a presentation and public Q&A with Brookfield Properties regarding updates to Brooklyn Commons (formerly MetroTech), for recommendation to the Public Design Commission.I presume that creating a new wayfinding and signage system won't be too controversial.
Brooklyn Commons is a 5-acre public plaza built in the late 1980s. Over the last 15 years, downtown Brooklyn has seen a shift in uses and users from a predominantly office, academic, and retail environment to surroundings that are now active 24/7, inclusive of residential buildings, more students, and growing live-work-play communities. While the plaza’s use is shifting along with the neighborhood, Brooklyn Commons still serves downtown Brooklyn, and reconfirms its value as a much-needed urban open space. This application is to create a simple unified wayfinding and signage system to guide visitors and help tenants better engage and discover while rebranding and reactivating the public realm.
Renaming some buildings, too
The renaming from MetroTech to Brooklyn Commons, announced last February, also includes a renaming and new addresses for some buildings, with 1 MetroTech becoming 351 Jay Street, as shown below (from here), 2 MetroTech becoming 100 Myrtle Avenue, and 15 MetroTech becoming 115 Myrtle Avenue.
Note: NYU, whose Tandon School of Engineering (previously Polytech) occupies several buildings in the complex, hasn't abandoned the MetroTech numerals. Nor has the city Fire Department.
NYU on 9/16/22 announced it had purchased 3 MetroTech Center, 10-story, 350,000 gross square feet building, from JP Morgan Chase. No new name there.
What about the subway stop?
Still, the general trend suggests that the MetroTech monitor, however, lodged in locals' minds, may be fading.
Still, the general trend suggests that the MetroTech monitor, however, lodged in locals' minds, may be fading.
And that suggests a reason to rename the Jay Street-MetroTech station, though someone might have to pay for the renaming and, perhaps, the new signage, as Ben Kabak suggested.
Does Brookfield, the current owner, want to pay for such changes? Does the public want such changes, or is the name ingrained?
And at Atlantic Av-Barclays Ctr?
We may be facing similar questions in ten years--if not sooner--when the Barclays naming rights agreement for the Brooklyn arena expires, and the building is no longer named the Barclays Center.
While that expires by September 2032, 20 years after the arena opened, it's not out of the question that the arena operators would negotiate Barclays' exit before then, since the current market for naming rights is far hotter.
Perhaps the new sponsor--or just the arena operator, as with the original example--will pay for the subway station renaming. And perhaps by then, locals might be wary of giving up the name.
Below, pitch decks for tenants, from Brookfield
Comments
Post a Comment