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Arena: "good for Brooklyn, bad for the neighborhood"?

In Nets Future Brooklyn Home Starts Taking Shape, WNYC finds a couple of teenagers (male, of course) who are excited about the Nets coming to Brooklyn and a couple of neighbors who are more wary:
Edwin Barreto lives next to the construction site and wishes the arena had been located further out in Brooklyn, perhaps closer to Red Hook. He's been frustrated by the loss of parking spaces, but is even more worried about what will happen, once the arena opens and thousands of outsiders start streaming into the neighborhood.

"What's going to happen too is all those people that go in there and drink that beer, they're going to be coming out here, peeing all over the corners, peeing on people's cars," said Barreto. "I've seen it happen in Newark."
This point was made at the August 2006 hearing on the Draft Environmental Impact Statement.

In closing: "good for Brooklyn, bad for the neighborhood"

The article closes thusly:
His friend, Sean Carnegie, walking to his son's basketball practice, saw pros and cons in the location of the arena.

"All in all, it's cool," said Carnegie. "It's good for Brooklyn, bad for the neighborhood."
The choice of this as a closing quote implies that the reporter considers this a reasonable summary.

Indeed, it captures some of the ambiguity: those closest to the arena site will bear the brunt of its impacts, while those farther away, to the extent it fits their pocketbooks, may avail themselves of sports and entertainment events.

Still, it's unlikely that the man-on-the-street assessment of "good for Brooklyn" factors in the elements of a full cost-benefit analysis, including direct subsidies, tax breaks, and the absence of (or delays in) promised project benefits.

Comments

  1. yes! yes i agree. East flatbush, carnarsie, mill basin, midwood etc. will on benefit.

    but when will some explore the idea of flatbush avenue becoming the life line of brooklyn. lets start from the top; going north to south on flatbush avenue goes like this:

    manhattan bridge, fulton mall, BAM, Brooklyn Nets, Grand Army, Library/ Museum, Prospect Park, Resturaunts/shopping, The junction/ Brooklyn College, Kings Plaza/ water front/ golf course. then hop on the belt to coney island.

    ... and flatbush avenue is also the great line divide of brooklyn. To the west is upper class and to the east is middle lower class.


    thanks,
    Don

    ReplyDelete

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