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tel/fax:
718.362.4784
Please note our new postal address when sending
contributions to the legal fund:
121 5th Avenue, PMB #150
Brooklyn, New York 11217
About DDDB
Our coalition consists of 21 community organizations and
there are 51 community organizations formally
aligned in opposition to the Ratner plan.
DDDB is a volunteer-run organization. We have over 5,000
subscribers to our email newsletter, and 7,000 petition
signers. Over 800 volunteers have registered with DDDB
to form our various teams, task-forces and committees
and we have over 150 block captains. We have a 20 person
volunteer legal team of local lawyers supplementing our
retained attorneys.
We are funded entirely by individual donations from the community at large
and through various fundraising events we and supporters have organized.
We have the financial support of well over 3,500 individual
donors.
More about
DDDB...
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What Makes Brooklyn Different than Newark?
Nothing; not even the stonewalling.
Today's Times'
article divulges information of great importance:
- That the NYPD and Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC) have stonewalled
on the subject of the distance of Ratner's arena from Atlantic and Flatbush
Avenues;
- Forest City Ratner has at long last revealed a major security flaw in their
project -- the Barclays Center Arena would be 20 feet from Atlantic and Flatbush
Avenues and,
- NYPD "has said that it does not comment on such matters. The department’s
security analysis, which found that the arena was safe and streets
need not be closed on game days, would stand."
Why is this a problem? Two weeks before the grand-opening of Newark's new Prudential
Center arena, Newark police officials realized that the new arena was too close
to the streets abutting it, and those streets would have to be closed
during arena events for terrorism protection. "You can't construct
an arena and put it right against a street in a post 9/11 world,"
Newark Police Director Garry McCarthy told the Star Ledger.
Is it remotely plausible that in Newark they planned, designed and constructed
the Prudential Center arena without consulting the police department at any point?
Of course it's not plausible.
So at some point in that process, the Newark police department must have "found
that the arena was safe and streets need not be closed on game days."
And then when it was built and two weeks away from opening, the Newark police
department looked at it again and changed their minds, and decided they must close
two streets abutting their new arena.
Imagine if this same scenario plays out in Brooklyn. We don't have the luxury
of closing Atlantic and Flatbush, two already clogged arteries. No amount of congestion
pricing will be able to solve the problems at the intersection of Atlantic, Flatbush
and 4th Avenues.
So the overarching question remains, as
asked in the Times article:
What makes the Atlantic Yards arena sufficiently different
from the Newark arena that it will not require street closings?
That question needs to be forthrightly answered by an indepedent body.
Posted: 11.24.07
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