Noise, limo parking complaints persist in blocks around arena, with no remedies (but still, an empty parking lot)

South Portland Avenue above Atlantic Avenue

For the fifth of eight Jay-Z concerts, held last night at the Barclays Center, residents on neighboring blocks again reported that sound and vibration penetrated their residences.

Also, while use of the surface parking lot was again slight (and an eyewitness reported no use of bicycle parking), numerous livery cabs and limos continued to idle or park illegally on area blocks.

(The photos were contributed by a Fort Greene resident.)

Expect more challenges with larger crowds expected at the Barbara Streisand concerts and Nets games.

Noise complaints

According to incident reports filed on Atlantic Yards Watch (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6):

• "Over 1 block away! I can hear & feel the noise!"
• "thumping bass sound coming into our apt. at 11pm"
• "Barclays concert noise; WHEN WILL IT END?"
• "Once again, the bass rumbling from the concert is clearly audible in my apartment a block away. even with the windows closed."

South Portland Avenue above Atlantic Avenue

Another resident called 311 but got nowhere:

The arena bass is once again audible, causing a rumble that can be heard and felt inside of our apartment. If the operators took the open night to try and implement a fix, it didn't work. Filed a report with 311 on Monday, and unsurprisingly the follow up said "The Police Department responded to the complaint and determined that police action was not necessary."

Concern about lights

Another complaint:

Every night the police have erected enormous flood lights on Flatbush (also on Atlantic) to enhance pedestrian safety. However, these lights are so bright as to irritate my eyes. They are tremendously intrusive even from 3 blocks away (6th Avenue and Flatbush, for starters). THey are an enormous blight on the neighborhood.

Cars vs. pedestrians

As I've written, traffic agents are waving Flatbush Avenue traffic through red lights to ensure traffic flow. According to this incident report, they're not always taking pedestrians in mind:

South Portland Avenue above Atlantic Avenue

As I was crossing Flatbush at the 5th Avenue cross walk, with the light, a traffic agent decided to wave traffic through but did not look to see that I and others were already halfway across. I had to leap back to avoid being hit, as the cars were both accelerating and moving fast.

I waited in the middle the avenue for the traffic to stop and felt lucky that it did.

I spoke with a patrolman on 5th Avenue who shrugged and joked about fine - tuning the traffic management rather than agreeing to tell the traffic agent to look both ways before unleashing a torrent of traffic against pedestrians lawfully and correctly crossing the very wide avenue.