Was the Barclays Center "Bloomberg's biggest contribution" to the landscape? Nope.

Just a reminder that the @barclayscenter plaza was a complete accident, as I wrote for @bklyner https://t.co/KuSq7BJJL6
Bloomberg admin championed #FrankGehry design, which buried #AtlanticYards arena in towers
(project was approved by NYS, not NYC) pic.twitter.com/GN10IQHdAu

— Norman Oder (@AYReport) June 29, 2020

About that crossroads

Missing piece is fixing Flatbush & Atlantic.

Barclays is the center & magnet because it’s the crossroads of the Bk subway system. But it’s *also* a crossroads of the streets system. We just need to convert those streets from dangerous highways to something safer & more inclusive

— Adam Forman (@LeoniaBatlan) June 28, 2020

That awaits, and will become complicated not just by the existing challenges specifically at Atlantic and Flatbush, but by the potential/future construction of towers at Site 5, catercorner from the arena, bordering that crossroads.

Beyond that, the ongoing construction and expected opening of the B4 tower (18 Sixth Avenue), and the expected construction of the Vanderbilt Yard platform, in two main phases, each of which would support three towers, will complicate--and perhaps improve?--the passage across Atlantic Avenue.

Did the arena transform Downtown Brooklyn?

I would agree. When all is said and done, Barclays Center is the most profound physical legacy of the Bloomberg Era. It completely transformed Downtown Brooklyn - and ossified the revitalization of the outer boroughs as cultural centers for music, sports, and nightlife. https://t.co/2X2e6jkYL4 pic.twitter.com/rciiMzD2v2

— Zachary from Vista (@ZacAKAMadu) June 28, 2020

Well, it's not quite a legacy from the Bloomberg administration, though it is a legacy from the Bloomberg era.

It's hard to tease out the arena and Atlantic Yards from the 2004 rezoning of Downtown Brooklyn, which was birthing new residential towers long before the arena even started construction.

But the Barclays Center surely was a significant part of the changes--even as the associated project, Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park, did not transform the Downtown Brooklyn/Prospect Heights transition zone or fight gentrification and foster a new paradigm of multi-class urban development.

(I'm a little perplexed by the use of the term "ossified," which does mean changing a material into bone, or solidified, but it also means "to make rigidly conventional and opposed to change," which of course would be misleading.)