interested in what I was doing. And I talked to you about it one night, and you said you faced the same commercial world and that you made peace with it by finding this small percentage of space in that commercial world where you could make a difference.
Finding the space
Gehry's tone gained a degree of wonderment, as he continued:
Man, that was amazing to me, Sydney, I’ve never forgotten that, and if you hear in my talks after that, I always talk about it that way, I say--he chuckled--there’s a sliver of space--I almost use your words.
That is the understandable challenge faced by many professionals, not just architects, when the excellence or vision they seek is constrained by cost, regulation, or their patrons. And Gehry surely has been successful in making a difference--though not always, since he has walked away from a few projects.
So Gehry, eager to build his first arena and do it right, may be willing to stay mum about changes to his design, which lessen some populist aspects (e.g., a green roof and rooftop park), because it represents that "small percentage of space."
Such changes are not atypical. After all, Gehry's design for an ice rink in Anaheim was diminished after the Disney Co. took another look at his designs. And, as sympathetic critic Nicolai Ouroussoff of the New York Times wrote in June 2006, the balance can be hard to discern:
Whatever [Atlantic Yards developer Bruce] Ratner’s ambitions, a mainstream developer is not about to promote radical changes in local housing policy. And Mr. Gehry is an architect, not a politician. But he has a public responsibility to put his formidable talents to full use.
That's the question.
Showing posts with label Frank Gehry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Frank Gehry. Show all posts
Saturday, August 16, 2008
Friday, July 25, 2008
In downtown Anaheim, the false promises accompanying Gehry's (nice) ice rink
It's not directly related to Atlantic Yards, but a look at Frank Gehry’s ice rink in Anaheim, CA, originally dubbed Disney Ice and now called Anaheim Ice, offers a cautionary tale about promises made for ambitious architecture.Notably, the structure, when it opened in 1995, did not contain some of the Gehryesque elements announced, it did not prompt the redevelopment of nearby parcels, and, counter to the expectations of its builders, it did not spawn a national effort to teach inner-city youths ice hockey.
(It was built in part as a practice rink for the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim; I'll bet that Gehry does not design the practice facility for the Nets that Forest City Ratner now promises in Brooklyn.)
Such sobering reality is accessible to anyone who takes a serious scan of local news coverage, but if you read the New York Times, the only extant look at the rink--other than two throwaway mentions--was a review written 9/18/94 by architecture critic Herbert Muschamp, a Gehry champion, some 13 months before the building opened.
The building serves as the practice rink for the Anaheim Ducks (originally Mighty Ducks of Anaheim) team in the National Hockey League (NHL). It includes one standard NHL-size rink, and one Olympic-size rink, is striking but hardly urban from the outside, an island of corrugated steel, but handsome on the inside, the rinks defined by curvaceous wood beams. It seems to get steady use from youth skating, beyond serving as a practice facility.
Writing too soon
Notably, the Times review was written when the building was about to go into construction, not after it opened and was used. Thus Muschamp could gush about the building as a piece of sculpture, not a messy, living thing with blank walls backing into a major avenue, though years later, as the photo shows, there's a new development (at right in picture) bordering the rink.
Similarly, he could proclaim, improbably at the time and incredibly in retrospect--that the Atlantic Yards arena, as designed, would be an “urban garden.” (Now even the promised green roof is gone.)
Muschamp’s essay, headlined Disney Takes the Ice to the Players, explained that the rink would be a practice rink for the team:
Initially conceived as a home base for Disney's N.H.L. team, the Mighty Ducks, the arena will also provide a community center for what Anaheim officials hope will become a vibrant downtown district. With walls and roof sheathed in corrugated aluminum, finished to the semi-gloss of freshly resurfaced ice, the building is plainly intended to stand out as a city landmark. And its shape, which will be visible from all four sides, also evokes imagery of winter sports. The structure rises from the ground in a steep convex slope, then swells into two silvery crests with a gentle dip in the middle. The effect is of two big Quonset huts that have partly melted together then magically congealed: an inner-city ski run for a contemporary Cinderella.
The name of the arena -- for now, the Disney people are calling it Goals, though that may change -- will be spelled out on the front and back of the building in curving metal letters three stories tall. If you look at the arena sideways, you may be able to make out that the letters form a stylized pair of mouse ears. On the other hand, you don't have to. An entrance canopy -- unmistakably a stylized duck bill -- projects over a plaza painted in radiating stripes of purple, green and yellow, the Ducks' team colors. (Even Ro
bert Venturi has never designed so literal a duck.) A big silver puck will hold the street edge of the plaza; you'll be able to buy your own hockey stick at the sporting-goods store housed inside it. Rows of palm trees will set this alpine apparition within a tropical frame.
Design changes
As photos from my recent visit show, no such three-story metal letters exist, nor do a stylized duck bill or silver puck. (Similarly, some of the flourishes announced for the Atlantic Yards arena, such as a rooftop park open to the public and even a green roof, have vanished.) What happened?
A 5/4/95 Los Angeles Times article, headlined "Disney Ice Rink Gets New, Cost-Saving Look," explained that the Anaheim City Council had just approved revised plans that eliminated a costly sign envisioned by Gehry. The news came in the wake of criticism of Gehry in the area for “cost overruns like the ones that have plagued the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles.”
The newspaper reported:
The original sign by Gehry was an architectural feature that blended into the front of the building. Its graphic elements and canopy were found to be "economically infeasible," according to a city staff report.
While Disney officials would not disclose the estimated cost of the building, a council member told the newspaper the building would cost $10 million to $12 million--nearly 100 times less than the Atlantic Yards arena, now estimated at $850 million.
An 11/12/95 Los Angeles Times review, headlined "Gehry Goes with the Floe," said it cost $8.5 million.
That review, praised Disney Ice as “a rare case of a hockey rink transformed into attractive architecture,” suggesting that the exterior was welcoming and the interior “warm and sheltering.” (I’d agree with the latter but not the former.)
A reader from Anaheim was a bit more skeptical, suggesting in a 12/3/95 letter:
I have seen better looking Quonset huts in the most desolate parts of the world that were put up in a day.
Gehry told the newspaper that one of Muschamp’s faves had been nixed:
"At one point I actually had a canopy shaped like a duck's bill over the entry, but the client felt it was a touch too fanciful."
Vibrant downtown?
Regarding the hope for Anaheim’s revival, Muschamp was repeating the conventional wisdom, such as an 8/10/94 Los Angeles Times article, headlined "Anaheim, Disney to Built Joint-Use Ice Rink,' which stated:
City officials hope that the new Community Ice Center will help revitalize downtown Anaheim.
It didn’t work. Anaheim’s downtown, more than one-and-a-half miles away from the Disneyland resort area, was long moribund. A 1/31/99 Orange County Register article about the relationship between Disney and the city of Anaheim, headlined “The Ties That Bind,” explained:
The stark facade of the Frank Gehry-designed building has been criticized by downtown merchants for its lack of landscaping. The city exempted Disney from normal landscaping rules at the request of the company's architects.
That was clearly a mistake, just as it was a mistake, in retrospect, not to require retail or other street-level activity around the rink. (Note the photo of the rink's back side near top.)
By contrast, planners for the Atlantic Yards arena, planned for an urban area already much, much busier than downtown Anaheim, say there will be retail around the building, and City Planning Commission Chair Amanda Burden even pushed for a “b-market” along Atlantic Avenue, a narrow strip of retail to accommodate smaller shops.
An arena wasn't necessary to revive the border of Prospect Heights and Downtown Brooklyn (and a site mostly in the former); an RFP process would've done fine.
A 10/3/02 Orange County Register article headlined “Voters concerned about downtown” stated:
The Anaheim Boulevard Consortium for Development has also been rallying for a more commercially viable downtown for two years.
Vic Real, a member of ABCD and a West Anaheim resident, said the goal is to make the downtown area more of a destination.
''Right now you find the downtown is deserted, everyone is going home,'' he said. ''Pedestrian-friendly, that would make downtown a downtown.''
Only recently has development come to a plot next to the rink. According to an 8/13/07 Orange County Business Journal article headlined Harbor Lofts by Lee Homes
& CIM Group Attracting First Time Buyers:
Harbor Lofts is Anaheim's first mixed-use building and stands as a pillar of the downtown's exciting revival.
Many of the units are still for sale, as far as I could tell, while taking a walk around the area earlier this month. It’s a sensible development, of reasonable scale, with retail on the ground floor, trying to add residents to downtown.
In fact, what it shows most of all is how the Gehry rink is anti-urban, isolated on the street, with a moat of parking. It can be fun for skateboarders, at least (see below).
A "piece of sculpture"
The rink gets unconditional kudos in the 2006 documentary Sketches of Frank Gehry, directed by Sydney Pollack, which I recently watched again.
Former Disney CEO Michael Eisner explains to the camera, "We bought a hockey team. We needed a practice rink. He designed for us a hockey rink in downtown Anaheim."
Eisner's enthusiasm ramps up: "It is a piece of sculpture sitting in this town. I think that and Bilbao and a couple of other things are his best work."
As the music swells, Eisner explains, "The inside is reminiscent of those hockey rinks that Frank grew up with in Canada. All wood, all trusses, looks very traditional, it looks like you could be nostalgic for being in Toronto in 1940something."
Delivering the picture
Finally, Eisner describes what it's like to be the client: "You give Frank the functionality, you make sure in the hockey rink you have the workout room and the locker rooms and all that stuff, and you’re on Frank that way--and then he delivers the picture."
The camera pulls away to an aerial shot of the rink, notable for the parking lot in the background, now, more than a dozen years later, occupied by a development, the Harbor Lofts. In other words, "the picture" to Eisner and so many Gehry enthusiasts ignores the larger context. Sure, it's a lovely piece of sculpture. But it's in an urban environment.
Beyond that, Eisner and the film omit the decisions to truncate Gehry's "picture" by eliminating the sign, duck bill, and puck.
Social mission truncated
Muschamp wrote:
The Anaheim rink has been conceived as a pilot project for a new Disney program with a serious social mission. Directed by David Wilk, founder of a pioneering New York City program called Ice Skating in Harlem, the Goals program is being developed to serve inner-city youth. Wilk views skating as a way to develop teamwork, discipline and self-esteem.
In addition to recreation, Goals will offer scholarships, internships and other educational programs. If the project succeeds in Anaheim, the plan is to replicate it in other American cities, perhaps as many as 30, in the next 10 years, according to David Malmuth of Disney's development wing.
Well, as the photo shows, at least it's provided a haven for skateboarders.
A 7/2/95 Orange County Register articled headlined "Disney’s Rink is All Business; It’s Mice-Free Ice," explained that the developer got a carrot to do so:
The city's redevelopment agency gave the 3.2-acre plot of vacant land at Lincoln Avenue and Harbor Boulevard to Disney Goals in exchange for an agreement to provide $ 4.3 million in ice-related youth and community services to the city.
And what happened to Disney GOALS? It has expanded only modestly, now operating in both the Anaheim and San Diego areas.
A 6/7/07 Orange County Register article, headlined "Scoring Goals," explained that, “between Orange and San Diego counties, the program serves about 2,000 youth.” While that’s nothing to criticize, it should be pointed out that it has not been replicated on the scale hoped for in Muschamp’s essay.
Such sobering reality is accessible to anyone who takes a serious scan of local news coverage, but if you read the New York Times, the only extant look at the rink--other than two throwaway mentions--was a review written 9/18/94 by architecture critic Herbert Muschamp, a Gehry champion, some 13 months before the building opened.The building serves as the practice rink for the Anaheim Ducks (originally Mighty Ducks of Anaheim) team in the National Hockey League (NHL). It includes one standard NHL-size rink, and one Olympic-size rink, is striking but hardly urban from the outside, an island of corrugated steel, but handsome on the inside, the rinks defined by curvaceous wood beams. It seems to get steady use from youth skating, beyond serving as a practice facility.
Writing too soon
Notably, the Times review was written when the building was about to go into construction, not after it opened and was used. Thus Muschamp could gush about the building as a piece of sculpture, not a messy, living thing with blank walls backing into a major avenue, though years later, as the photo shows, there's a new development (at right in picture) bordering the rink.Similarly, he could proclaim, improbably at the time and incredibly in retrospect--that the Atlantic Yards arena, as designed, would be an “urban garden.” (Now even the promised green roof is gone.)
Muschamp’s essay, headlined Disney Takes the Ice to the Players, explained that the rink would be a practice rink for the team:
Initially conceived as a home base for Disney's N.H.L. team, the Mighty Ducks, the arena will also provide a community center for what Anaheim officials hope will become a vibrant downtown district. With walls and roof sheathed in corrugated aluminum, finished to the semi-gloss of freshly resurfaced ice, the building is plainly intended to stand out as a city landmark. And its shape, which will be visible from all four sides, also evokes imagery of winter sports. The structure rises from the ground in a steep convex slope, then swells into two silvery crests with a gentle dip in the middle. The effect is of two big Quonset huts that have partly melted together then magically congealed: an inner-city ski run for a contemporary Cinderella.
The name of the arena -- for now, the Disney people are calling it Goals, though that may change -- will be spelled out on the front and back of the building in curving metal letters three stories tall. If you look at the arena sideways, you may be able to make out that the letters form a stylized pair of mouse ears. On the other hand, you don't have to. An entrance canopy -- unmistakably a stylized duck bill -- projects over a plaza painted in radiating stripes of purple, green and yellow, the Ducks' team colors. (Even Ro
bert Venturi has never designed so literal a duck.) A big silver puck will hold the street edge of the plaza; you'll be able to buy your own hockey stick at the sporting-goods store housed inside it. Rows of palm trees will set this alpine apparition within a tropical frame.Design changes
As photos from my recent visit show, no such three-story metal letters exist, nor do a stylized duck bill or silver puck. (Similarly, some of the flourishes announced for the Atlantic Yards arena, such as a rooftop park open to the public and even a green roof, have vanished.) What happened?
A 5/4/95 Los Angeles Times article, headlined "Disney Ice Rink Gets New, Cost-Saving Look," explained that the Anaheim City Council had just approved revised plans that eliminated a costly sign envisioned by Gehry. The news came in the wake of criticism of Gehry in the area for “cost overruns like the ones that have plagued the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles.”
The newspaper reported:
The original sign by Gehry was an architectural feature that blended into the front of the building. Its graphic elements and canopy were found to be "economically infeasible," according to a city staff report.
While Disney officials would not disclose the estimated cost of the building, a council member told the newspaper the building would cost $10 million to $12 million--nearly 100 times less than the Atlantic Yards arena, now estimated at $850 million.
An 11/12/95 Los Angeles Times review, headlined "Gehry Goes with the Floe," said it cost $8.5 million.That review, praised Disney Ice as “a rare case of a hockey rink transformed into attractive architecture,” suggesting that the exterior was welcoming and the interior “warm and sheltering.” (I’d agree with the latter but not the former.)
A reader from Anaheim was a bit more skeptical, suggesting in a 12/3/95 letter:
I have seen better looking Quonset huts in the most desolate parts of the world that were put up in a day.
Gehry told the newspaper that one of Muschamp’s faves had been nixed:
"At one point I actually had a canopy shaped like a duck's bill over the entry, but the client felt it was a touch too fanciful."
Vibrant downtown?
Regarding the hope for Anaheim’s revival, Muschamp was repeating the conventional wisdom, such as an 8/10/94 Los Angeles Times article, headlined "Anaheim, Disney to Built Joint-Use Ice Rink,' which stated:City officials hope that the new Community Ice Center will help revitalize downtown Anaheim.
It didn’t work. Anaheim’s downtown, more than one-and-a-half miles away from the Disneyland resort area, was long moribund. A 1/31/99 Orange County Register article about the relationship between Disney and the city of Anaheim, headlined “The Ties That Bind,” explained:
The stark facade of the Frank Gehry-designed building has been criticized by downtown merchants for its lack of landscaping. The city exempted Disney from normal landscaping rules at the request of the company's architects.
That was clearly a mistake, just as it was a mistake, in retrospect, not to require retail or other street-level activity around the rink. (Note the photo of the rink's back side near top.)By contrast, planners for the Atlantic Yards arena, planned for an urban area already much, much busier than downtown Anaheim, say there will be retail around the building, and City Planning Commission Chair Amanda Burden even pushed for a “b-market” along Atlantic Avenue, a narrow strip of retail to accommodate smaller shops.
An arena wasn't necessary to revive the border of Prospect Heights and Downtown Brooklyn (and a site mostly in the former); an RFP process would've done fine.
A 10/3/02 Orange County Register article headlined “Voters concerned about downtown” stated:The Anaheim Boulevard Consortium for Development has also been rallying for a more commercially viable downtown for two years.
Vic Real, a member of ABCD and a West Anaheim resident, said the goal is to make the downtown area more of a destination.
''Right now you find the downtown is deserted, everyone is going home,'' he said. ''Pedestrian-friendly, that would make downtown a downtown.''
Only recently has development come to a plot next to the rink. According to an 8/13/07 Orange County Business Journal article headlined Harbor Lofts by Lee Homes
& CIM Group Attracting First Time Buyers:Harbor Lofts is Anaheim's first mixed-use building and stands as a pillar of the downtown's exciting revival.
Many of the units are still for sale, as far as I could tell, while taking a walk around the area earlier this month. It’s a sensible development, of reasonable scale, with retail on the ground floor, trying to add residents to downtown.
In fact, what it shows most of all is how the Gehry rink is anti-urban, isolated on the street, with a moat of parking. It can be fun for skateboarders, at least (see below).
A "piece of sculpture"
The rink gets unconditional kudos in the 2006 documentary Sketches of Frank Gehry, directed by Sydney Pollack, which I recently watched again.
Former Disney CEO Michael Eisner explains to the camera, "We bought a hockey team. We needed a practice rink. He designed for us a hockey rink in downtown Anaheim."
Eisner's enthusiasm ramps up: "It is a piece of sculpture sitting in this town. I think that and Bilbao and a couple of other things are his best work."
As the music swells, Eisner explains, "The inside is reminiscent of those hockey rinks that Frank grew up with in Canada. All wood, all trusses, looks very traditional, it looks like you could be nostalgic for being in Toronto in 1940something."
Delivering the picture
Finally, Eisner describes what it's like to be the client: "You give Frank the functionality, you make sure in the hockey rink you have the workout room and the locker rooms and all that stuff, and you’re on Frank that way--and then he delivers the picture."The camera pulls away to an aerial shot of the rink, notable for the parking lot in the background, now, more than a dozen years later, occupied by a development, the Harbor Lofts. In other words, "the picture" to Eisner and so many Gehry enthusiasts ignores the larger context. Sure, it's a lovely piece of sculpture. But it's in an urban environment.
Beyond that, Eisner and the film omit the decisions to truncate Gehry's "picture" by eliminating the sign, duck bill, and puck.Social mission truncated
Muschamp wrote:
The Anaheim rink has been conceived as a pilot project for a new Disney program with a serious social mission. Directed by David Wilk, founder of a pioneering New York City program called Ice Skating in Harlem, the Goals program is being developed to serve inner-city youth. Wilk views skating as a way to develop teamwork, discipline and self-esteem.
In addition to recreation, Goals will offer scholarships, internships and other educational programs. If the project succeeds in Anaheim, the plan is to replicate it in other American cities, perhaps as many as 30, in the next 10 years, according to David Malmuth of Disney's development wing.Well, as the photo shows, at least it's provided a haven for skateboarders.
A 7/2/95 Orange County Register articled headlined "Disney’s Rink is All Business; It’s Mice-Free Ice," explained that the developer got a carrot to do so:The city's redevelopment agency gave the 3.2-acre plot of vacant land at Lincoln Avenue and Harbor Boulevard to Disney Goals in exchange for an agreement to provide $ 4.3 million in ice-related youth and community services to the city.
And what happened to Disney GOALS? It has expanded only modestly, now operating in both the Anaheim and San Diego areas.
A 6/7/07 Orange County Register article, headlined "Scoring Goals," explained that, “between Orange and San Diego counties, the program serves about 2,000 youth.” While that’s nothing to criticize, it should be pointed out that it has not been replicated on the scale hoped for in Muschamp’s essay. Losing commitment
Then again, Disney sold the hockey team in 2005, and the team’s name changed from the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim to the Anaheim Ducks. Thus Disney has no reason to be fully committed to hockey.
How long before Forest City Ratner and parent Forest City Enterprises, who have no past history with professional sports, sell the Nets basketball team? According to the 10-K report (p. 9) filed in March with the Securities and Exchange Commission, one of the risks investors should recognize is this:
We Have Limited Experience Participating in the Operation and Management of a Professional Basketball Team, and Future Losses Are Expected for the Nets.
Gehry’s fuzzy geography
In a 7/1/08 Guardian of London interview headlined Let's twist again, Gehry recalled his upbringing in Toronto:
The Gehrys were "pretty poor. At school, I got beat up by Catholic Polish kids, miners' sons, who called me 'kike' and 'Christ killer'. But the French Catholics, the underdogs in Toronto, were on my side and I learned to fight back. I even got good at ice hockey. One of my favourite projects has been 'Disney ice', a rink we did in Anaheim in the mid 90s close by Disneyland."
Well, “close by” is a relative term. It’s 1.68 miles away, according to MapQuest (right), and downtown and Disneyland are separated by a residential neighborhood.
Then again, Disney sold the hockey team in 2005, and the team’s name changed from the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim to the Anaheim Ducks. Thus Disney has no reason to be fully committed to hockey.
How long before Forest City Ratner and parent Forest City Enterprises, who have no past history with professional sports, sell the Nets basketball team? According to the 10-K report (p. 9) filed in March with the Securities and Exchange Commission, one of the risks investors should recognize is this:
We Have Limited Experience Participating in the Operation and Management of a Professional Basketball Team, and Future Losses Are Expected for the Nets.
Gehry’s fuzzy geography
In a 7/1/08 Guardian of London interview headlined Let's twist again, Gehry recalled his upbringing in Toronto:
The Gehrys were "pretty poor. At school, I got beat up by Catholic Polish kids, miners' sons, who called me 'kike' and 'Christ killer'. But the French Catholics, the underdogs in Toronto, were on my side and I learned to fight back. I even got good at ice hockey. One of my favourite projects has been 'Disney ice', a rink we did in Anaheim in the mid 90s close by Disneyland."
Well, “close by” is a relative term. It’s 1.68 miles away, according to MapQuest (right), and downtown and Disneyland are separated by a residential neighborhood. Given Anaheim weather and traffic, it’s really not walkable--though there is a regular bus.
It makes you wonder how much feel the Los Angeles-based Gehry has for Brooklyn.
It makes you wonder how much feel the Los Angeles-based Gehry has for Brooklyn.
Sunday, June 22, 2008
When architects meet autocratic clients, when's time to walk?
A New York Times architecture column today, headlined I’m the Designer. My Client’s the Autocrat., takes on the question--raised by Daniel Libeskind--about working for repressive regimes:
Some architects argue that it is unrealistic and self-serving for them to presume that they can transform a society or distance themselves from a patron’s conduct.
“Sometimes architects like to think they’re above the political fray,” said Frederic M. Bell, the executive director of the New York chapter of the American Institute of Architects. “I think that’s a little bit disingenuous. Sometimes it’s very difficult to take commissions from countries with positions with which one disagrees.”
While Forest City Ratner is not Communist China, that still reminds me of a couple of AY-related quotes. Frank Gehry in January 2006 said, "If I think it got out of whack with my own principles, I’d walk away."
Asked if any of his previous projects involved the use of eminent domain or eminent domain abuse, and whether that be enough to make him walk away from Atlantic Yards, he responded, "No comment."
When to walk
This past March, New York Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff, responding to reports of a truncated arena-only project for the foreseeable future--one that Forest City Ratner in May asserted was incorrect--suggested that "Mr. Gehry, on the other hand, could walk away."
As I observed, Maybe Forest City Ratner should release the gag on Gehry and let him talk to Brooklynites about how the project fits with his principles.
He did walk once, from the Playa Vista project in California, even though Ouroussoff, then writing for the Los Angeles Times, had said it was too late. Still, the critic acknowledged the role of the architect: "Gehry's reputation lends the entire project an air of respectability. In effect, he gives Playa Vista the imprimatur of the architectural and artistic establishments--communities one traditionally associates with high ideals."
Some architects argue that it is unrealistic and self-serving for them to presume that they can transform a society or distance themselves from a patron’s conduct.
“Sometimes architects like to think they’re above the political fray,” said Frederic M. Bell, the executive director of the New York chapter of the American Institute of Architects. “I think that’s a little bit disingenuous. Sometimes it’s very difficult to take commissions from countries with positions with which one disagrees.”
While Forest City Ratner is not Communist China, that still reminds me of a couple of AY-related quotes. Frank Gehry in January 2006 said, "If I think it got out of whack with my own principles, I’d walk away."
Asked if any of his previous projects involved the use of eminent domain or eminent domain abuse, and whether that be enough to make him walk away from Atlantic Yards, he responded, "No comment."
When to walk
This past March, New York Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff, responding to reports of a truncated arena-only project for the foreseeable future--one that Forest City Ratner in May asserted was incorrect--suggested that "Mr. Gehry, on the other hand, could walk away."
As I observed, Maybe Forest City Ratner should release the gag on Gehry and let him talk to Brooklynites about how the project fits with his principles.
He did walk once, from the Playa Vista project in California, even though Ouroussoff, then writing for the Los Angeles Times, had said it was too late. Still, the critic acknowledged the role of the architect: "Gehry's reputation lends the entire project an air of respectability. In effect, he gives Playa Vista the imprimatur of the architectural and artistic establishments--communities one traditionally associates with high ideals."
Monday, June 09, 2008
On Charlie Rose, Gehry claims that old AY designs were never legit
On Thursday, talk show host Charlie Rose interviewed Pritzker Prize Winners Jean Nouvel, Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid and Renzo Piano. Notably, Gehry outlandishly claimed that "nobody" had seen the project until his new designs were released last month.
It makes you wonder why, exactly, Gehry had appeared in Brooklyn (and in a New York Times video) in May 2006 to tout new designs. And it was an implicit dis of New York Times architectural critic Nicolai Ouroussoff, who had cheered for the project, lamented the impact of its stall, and called for Gehry to pull out. Rose, known as a sympathetic, even sycophantic host, didn't challenge Gehry or bring up the issue of, say, indefinite interim surface parking.
Hadid, an Iraqi-born Briton who was the 2004 winner, came off as thoughtful and candid, welcoming constraints in creating architecture.
Rules are good
At about 25:20 of the video, the conversation turned to constraints.
CR: Would you like for people to say to you: “Do what you most want to do. Don’t be reasonable. Be unreasonable.”?
ZH: I think some rules, in everything, are good.
CR: What are rules?
ZH: Nobody will tell you to do what you want. They say that maybe the first time they meet you. The second time they start chopping away... slicing it. You learn how to preserve the most important idea… Chop it by half, it doesn’t work. In Germany, it’s called 'the salami effect,' that no matter how much you chop, the salami’s the same. But it’s not the same in architecture, you can’t do it.
CR: So you go create your dream and then they say chop it in half?
ZH: Not necessarily, but you need to need to have some parameters, which you apply to a project, which might be the parameters of the client or the city or the planning [department] or whatever. Within that, you have to kind of maneuver the idea. In architecture you come up with a better project, because of all these impositions, to factor in.
CR: It makes you be more creative.
ZH: It could make you more creative, but not always.
Note that Atlantic Yards is a zoning override, with the developer in the lead.
In Brooklyn
Rose then turned to Atlantic Yards, without actually naming the project and, oddly enough, showing a slide of the previous iteration (right; the more recent one is below).
CR: You’re experiencing this in Brooklyn right now, right now. How do you deal with that Frank? Here you have this thing that everybody praised and now, because of one [inaudible] after another, people are saying, they’re tearing the soul out of this project is what they’re saying.
Rose's invocation of "everybody" seemed to be limited to New York Times architecture critics Herbert Muschamp and Ouroussoff, who praised the project. His invocation of what "people are saying" also seemed limited to Ouroussoff's second thoughts, because most critics have much broader concerns than the effect of a stall on Gehry's vision.
FG: But you can’t pay attention, because they haven’t seen the project.
The studio audience laughed. It makes you wonder what Muschamp and Ouroussoff had been raving about, or why the New York Times put the July 2005 second round of renderings on the front page. Was Gehry acknowledging, as Ouroussoff wrote recently, that AY renderings distorted reality? (They still do.)
A smaller Building 1
CR: You mean, they the people who’re trying to say they’re doing damage to what Frank created, they haven’t seen it--or the people who demaind that you cut it in half?
The former consist mainly of Ouroussoff. Note that the critic, who in March counted himself as among the AY opponents, more recently said that Gehry's AY plan "remains a pet target of grass-roots activists," a contradiction that Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn pronounced as "cute."
FG: Nobody has seen it, until a few weeks ago, for the first time. And we’ve been working on it four years. And it went through a fairly creative, but legal and business and city planning, as you know, process. I think, in the end, it was going in the right way. The thing--apparently he was referring to Building 1, not the project as a whole--was made smaller because we always knew it probably would.
Interesting. Remember that wonderful piece of spin in the front-page 9/5/06 New York Times article, which over-hyped a rumored 8% cut in the project scale? It attributed resistance to cuts in Miss Brooklyn to the artistic temperament:
But according to executives briefed by the developer, Mr. Gehry has objected to any changes in his design for Miss Brooklyn.
Economic effect
FG: So we didn’t design it, really design it, we were playing with blocks and forms, the idea of a skyline and things like that. I think now it’s starting to unfold. And unfortunately, there’s a hiccup in the economics that has nothing to do with our client. So everybody’s seizing on that, but it’s not real.
It's not real? It may not be definitive, given that projects like this are supposed to endure multiple economic cycles (though the Empire State Development Corporation didn't admit it when it "anticipated" a ten-year buildout). But Atlantic Yards faces other challenges, including pending legal cases, a shortage of tax-free bonds, and the steady losses endured by the New Jersey Nets.
Level of reality
Gehry, continuing, turned to Forest City Ratner's recently unveiled Beekman Tower in Lower Manhattan.
FG: But I think to this issue—I always take a project and assume a level of reality is going to prevail--the economics, building department, gravity, all the things--and try to minimize the impact… I take great pride in getting very close to the bone of the problem and expressing that, and making a move that makes it different. So the [Beekman] tower that was just published… my client told me that the design moves, the curtain wall move and the extra height to reproportion the building was a zero effect on the budget. He would’ve paid that much for that building, no matter who, if he did a very dumb building, it would’ve been the same. It’s kind of far-fetched, but I think he believes it, and I’m happy he does…
Gehry grinned, and the audience chuckled. Does Gehry think his client's effort to generate support for Atlantic Yards was "kind of far-fetched"?
Buildings we deserve
CR: If we’re not getting buildings that we deserve in the world today, what would be the main reason?
ZH: I have to start from the beginning. You have to have some sort of strategy about planning in that particular city, not just for the building…. They have to have vision. I have to say: Europe gained a lot by investing in civic projects, because they were the first buildings which actually showed examples of how you can move to the next stage.
Note that Hadid apparently defines "civic project" as something government-sponsored, as opposed to the more narrow definition in New York law, "intended for the purpose of providing facilities for educational, cultural, recreational, community, municipal, public service or other civic purposes.” Atlantic Yards opponents have argued unsuccessfully that a sports arena is not a civic project. (The Atlantic Yards arena would technically be publicly owned but leased for $1.)
Corporate vs. civic work
Hadid made another distinction.
ZH: And I think the dynamic of corporate work is very different from civic work. So to differentiate between the work which is done in America and maybe in Britain than in Europe. Therefore I am grateful for [comeptitions that lead to commissions].
The importance of leadership
At about 35:30, Renzo Piano talked about the constraints of rules, and how architects enjoy breaking rules, and suggested that many people may think that freedom is a trap. Gehry then spoke modestly about how his landmark Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain was only one element of a comprehensive redevelopment strategy. (That point was also made in the 2006 documentary film "Sketches of Frank Gehry.")
CR: Freedom is a trap?
FG: No, no. It’s not real… what you do need, I think, is a governmental consensus, somebody with a vision. What happened in Bilbao is the minister of culture, minister of finance, the mayor, the president of the country, they all conspired to create a changed Bilbao. And we were just one piece of it. The same thing happened in Chicago. [Mayor] Richie Daley made this park.
CR: Millennium Park.
FG: Millennium Park. Renzo’s part of it. That creates a context. I think that’s what missing, we don’t have that kind of leadership in government…
CR: Mitterand had it in France.
FG: It’s very rare, I mean... I got a nice letter from Barbara Bush last year.
Read through a Brooklyn lens, it was another lament that an abdication by the public sector has left room for developers to take the lead.
In the NYT Magazine
In yesterday's New York Times Magazine, a special architecture issue, Ouroussoff wrote about visiting China and the Persian Gulf to find ever-expanding cities that seem quite different from the cities of the United States. The article is headlined The New, New City:
“The old contextual model is not very relevant anymore,” Jesse Reiser, an American architect working in Dubai, told me recently. “What context are we talking about in a city that’s a few decades old? The problem is that we are only beginning to figure out where to go from here.”
Architects comment about the difficulty of building in older cities--an issue that has come up in regard to AY:
“In America, I could never do work like I do here,” Steven Holl, a New York architect with several large projects in China, recently told me, referring to his latest complex in Beijing. “We’ve become too backward-looking. In China, they want to make everything look new. This is their moment in time. They want to make the 21st century their century. For some reason, our society wants to make everything old. I think we somehow lost our nerve.”
Issues of scale
One significant difference is that these new cities are expanding by using empty land, or land that has been cleared wholesale. It's left some lingering questions:
Cities like these, built on a colossal scale, seem to absorb any urban model, no matter how unique, virtually unnoticed. A project that could have a significant impact on the character of, say, New York — like the development plans for ground zero — can seem a mere blip in Beijing, which has embarked on dozens of similarly sized endeavors in the last decade alone. “The irony is that we still don’t know if postmodernism was the end of Modernism or just an interruption,” Koolhaas told me recently. “Was it a brief hiatus, and now we are returning to something that has been going on for a long time, or is it something radically different? We are in a condition we don’t understand yet.”
The challenge of place
In the closing paragraphs, Ouroussoff returns to issues Gehry raised during the Charlie Rose interview:
As Holl told me recently in his New York office, working on a large scale doesn’t mean that the particulars of place no longer matter. “I don’t think of any of my buildings as a model for something, the way the Modernists did,” Holl said. “If it works, it works in its specific context. You can’t just move it somewhere else.”
But is site specificity enough? “The amount of building becomes obscene without a blueprint,” Koolhaas said. “Each time you ask yourself, Do you have the right to do this much work on this scale if you don’t have an opinion about what the world should be like? We really feel that. But is there time for a manifesto? I don’t know.”
In other words, some civic planning would help.
It makes you wonder why, exactly, Gehry had appeared in Brooklyn (and in a New York Times video) in May 2006 to tout new designs. And it was an implicit dis of New York Times architectural critic Nicolai Ouroussoff, who had cheered for the project, lamented the impact of its stall, and called for Gehry to pull out. Rose, known as a sympathetic, even sycophantic host, didn't challenge Gehry or bring up the issue of, say, indefinite interim surface parking.
Hadid, an Iraqi-born Briton who was the 2004 winner, came off as thoughtful and candid, welcoming constraints in creating architecture.
Rules are good
At about 25:20 of the video, the conversation turned to constraints.
CR: Would you like for people to say to you: “Do what you most want to do. Don’t be reasonable. Be unreasonable.”?
ZH: I think some rules, in everything, are good.CR: What are rules?
ZH: Nobody will tell you to do what you want. They say that maybe the first time they meet you. The second time they start chopping away... slicing it. You learn how to preserve the most important idea… Chop it by half, it doesn’t work. In Germany, it’s called 'the salami effect,' that no matter how much you chop, the salami’s the same. But it’s not the same in architecture, you can’t do it.
CR: So you go create your dream and then they say chop it in half?
ZH: Not necessarily, but you need to need to have some parameters, which you apply to a project, which might be the parameters of the client or the city or the planning [department] or whatever. Within that, you have to kind of maneuver the idea. In architecture you come up with a better project, because of all these impositions, to factor in.
CR: It makes you be more creative.
ZH: It could make you more creative, but not always.
Note that Atlantic Yards is a zoning override, with the developer in the lead.
In Brooklyn
Rose then turned to Atlantic Yards, without actually naming the project and, oddly enough, showing a slide of the previous iteration (right; the more recent one is below).CR: You’re experiencing this in Brooklyn right now, right now. How do you deal with that Frank? Here you have this thing that everybody praised and now, because of one [inaudible] after another, people are saying, they’re tearing the soul out of this project is what they’re saying.
Rose's invocation of "everybody" seemed to be limited to New York Times architecture critics Herbert Muschamp and Ouroussoff, who praised the project. His invocation of what "people are saying" also seemed limited to Ouroussoff's second thoughts, because most critics have much broader concerns than the effect of a stall on Gehry's vision.
FG: But you can’t pay attention, because they haven’t seen the project.The studio audience laughed. It makes you wonder what Muschamp and Ouroussoff had been raving about, or why the New York Times put the July 2005 second round of renderings on the front page. Was Gehry acknowledging, as Ouroussoff wrote recently, that AY renderings distorted reality? (They still do.)
A smaller Building 1
CR: You mean, they the people who’re trying to say they’re doing damage to what Frank created, they haven’t seen it--or the people who demaind that you cut it in half?
The former consist mainly of Ouroussoff. Note that the critic, who in March counted himself as among the AY opponents, more recently said that Gehry's AY plan "remains a pet target of grass-roots activists," a contradiction that Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn pronounced as "cute."
FG: Nobody has seen it, until a few weeks ago, for the first time. And we’ve been working on it four years. And it went through a fairly creative, but legal and business and city planning, as you know, process. I think, in the end, it was going in the right way. The thing--apparently he was referring to Building 1, not the project as a whole--was made smaller because we always knew it probably would.Interesting. Remember that wonderful piece of spin in the front-page 9/5/06 New York Times article, which over-hyped a rumored 8% cut in the project scale? It attributed resistance to cuts in Miss Brooklyn to the artistic temperament:
But according to executives briefed by the developer, Mr. Gehry has objected to any changes in his design for Miss Brooklyn.
Economic effect
FG: So we didn’t design it, really design it, we were playing with blocks and forms, the idea of a skyline and things like that. I think now it’s starting to unfold. And unfortunately, there’s a hiccup in the economics that has nothing to do with our client. So everybody’s seizing on that, but it’s not real.
It's not real? It may not be definitive, given that projects like this are supposed to endure multiple economic cycles (though the Empire State Development Corporation didn't admit it when it "anticipated" a ten-year buildout). But Atlantic Yards faces other challenges, including pending legal cases, a shortage of tax-free bonds, and the steady losses endured by the New Jersey Nets.
Level of reality
Gehry, continuing, turned to Forest City Ratner's recently unveiled Beekman Tower in Lower Manhattan.
FG: But I think to this issue—I always take a project and assume a level of reality is going to prevail--the economics, building department, gravity, all the things--and try to minimize the impact… I take great pride in getting very close to the bone of the problem and expressing that, and making a move that makes it different. So the [Beekman] tower that was just published… my client told me that the design moves, the curtain wall move and the extra height to reproportion the building was a zero effect on the budget. He would’ve paid that much for that building, no matter who, if he did a very dumb building, it would’ve been the same. It’s kind of far-fetched, but I think he believes it, and I’m happy he does…
Gehry grinned, and the audience chuckled. Does Gehry think his client's effort to generate support for Atlantic Yards was "kind of far-fetched"?
Buildings we deserve
CR: If we’re not getting buildings that we deserve in the world today, what would be the main reason?
ZH: I have to start from the beginning. You have to have some sort of strategy about planning in that particular city, not just for the building…. They have to have vision. I have to say: Europe gained a lot by investing in civic projects, because they were the first buildings which actually showed examples of how you can move to the next stage.
Note that Hadid apparently defines "civic project" as something government-sponsored, as opposed to the more narrow definition in New York law, "intended for the purpose of providing facilities for educational, cultural, recreational, community, municipal, public service or other civic purposes.” Atlantic Yards opponents have argued unsuccessfully that a sports arena is not a civic project. (The Atlantic Yards arena would technically be publicly owned but leased for $1.)
Corporate vs. civic work
Hadid made another distinction.
ZH: And I think the dynamic of corporate work is very different from civic work. So to differentiate between the work which is done in America and maybe in Britain than in Europe. Therefore I am grateful for [comeptitions that lead to commissions].
The importance of leadership
At about 35:30, Renzo Piano talked about the constraints of rules, and how architects enjoy breaking rules, and suggested that many people may think that freedom is a trap. Gehry then spoke modestly about how his landmark Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain was only one element of a comprehensive redevelopment strategy. (That point was also made in the 2006 documentary film "Sketches of Frank Gehry.")
CR: Freedom is a trap?
FG: No, no. It’s not real… what you do need, I think, is a governmental consensus, somebody with a vision. What happened in Bilbao is the minister of culture, minister of finance, the mayor, the president of the country, they all conspired to create a changed Bilbao. And we were just one piece of it. The same thing happened in Chicago. [Mayor] Richie Daley made this park.
CR: Millennium Park.
FG: Millennium Park. Renzo’s part of it. That creates a context. I think that’s what missing, we don’t have that kind of leadership in government…
CR: Mitterand had it in France.
FG: It’s very rare, I mean... I got a nice letter from Barbara Bush last year.
Read through a Brooklyn lens, it was another lament that an abdication by the public sector has left room for developers to take the lead.
In the NYT Magazine
In yesterday's New York Times Magazine, a special architecture issue, Ouroussoff wrote about visiting China and the Persian Gulf to find ever-expanding cities that seem quite different from the cities of the United States. The article is headlined The New, New City:
“The old contextual model is not very relevant anymore,” Jesse Reiser, an American architect working in Dubai, told me recently. “What context are we talking about in a city that’s a few decades old? The problem is that we are only beginning to figure out where to go from here.”
Architects comment about the difficulty of building in older cities--an issue that has come up in regard to AY:
“In America, I could never do work like I do here,” Steven Holl, a New York architect with several large projects in China, recently told me, referring to his latest complex in Beijing. “We’ve become too backward-looking. In China, they want to make everything look new. This is their moment in time. They want to make the 21st century their century. For some reason, our society wants to make everything old. I think we somehow lost our nerve.”
Issues of scale
One significant difference is that these new cities are expanding by using empty land, or land that has been cleared wholesale. It's left some lingering questions:
Cities like these, built on a colossal scale, seem to absorb any urban model, no matter how unique, virtually unnoticed. A project that could have a significant impact on the character of, say, New York — like the development plans for ground zero — can seem a mere blip in Beijing, which has embarked on dozens of similarly sized endeavors in the last decade alone. “The irony is that we still don’t know if postmodernism was the end of Modernism or just an interruption,” Koolhaas told me recently. “Was it a brief hiatus, and now we are returning to something that has been going on for a long time, or is it something radically different? We are in a condition we don’t understand yet.”
The challenge of place
In the closing paragraphs, Ouroussoff returns to issues Gehry raised during the Charlie Rose interview:
As Holl told me recently in his New York office, working on a large scale doesn’t mean that the particulars of place no longer matter. “I don’t think of any of my buildings as a model for something, the way the Modernists did,” Holl said. “If it works, it works in its specific context. You can’t just move it somewhere else.”
But is site specificity enough? “The amount of building becomes obscene without a blueprint,” Koolhaas said. “Each time you ask yourself, Do you have the right to do this much work on this scale if you don’t have an opinion about what the world should be like? We really feel that. But is there time for a manifesto? I don’t know.”
In other words, some civic planning would help.
Thursday, May 22, 2008
At MAS, AY as an example of a neighborhood planning struggle
When it comes to discussions of “David vs. Goliath,” the subject of a Municipal Art Society (MAS) Planning Center Forum on May 14, Atlantic Yards is an inevitable subject, though--as I’ll note below--the politics of AY means that more than one set of parties might consider themselves “Davids.”(Photos by Jonathan Barkey)
The panel addressed the issue of “neighborhood planning in the face of large-scale development,” and planner/architect Stuart Pertz, in his introduction, noted that some projects are inherently large, and only work if built on a large scale. “Unfortunately, it often gets out of hand,” he said, suggesting that “Goliath in development has extraordinary leverage, using powerful lawyers, contractors, planners, and unions.” Then again, he said, “there are many Davids.”
So how empower communities? Anthony Borelli, Director of Land Use in the Office of Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, said the office has tried to even the playing field by offering land use training for Community Board members, a fellowship program that assigns urban planners to community boards, and practiced “proactive planning,” exemplified by a proposal for a West Harlem Special District, a reaction to Columbia University’s expansion. (The Manhattan Borough President is far ahead of the other four borough presidents on land use issues. Unfortunately, long-underfunded community boards are seeing their budgets cut rather than raised.)
City of limitsArchitect Marshall Brown (right), a developer of the UNITY plan for the Metropolitian Transportation Authority’s Vanderbilt Yard (and beyond), said, with perhaps some retrospective bravado, “Four years ago we realized we needed to have something in place for the probable occurrence of Forest City Ratner’s plans running aground.” He suggested that Atlantic Yards exemplified a “willful ignorance of limits,” including the physical limit of an eight-acre railyard, the legal limit of eminent domain, the democratic limit of ULURP (the city’s Uniform Land Use Review Procedure, bypassed in this case for a fast-track state review), and “finally, the all too evident limit of the talents of a single architect.”
He noted that he wasn’t dissing Frank Gehry, just pointing out--as have others, and even Gehry himself--that megaprojects require multiple architects.
Brown suggested that questions of sustainability and the “looming environmental apocalypse” meant that the Bloomberg administration should prioritize quality ahead of quantity: “I’d say it’s a city of limits.”
Lawyer Candace Carponter (right), a co-chair of the Council of Brooklyn Neighborhoods (CBN), described how the coalition, formed to respond to the Atlantic Yards environmental review, moved from officially agnostic to ultimately oppositional, joining a lawsuit challenging the review, and becoming a supporter of the UNITY plan. She suggested that the combination of a new governor, “detrimental economics,” and the Newark option for the Nets might provide an opening for the UNITY plan--though of course, that remains to be seen.
Jordi Reyes-Montblanc, former chairman of Manhattan Community Board 9, offered an earthy explanation for his civic role: “I got involved in the Community Board to keep an eye on the S.O.B.s.” He noted that Columbia President Lee Bollinger wanted to break ground on the expansion project in 2002, the same year it was proposed.
The East Side sleeper project
Ed Rubin (right), of Manhattan Community Board 6 in East Midtown, described the board’s efforts to respond to developer Sheldon Solow, whose 6.1 million square foot proposal on three parcels between 35th and 41st Streets generated less notice than the Columbia or AY controversies. Rubin said that the CB’s own plan, as well as “an incredible Power Point,” helped the community, via Council Member Dan Garodnick, to get Solow to reduce some of the floor area, lower the office tower form 864 feet to 553 feet, pledge $10 million for a pedestrian bridge to an expected park, and include 20% affordable housing. (Not everyone's on board.)Still, Rubin said that the Department of City Planning, under control of the mayor’s office, wasn’t much help: “Sadly, City Planning, they do rezonings, but I think their policy is, when developers come up with plans, they hold back and think they’re a reviewing agency.”
Tools needed
Moderator Alberto Vourvoulias-Bush, Executive Editor, El Diario/La Prensa, pointed out that not all “Davids” and not all Community Boards are equally equipped to critique and resist development. What are the most important tools to have? Rubin noted that Manhattan CB6 had never resisted development, and that its own plan for the Solow site allowed for a significant amount of density.
Reyes-Montblanc argued similarly, saying that CB9’s alternative plan offered Columbia “80%” of what it wanted. Reyes-Montblanc noted that CB9 was able to get help from the Pratt Center for Community Development to provide recommendations and to respond to Columbia’s proposal. (Pratt's Brad Lander, who worked with CB9, has suggested it was 60%.)
Carponter said, that she’d “like to think” that when the story of Atlantic Yards is told, “the fact that we had an alternative plan” was essential. The more opponents get elected officials to support calls for change, the more they’re likely to consider the UNITY plan.
Brown said it was a matter of information (often concealed by developers), communication (tapping collective local intelligence), and storytelling (“you’ve got to tell a better story; who can argue with something as positive as UNITY?”).
ULURP gone?
Vourvoulias-Bush also referred to the rumor that Bloomberg wants to do away with ULURP. In a 5/11/08 column, headlined Mayor Bloomberg puts $2.1M on City Charter revision, Daily News columnist Kirsten Danis wrote that, “depending on various theories floating around,” would enable, among other things, a revision in “the way development deals and zoning changes are done in the city.”
(Lobbyist Richard Lipsky has commented that the phase-out of offices like the Public Advocate "could win the mayor support for what he really wants: putting his stamp on the way government works day-to-day - permanently -- and changing the way land use and development projects are approved.")
Borelli (right) said that it was essential that Community Boards have planning capacity. “Planning is not just about zoning and land use,” he said. He praised ULURP, contrasting New York with Toronto, where, without such a systematic process, development depends on a thumbs-up from the local elected officials. The 7.5-month timeline in New York is “not that burdensome,” he said, nothing that 99% of projects don’t go through ULURP because they’re not large enough. (Also, some large projects, like Atlantic Yards, have deliberately bypassed ULURP.)
News coverage
Vourvoulias-Bush also lamented the paucity of coverage regarding major development projects like Atlantic Yards and the Columbia expansion, observing that coverage is often “extraordinarily superficial,” despite clear evidence of the project proponents’ efforts to manipulate the media.
Borelli commented that it was very important to “use media.” Manhattan Community Board 4 was able to get an editorial from the New York Times backing its stance against the proposed West Side Stadium.
Brown said that, four years ago, a graphic designer friend suggested “you have a marketing problem, not an architecture problem.” Carponter said that blogs have been able to get the message out. (She might have mentioned that Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn has a blog-like news update and a--take your pick--persistent/pugnacious spokesman in Daniel Goldstein.)
News coverage
Vourvoulias-Bush also lamented the paucity of coverage regarding major development projects like Atlantic Yards and the Columbia expansion, observing that coverage is often “extraordinarily superficial,” despite clear evidence of the project proponents’ efforts to manipulate the media.
Borelli commented that it was very important to “use media.” Manhattan Community Board 4 was able to get an editorial from the New York Times backing its stance against the proposed West Side Stadium.
Brown said that, four years ago, a graphic designer friend suggested “you have a marketing problem, not an architecture problem.” Carponter said that blogs have been able to get the message out. (She might have mentioned that Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn has a blog-like news update and a--take your pick--persistent/pugnacious spokesman in Daniel Goldstein.)
She also suggested that Atlantic Yards opponents had helped push the New York Times to cover the delays in AY, culminating in the surprising front-page story March 21 declaring the project stalled.
Reyes-Montblanc said the Columbia coverage had gotten “tremendously large coverage,” most of it fair, some with “subtle pro-Columbia bias.”
Rubin observed that Atlantic Yards and Columbia actually got far more coverage in the Times than the Solow plan. (Indeed, a reporter at another newspaper told me last year that the East Side plan was receiving far less coverage related to its enormous size.)
Reyes-Montblanc said the Columbia coverage had gotten “tremendously large coverage,” most of it fair, some with “subtle pro-Columbia bias.”
Rubin observed that Atlantic Yards and Columbia actually got far more coverage in the Times than the Solow plan. (Indeed, a reporter at another newspaper told me last year that the East Side plan was receiving far less coverage related to its enormous size.)
Major newspapers, Rubin said, don’t necessarily look at a project from a community perspective and examine how the project might affect quality of life.
Some AY support
Then came a question from the audience that challenged one of the premises of the panel, that the side represented by Carponter and Brown constitutes the sole “Davids” of the Atlantic Yards battle. “Atlantic Yards means a lot of construction jobs,” asserted Martin Allen, a representative of People for Political and Economic Empowerment (PPEE), a Fort Greene-based group that tries to place construction workers at job sites and has loudly supported the project at some AY-related events, such as the Ward Bakery demolition and a community forum. “It’s a life-changing thing” for a person who can’t feed his family, Allen said.
Moderator Vourvoulias-Bush gave a partial nod to that sentiment but raised the question about whether pledges of housing and jobs in the Atlantic Yards Community Benefits Agreement (CBA) are enforceable. (He’s editorialized critically about Atlantic Yards and his wife, author Jhumpa Lahiri, is on the Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn advisory board. His newspaper is moving to Forest City Ratner's MetroTech.)
“Nobody’s against development,” Carponter said, suggesting it was a question of scale. She pointed out that the template for CBAs created in California involves groups that ordinarily would oppose a project--here's the definitive testimony, from Good Jobs NY-- but in Brooklyn, “the developer created seven out of eight organizations.”
(Actually, both ACORN and the New York Association of Minority Contractors were well-established, BUILD was fledgling, and the other five groups in the CBA had no track record.)
Allen was unbowed. “You all never gave the Community Benefits Agreement a chance,” he said. “You’re stopping [workers] from eating if you delay this project.” Vourvoulias-Bush moved the discussion along, apparently not wanting to turn the event into a debate about AY--after all, the amount of special subsidies granted Forest City Ratner could be brought up as a counter-argument--but the issue surfaced a bit later.
Brooklyn changing
Brown suggested that Forest City Ratner underestimated Brooklyn, thinking the borough was little changed from 1985 or 1988, when MetroTech was proposed: “The areas have come into their own.”
“Atlantic Yards is a world-class location,” Brown said. “Harlem is a famous place. It has to inform how we deal with developers.” The proximity of the AY site to the Atlantic Terminal transit hub and the Brooklyn Academy of Music means that it should’ve been seen as a source of negotiating power. (Of course, there never was a negotiation.)
Carponter noted that, after the passage of Atlantic Yards, Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz “fired” nine members of Brooklyn CB6. (They weren’t reappointed.) There were similar reprisals in the Bronx after Bronx CB4 opposed the Yankee Stadium deal. By contrast, said Reyes-Montblanc, there were no reprisals in Manhattan.
The art of compromise
Did Solow really compromise or had he planned for such a scaleback, Rubin was asked. “Obviously he was pleased at the end,” Rubin said, suggesting that the CB’s backup 197-c plan was helpful. Compromise is essential, he suggested, because “an area that’s fairly well-heeled can litigate forever.”
Reyes-Montblanc suggested it might be easier to deal with a developer than an institution, since the former might compromise while the seemingly-benign institution wants all it requested.
DDDB spokesman Goldstein, from the audience, suggested that community plans could be more powerful if they gained the endorsement of construction unions, since no one opposes jobs. Borelli respondedd that Manhattan BP Stringer has convened a Community-Labor Task Force on Responsible Contracting.
Allen was unbowed. “You all never gave the Community Benefits Agreement a chance,” he said. “You’re stopping [workers] from eating if you delay this project.” Vourvoulias-Bush moved the discussion along, apparently not wanting to turn the event into a debate about AY--after all, the amount of special subsidies granted Forest City Ratner could be brought up as a counter-argument--but the issue surfaced a bit later.
Brooklyn changing
Brown suggested that Forest City Ratner underestimated Brooklyn, thinking the borough was little changed from 1985 or 1988, when MetroTech was proposed: “The areas have come into their own.”
“Atlantic Yards is a world-class location,” Brown said. “Harlem is a famous place. It has to inform how we deal with developers.” The proximity of the AY site to the Atlantic Terminal transit hub and the Brooklyn Academy of Music means that it should’ve been seen as a source of negotiating power. (Of course, there never was a negotiation.)
Carponter noted that, after the passage of Atlantic Yards, Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz “fired” nine members of Brooklyn CB6. (They weren’t reappointed.) There were similar reprisals in the Bronx after Bronx CB4 opposed the Yankee Stadium deal. By contrast, said Reyes-Montblanc, there were no reprisals in Manhattan.
The art of compromise
Did Solow really compromise or had he planned for such a scaleback, Rubin was asked. “Obviously he was pleased at the end,” Rubin said, suggesting that the CB’s backup 197-c plan was helpful. Compromise is essential, he suggested, because “an area that’s fairly well-heeled can litigate forever.”
Reyes-Montblanc suggested it might be easier to deal with a developer than an institution, since the former might compromise while the seemingly-benign institution wants all it requested.
DDDB spokesman Goldstein, from the audience, suggested that community plans could be more powerful if they gained the endorsement of construction unions, since no one opposes jobs. Borelli respondedd that Manhattan BP Stringer has convened a Community-Labor Task Force on Responsible Contracting.
(According to the BP’s web site, the group “is forging a broad-based consensus in favor of development that provides job opportunities for community members, safe work sites governed by fair labor practices, and real opportunities for minority- and women-owned businesses.”)
The goal, he said, is to get labor unions and the community to speak in one voice. And another effort, he said, is to get union members on community boards.
In Brooklyn, so far, the “one voice” goal remains a challenge, as exemplified by the "Time Out" rally and "Build It Now" counter-protest on May 3.
The goal, he said, is to get labor unions and the community to speak in one voice. And another effort, he said, is to get union members on community boards.
In Brooklyn, so far, the “one voice” goal remains a challenge, as exemplified by the "Time Out" rally and "Build It Now" counter-protest on May 3.
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Gehry's dutiful B1 charade and the marketing of naming rights
In for a dime, in for a dollar--or many, many thousands of them. The opportunity to build his first arena, and maybe even "a neighborhood practically from scratch", means starchitect Frank Gehry dutifully participated in a charade over the name of the flagship Atlantic Yards tower, which is now--as predicted by me and NoLandGrab--up for a naming rights sponsorship.
The New York Observer's Real Estate blog reported yesterday:
Bruce Ratner is looking for a new name for the signature office tower in his $4 billion-plus Atlantic Yards project.
The Frank Gehry-designed tower was known as “Miss Brooklyn” until it was shrunk, redesigned and re-unveiled in April under a new, more staid moniker: “B1.” It turns out that that name, too, may change, should developer Forest City Ratner, led by Mr. Ratner, find a tenant eager enough to attach its name to the building.
B1 was the original moniker.
Gehry's statement
“The design for Miss Brooklyn, which we now call Building One, has become very special for me," Gehry said in a May 5 press release from developer Forest City Ratner.
In a May 5 e-newsletter, the developer upped the ante, suggesting that the utilitarian placeholder "B1" had been "christened": And today Forest City Ratner released new renderings showing Frank Gehry's beautiful redesign of the Barclays Center arena, the first residential building and the office tower now christened B1 (formerly known as Miss Brooklyn).
As I wrote May 6, actually, it was always Building One; I noted comments in September 2006 from the Department of City Planning and the official site plan. It's likely, I added, that B1 is just a placeholder, ready to be jettisoned if and when an anchor tenant is recruited.
Unskeptical press
Still, the press wasn't skeptical enough. The New York Daily News, on May 5: Originally envisioned as a 620-foot residential and commercial tower, the newly named "B1" - or Building One - will be slashed to 511 feet and feature commercial office space only, Gehry said yesterday.
Curbed on May 5 called it [T]he unfortunately named B1...
The Brooklyn Paper, on May 6, wrote: Ratner has said he won’t build the Frank Gehry–designed tower, now called “Building B-1”
(Lumi Rolley of NoLandGrab commented on the likelihood the name was just a placeholder.)
Even Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn's press release stated: The paper reports that the so-called "Miss Brooklyn" signature skyscraper, is now called simply "Building 1."
Metro , on May 6, reported: Gehry — who once said his inspiration for his centerpiece building, “Miss Brooklyn,” was a bride he saw in the borough — jilted her for a tower now called “B1” (Building One).
The Toronto Globe & Mail, on May 19, wrote: The now dubbed B1 replaces the former Miss Brooklyn...
Expect more coverage if/when Forest City Ratner secures an anchor tenant.
The New York Observer's Real Estate blog reported yesterday:
Bruce Ratner is looking for a new name for the signature office tower in his $4 billion-plus Atlantic Yards project.
The Frank Gehry-designed tower was known as “Miss Brooklyn” until it was shrunk, redesigned and re-unveiled in April under a new, more staid moniker: “B1.” It turns out that that name, too, may change, should developer Forest City Ratner, led by Mr. Ratner, find a tenant eager enough to attach its name to the building.
B1 was the original moniker.
Gehry's statement
“The design for Miss Brooklyn, which we now call Building One, has become very special for me," Gehry said in a May 5 press release from developer Forest City Ratner.In a May 5 e-newsletter, the developer upped the ante, suggesting that the utilitarian placeholder "B1" had been "christened": And today Forest City Ratner released new renderings showing Frank Gehry's beautiful redesign of the Barclays Center arena, the first residential building and the office tower now christened B1 (formerly known as Miss Brooklyn).
As I wrote May 6, actually, it was always Building One; I noted comments in September 2006 from the Department of City Planning and the official site plan. It's likely, I added, that B1 is just a placeholder, ready to be jettisoned if and when an anchor tenant is recruited.
Unskeptical press
Still, the press wasn't skeptical enough. The New York Daily News, on May 5: Originally envisioned as a 620-foot residential and commercial tower, the newly named "B1" - or Building One - will be slashed to 511 feet and feature commercial office space only, Gehry said yesterday.
Curbed on May 5 called it [T]he unfortunately named B1...
The Brooklyn Paper, on May 6, wrote: Ratner has said he won’t build the Frank Gehry–designed tower, now called “Building B-1”
(Lumi Rolley of NoLandGrab commented on the likelihood the name was just a placeholder.)
Even Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn's press release stated: The paper reports that the so-called "Miss Brooklyn" signature skyscraper, is now called simply "Building 1."
Metro , on May 6, reported: Gehry — who once said his inspiration for his centerpiece building, “Miss Brooklyn,” was a bride he saw in the borough — jilted her for a tower now called “B1” (Building One).
The Toronto Globe & Mail, on May 19, wrote: The now dubbed B1 replaces the former Miss Brooklyn...
Expect more coverage if/when Forest City Ratner secures an anchor tenant.
Friday, May 16, 2008
"Street to seat brand domination" absent from AY renderings
The Sports Business Journal article published Monday on six founding partners for the planned Barclays Center arena said the Nets promise “street to seat brand domination.”
“We’ll have very little static signage,” [Nets CEO Brett] Yormark said. “From the street or subway to the marquee and inside the bowl, only one brand will be visible at a time. The marketers we are talking to want fewer relationships that are more dominant. [Building architect] Frank Gehry did not want to overcommercialize this building, but he wanted to provide ownership for those brands that want to get involved.”
Also, there will be a “construction activation platform” with signage, countdown clocks and other media in which partners will be identified.
However, the new renderings (above) produced by Gehry show no commercial signage (nor "construction activitation platform"), even though signs could be 150 feet high and 75 feet wide. Also, Gehry once wanted to make sure that arena signage had a social function, used for art and community purposes, but that has fallen by the wayside. And the developer has pledged that signage would be relegated to games, a promise that deserves further scrutiny.
(Above, a rendering released yesterday with the relaunch of the Barclays Center web site suggested some signage. It also is marked "EmblemHealth Entrance" after an existing and promised sponsor.)
More from the state's reports
Renderings in the Draft Environmental Impact Statement didn't show much signage, but at least they showed more than the developer has produced. (There's no signage in either the 2006 Image Gallery or the 2008 Image Gallery on the official Atlantic Yards web site.) The graphic at right by BrooklynSpeaks is adapted from two separate renderings in the Atlantic Yards Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS). As with the graphic below from the FEIS, it's tough to get a sense of the scale from ground level, but we can assume that the signage would be a lot more noticeable to someone walking or driving by.
The disconnect between planned signage and proferred renderings is another example of what New York Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff called a "distorted picture of reality" that "stifles what is supposed to be an open, democratic process."
What Gehry wanted
If Gehry "did not want to overcommercialize" the arena" but "wanted to provide ownership" for involved brands, what does that mean?
On the 4/10/06 Charlie Rose show on PBS, Gehry described the arena exterior during an interview conducted by Ouroussoff:
So it's not there sometimes and it's there sometimes. There's a little bit of it, and there's more of it. And it can be used for community issues, as well as advertising. It has a social function, if it's played right, it can be used for art... How do you make that--everybody's getting it, whether they like it or not, it's all over us.
A 5/13/06 Daily News article stated:
Don't expect flashy neon signs at the proposed Nets arena in Brooklyn.
Instead, developer Bruce Ratner plans to project images directly onto the glass building during games - but turn them off at other times to help it blend in with the surrounding area.
That's not ruled out by the currently announced plans, nor does it rule out a "construction activation platform." After all, there are billboards and signs along Flatbush and Atlantic avenues. But we should get a chance to see what an honest rendering of the current plans, not the distorted reality we get from Gehry's latest images.
Indeed, the first distortion is in presenting the arena block intact, even though the developer plans to open only one tower along with the arena. The new rendering at right shows a Dean Street entrance between two buildings. It's distorted reality.
“We’ll have very little static signage,” [Nets CEO Brett] Yormark said. “From the street or subway to the marquee and inside the bowl, only one brand will be visible at a time. The marketers we are talking to want fewer relationships that are more dominant. [Building architect] Frank Gehry did not want to overcommercialize this building, but he wanted to provide ownership for those brands that want to get involved.”Also, there will be a “construction activation platform” with signage, countdown clocks and other media in which partners will be identified.
However, the new renderings (above) produced by Gehry show no commercial signage (nor "construction activitation platform"), even though signs could be 150 feet high and 75 feet wide. Also, Gehry once wanted to make sure that arena signage had a social function, used for art and community purposes, but that has fallen by the wayside. And the developer has pledged that signage would be relegated to games, a promise that deserves further scrutiny.(Above, a rendering released yesterday with the relaunch of the Barclays Center web site suggested some signage. It also is marked "EmblemHealth Entrance" after an existing and promised sponsor.)
More from the state's reports
Renderings in the Draft Environmental Impact Statement didn't show much signage, but at least they showed more than the developer has produced. (There's no signage in either the 2006 Image Gallery or the 2008 Image Gallery on the official Atlantic Yards web site.) The graphic at right by BrooklynSpeaks is adapted from two separate renderings in the Atlantic Yards Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS). As with the graphic below from the FEIS, it's tough to get a sense of the scale from ground level, but we can assume that the signage would be a lot more noticeable to someone walking or driving by.The disconnect between planned signage and proferred renderings is another example of what New York Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff called a "distorted picture of reality" that "stifles what is supposed to be an open, democratic process."
What Gehry wanted
If Gehry "did not want to overcommercialize" the arena" but "wanted to provide ownership" for involved brands, what does that mean?On the 4/10/06 Charlie Rose show on PBS, Gehry described the arena exterior during an interview conducted by Ouroussoff:
So it's not there sometimes and it's there sometimes. There's a little bit of it, and there's more of it. And it can be used for community issues, as well as advertising. It has a social function, if it's played right, it can be used for art... How do you make that--everybody's getting it, whether they like it or not, it's all over us.
A 5/13/06 Daily News article stated:
Don't expect flashy neon signs at the proposed Nets arena in Brooklyn.
Instead, developer Bruce Ratner plans to project images directly onto the glass building during games - but turn them off at other times to help it blend in with the surrounding area.
That's not ruled out by the currently announced plans, nor does it rule out a "construction activation platform." After all, there are billboards and signs along Flatbush and Atlantic avenues. But we should get a chance to see what an honest rendering of the current plans, not the distorted reality we get from Gehry's latest images.Indeed, the first distortion is in presenting the arena block intact, even though the developer plans to open only one tower along with the arena. The new rendering at right shows a Dean Street entrance between two buildings. It's distorted reality.
Tuesday, May 06, 2008
AY Image Gallery 2006 vs. Image Gallery 2008
Is the Atlantic Yards project really progressing? The current Image Gallery has the exact same renderings by landscape architect Laurie Olin that were unveiled in May 2006 (bottom). Also, it's a smaller gallery because it lacks any images of Site 5, Phase 2, or neighborhood perspectives, flawed as they may be.
Click on graphics to enlarge.
May 2006 Image Gallery
Click on graphics to enlarge.
May 2006 Image Gallery
Monday, May 05, 2008
New renderings show Miss Brooklyn cut (duh), renamed, "more festive," but questions unanswered
A Daily News exclusive today shows new renderings of the flagship Atlantic Yards tower but hints at many questions unanswered, notably the apparent dumping of a Phase 1 tower at Site 5 (see building at far left below), the continuing role of architect Frank Gehry, the plans for the proposed Urban Room, and new designs--apparently with less glass, a potential security issue--for the planned arena.The 373-word article, headlined (online) Atlantic Yards' Miss Brooklyn is slashed more than 100 feet in massive redo, suggests that the news is that the tower would be cut to 511 feet and feature commercial office space only, but neither is a surprise.
(It appears on page 2 of the newspaper, with the headline "She loses her crown." Image below.)
After all, the agreement to keep the tower shorter than the 512-foot Williamsburgh Savings Bank tower was announced as a "concession" on 12/20/06, to coincide with the approval of the project by the Public Authorities Control Board. And I reported in February on developer Forest City Ratner's apparent plans to make Miss Brooklyn an office tower only.But the Daily News, a day after publishing developer Bruce Ratner's exclusive op-ed and a nonskeptical Cliff's Notes article accompanying it, is not asking the hard questions. Nor does it point out that the project now appears to have 15 towers, not 16, as hinted in Bruce Ratner's op-ed yesterday.
The new renderings, of course, picture Phase 1 complete, rather than in stages, leaving possible vacant lots around the arena block, as the New York Post depicts today.Remember, a 12/10/03 Forest City Ratner press release announcing the Atlantic Yards project claimed:
The complex has been planned to look whole and complete during each phase of construction.
(Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn reminds us how New York Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff recently slammed the "distorted reality" of project renderings. Given recent tougher coverage in the Times on the AY stall and criticism from Ouroussoff, today's Daily News coverage further confirms that the tabloid is now the developer's go-to news outlet.)
Gehry's enthusiasm
The article quotes Gehry dutifully expressing enthusiasm after working on a redesign for more than 16 months:"My enthusiasm for Atlantic Yards has grown and grown until arriving at our current design, which works better with the surrounding area than it ever had before," said Gehry of new designs obtained exclusively by the Daily News.
"Miss Brooklyn, now called Building One, has been slimmed down and has become more festive, resulting in a very unique office building," he said.
Once "sleek," it now resembles "a spiraling Lego structure, edges askew," according to the Daily News.(The old design as at right.)
More office space
The Daily News reports that the building would include 650,000 square feet of office space, which is more than the 528,000 square feet described last October. Given that the building was once supposed to also include a hotel with 164,652 square feet, it's a good bet that the revised plans trade hotel space for office space.
Planned condos "will be shifted to a different building or be built as rental units instead," according to a Ratner official.
(New renderings)
First residential building
The article states:Meanwhile, "B2," which will be completed first, is a red-and-pink-hued, 340-foot building featuring 350 market-rate and affordable apartments, which Gehry said "speaks to the residential fabric of the neighborhood."
As the top two renderings suggest, the design seems little changed.
If 30% of the apartments are to be affordable, that means 105 affordable apartments, with 42 of them low-income.
While the article doesn't specify the location, Building 2 is at the northeast corner of Dean Street and Flatbush Avenue, according to the official Site Plan. According to the General Project Plan appoved by the Empire State Development Corporation, its maximum height was to be 322 feet. (That refers to the last occupiable floor, so the 340-foot figure may refer to rooftop mechanicals.)
Building 2 is supposed to open at the same time as the arena; the developer says 2010, but that seems highly speculative. Nor was the developer asked if the project would contain 16 towers, as approved, or 15, as hinted by yesterday's Daily News article.
Missing buildings
Notably, the revised renderings show only three buildings: the arena, Building 1, and Building 2. Previous renderings showed Gehry's designs for the entire arena block.Does this mean Gehry's working on only three buildings and may bow out after that? Or is it that designs for other buildings may change as time passes?
Note that Forest City Ratner has taken down the Image Gallery from the Atlantic Yards web site that showed renderings of the buildings as well as landscape designs.
Also missing is any rendering of a building at Site 5, on the block bounded by Pacific Street and Atlantic, Flatbush, and Fourth avenues, now home to Modell's and P.C. Richard. That building, which was reduced to 250 feet after a "recommendation" from the New York City Planning Commission.
Arena and Urban Room
There's no explanation in today's article about how arena-goers would enter the arena without the planned Urban Room civic space--will there be a temporary "Urban Shed" ushering them from a new subway entrance?The renderings do show an Urban Room--albeit without the massive signage planned (right)--attached to Building 1, assuming it gets built.
The arena appears to have new metal flaps reminiscent of some other Gehry buildings, which would lessen the amount of glass. That may be a response to security concerns raised in the wake of the closure of streets outside Newark's new Prudential Center.
Forest City Ratner officials were cagey about the exact distance between the arena and the street; they finally acknowledged to the New York Times that the arena would be, in fact, only 20 feet from the street.(Photo of an Atlantic Yards model published 5/12/06 by the New York Times.)
Opponents get their say
In another article published today, headlined Opponents say Ratner's time line for Atlantic Yards is pie in the sky, the Daily News does allow opponents to express skepticism.
The article states:
"His project is in serious jeopardy no matter how he spins it," Daniel Goldstein of the anti-Brooklyn Yards group Develop, Don't Destroy Brooklyn said of Ratner's Op-Ed piece in yesterday's Daily News.
In it, Ratner claims his entire NBA basketball arena and skyscraper project will be finished by 2018. Goldstein said a lack of committed financing - including housing bonds - and ballooning construction costs could drag the project into a 20-year ordeal.
"When he says he plans to complete his project in 2018, it's simply not credible," Goldstein said. "It means nothing."
While the article doesn't make this point, I think the single strongest reason for skepticism is Ratner's statement that "We anticipate finishing all of Atlantic Yards by 2018."After all, as I pointed out, executive Chuck Ratner of parent Forest City Enterprises told investment analysts last year, "As you know, in our business, these things take a very long time, most often, frankly, longer than we anticipate."
The article also quotes Council Member Letitia James, who says, "It's the same plan without definitive financing."
Last word to BUILD's Caldwell
The last word goes to a signatory of the Community Benefits Agreement which, it goes unmentioned, is funded by Ratner:
James Caldwell, president of the nonprofit Brooklyn United for Innovative Local Development, said he continues to back Ratner and the development plan.
"I feel better, especially with the way the economy is right now, that everything is going ahead as planned."
Caldwell, it should remember, in 2005 called Ratner “like an angel sent from God.”
Caption error
One caption in today's Daily News makes the common error of suggesting that the arena could be built only over the MTA's Vanderbilt Yard:
The Long Island Railroad yard at the intersection of Flatbush and Atlantic Ave., where Bruce Ratner intends to build the Barclay Center, future home to the New Jersey Nets and the centerpiece of the Atlantic Yards project.
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Ratner lowers our architectural expections; will Gehry ease away?
Yes, the "news" (as hinted by the New York Observer) from the fairly gentle profile NY1 ran last night of Bruce Ratner is that the Atlantic Yards developer is talking populism, not Gehry-ism:
“We need jobs, we need shopping that's appropriate and the right price and quality goods, we need supermarkets that provide food that is of quality and well-priced, we need housing, and you know what? The architecture is important, but it's not that important,” says Ratner.
"I want to do great architecture, but I have to say something, which is that, if one is going to boil life down to architecture, then you know what? It's not for me,” he adds.
Pending estrangement?
Interviewer Budd Mishkin, host of the "One On 1" series, didn't raise the suggestion, but to me it hinted as a potential estrangement from Frank Gehry. (Gehry's not mentioned at all in the piece, though models of his buildings are evident and, of course, such video segments are edited.)
After all, Ratner not so long ago was emphasizing his commitment to architecture: "I’ve been talking for ten years about trying to use ‘design architects’ instead of ‘developer architects," he told New York magazine's Kurt Andersen in 2005. (Citation below.)
Gehry's never designed an arena, so to him that may be the prime lure of the Atlantic Yards commission. Given that most of the project, including the Miss Brooklyn tower (which Gehry called "my ego trip"), has been delayed and layoffs have occurred in Gehry's office, it's possible that Gehry--who has publicly said that typically he'd bring in other architects to work with him--sees a light at the end of the tunnel.
Ratner is now talking about housing and jobs and big box shopping, not architecture.
(The profile offered a look at Ratner in his earlier days, right, as well as a reasonable survey of his life and career.)
Some ironies
Oddly enough, Ratner was making his point while in the invitation-only Atlantic Yards Information Center, behind closed steel doors on the third floor of the Atlantic Center mall, where he's already apologized for the architecture. ("It's not something that we would build again," he told the New York Times in 2004.)
And given that Atlantic Yards would have relatively little retail--and none of the big box stores (at least according to former project executive Jim Stuckey) in the two malls--it was a bit of a nonsequitur.
But earlier in the piece he defended the malls:
"I'm proud of both of these, because the jobs they create number one and number two they save people money and allow people to buy good quality goods at lower prices and this serves a large part of Brooklyn. So, you know, those who focus on the architecture are frankly misguided about what's really important in this world,” says Ratner.
Mishkin suggests another irony:
It’s ironic [that Ratner has been the subject of protests], because he himself has taken to the streets to protest, before the start of the Iraq war, and especially during his Columbia Law School days in the ‘60s.
Actually, it's not so ironic. More ironic is brother Michael Ratner's committed activism while supporting machine politicians who might help Forest City Ratner.
Also ironic is coupling a scene of the signing of the Community Benefits Agreement, a private deal outside the purview of government (though Mayor Mike Bloomberg was a witness), with Mishkin's narration:
Ratner says his agreement with the city requires him to build low- and moderate-income housing and he believes the Atlantic Yards project will create jobs.
The question is not whether Bruce Ratner thinks a project getting significant subsidies will create jobs, but whether the special benefits are worth it.
Saving Brooklyn
Ratner gets to make the point that Brooklyn has changed significantly:
"I could remember initially when we built the MetroTech, there were bullet halls in the glass in the office buildings where the workers were and it was a very difficult sell to get companies to decide to move to Brooklyn as opposed to moving out of the state,” says Ratner.
It's an explanation for why MetroTech was designed the way it was, and a lot of people give Ratner more slack for MetroTech than a project like Atlantic Yards. What's left out of the NY1 profile, regarding MetroTech, the Atlantic Terminal and Atlantic Center malls, and Atlantic Yards, is how Forest City Ratner leverages public subsidies, tax breaks, and other benefits to build its projects.
The piece concludes:
“Nobody even knows I was consumer affairs commissioner, so you know what? I'm not building the stuff for legacy,” says Ratner. “I'm building it because I think that doing the residential we're doing, bringing the arena, bringing the team is important, and when it's built I think that'll be realized.”
Ratner can say all he wants about whether the project is "important," but the words of his cousin Chuck Ratner also deserve notice: "It's a great piece of real estate."
Ratner's conversion, in New York magazine
A look back shows how Ratner's embrace of starchitecture was saluted by critics, albeit sometimes with skepticism. (All emphases added.)
Kurt Andersen's 11/20/05 New York magazine Imperial City column, was headlined Delirious New York: Our long architectural snooze is over, thanks to neomodernist mania and the arrival—finally—of Gehry. Bro
“We need jobs, we need shopping that's appropriate and the right price and quality goods, we need supermarkets that provide food that is of quality and well-priced, we need housing, and you know what? The architecture is important, but it's not that important,” says Ratner.
"I want to do great architecture, but I have to say something, which is that, if one is going to boil life down to architecture, then you know what? It's not for me,” he adds. Pending estrangement?
Interviewer Budd Mishkin, host of the "One On 1" series, didn't raise the suggestion, but to me it hinted as a potential estrangement from Frank Gehry. (Gehry's not mentioned at all in the piece, though models of his buildings are evident and, of course, such video segments are edited.)
After all, Ratner not so long ago was emphasizing his commitment to architecture: "I’ve been talking for ten years about trying to use ‘design architects’ instead of ‘developer architects," he told New York magazine's Kurt Andersen in 2005. (Citation below.)
Gehry's never designed an arena, so to him that may be the prime lure of the Atlantic Yards commission. Given that most of the project, including the Miss Brooklyn tower (which Gehry called "my ego trip"), has been delayed and layoffs have occurred in Gehry's office, it's possible that Gehry--who has publicly said that typically he'd bring in other architects to work with him--sees a light at the end of the tunnel.
Ratner is now talking about housing and jobs and big box shopping, not architecture.(The profile offered a look at Ratner in his earlier days, right, as well as a reasonable survey of his life and career.)
Some ironies
Oddly enough, Ratner was making his point while in the invitation-only Atlantic Yards Information Center, behind closed steel doors on the third floor of the Atlantic Center mall, where he's already apologized for the architecture. ("It's not something that we would build again," he told the New York Times in 2004.)
And given that Atlantic Yards would have relatively little retail--and none of the big box stores (at least according to former project executive Jim Stuckey) in the two malls--it was a bit of a nonsequitur.
But earlier in the piece he defended the malls:
"I'm proud of both of these, because the jobs they create number one and number two they save people money and allow people to buy good quality goods at lower prices and this serves a large part of Brooklyn. So, you know, those who focus on the architecture are frankly misguided about what's really important in this world,” says Ratner.
Mishkin suggests another irony:
It’s ironic [that Ratner has been the subject of protests], because he himself has taken to the streets to protest, before the start of the Iraq war, and especially during his Columbia Law School days in the ‘60s.
Actually, it's not so ironic. More ironic is brother Michael Ratner's committed activism while supporting machine politicians who might help Forest City Ratner.Also ironic is coupling a scene of the signing of the Community Benefits Agreement, a private deal outside the purview of government (though Mayor Mike Bloomberg was a witness), with Mishkin's narration:
Ratner says his agreement with the city requires him to build low- and moderate-income housing and he believes the Atlantic Yards project will create jobs.
The question is not whether Bruce Ratner thinks a project getting significant subsidies will create jobs, but whether the special benefits are worth it.
Saving Brooklyn
Ratner gets to make the point that Brooklyn has changed significantly:
"I could remember initially when we built the MetroTech, there were bullet halls in the glass in the office buildings where the workers were and it was a very difficult sell to get companies to decide to move to Brooklyn as opposed to moving out of the state,” says Ratner.
It's an explanation for why MetroTech was designed the way it was, and a lot of people give Ratner more slack for MetroTech than a project like Atlantic Yards. What's left out of the NY1 profile, regarding MetroTech, the Atlantic Terminal and Atlantic Center malls, and Atlantic Yards, is how Forest City Ratner leverages public subsidies, tax breaks, and other benefits to build its projects.
The piece concludes:
“Nobody even knows I was consumer affairs commissioner, so you know what? I'm not building the stuff for legacy,” says Ratner. “I'm building it because I think that doing the residential we're doing, bringing the arena, bringing the team is important, and when it's built I think that'll be realized.”
Ratner can say all he wants about whether the project is "important," but the words of his cousin Chuck Ratner also deserve notice: "It's a great piece of real estate."
Ratner's conversion, in New York magazine
A look back shows how Ratner's embrace of starchitecture was saluted by critics, albeit sometimes with skepticism. (All emphases added.)
Kurt Andersen's 11/20/05 New York magazine Imperial City column, was headlined Delirious New York: Our long architectural snooze is over, thanks to neomodernist mania and the arrival—finally—of Gehry. Bro