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718.362.4784
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Brooklyn, New York 11217
About DDDB
Our coalition consists of 21 community organizations and
there are 51 community organizations formally
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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.
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Breaking News: Gehry Thinks Atlantic Yards Is Not "Going to Happen"
The Architect's
Newspaper breaks the news.
Frank Gehry, unchained and for the first time not toeing Forest City Ratner's
PR line, proclaims Atlantic Yards is dead:
Q&A:
Gehry at 80
... Which other unrealized commissions do you most wish had been built?
The Corcoran Gallery in DC, the Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn—I
don’t think it’s going to happen. There are projects underway
that are being threatened, and may not be completed. That would be devastating
to me. Grand Avenue in downtown Los Angeles is also on hold.
(Emphasis added.)
So. Is Atlantic Yards dead? Or is the "liberal
do-gooder" Frank Gehry just speaking liberally?
While Ratner's project is a big question mark, it appears to be clear that his
star architect-a key selling point for the project and the arena's naming-rights
sponsor Barclays bank-is no longer working on the project. Mr. Gehry would not
have made this comment if he were still involved with Atlantic Yards and Forest
City Ratner. Star architects simply do not say such things about their clients.
Update (10:15pm):
Norman Oder follows the story on his Atlantic Yards Report:
Gehry
on Atlantic Yards: "I don’t think it’s going to happen" (ask him
May 11 in NYC
Atlantic Yards architect Frank Gehry has finally expressed serious public
doubts about Atlantic Yards, which leads to the following questions:
- how much does he know?
- what led to his candor?
- can the Barclays Center be built without him?
...
Is AY really dead?
While the New York Daily News said
Gehry declared the project "dead," he didn't speak with complete certainty,
so we should expect a statement soon from developer Forest City Ratner.
After all, Mayor Mike Bloomberg said
yesterday that he thought the project could get built without the Gehry
design.
If so, the Barclays Center naming rights deal, already under fire because
of the AIG connection, might be reconsidered by the bank, since it was signing
on to a Gehry arena, not a generic one. That raises major question marks about
the developer's capacity to build an arena.
Gehry vs. Ratner
The Daily News probably was correct, however, in observing that "The comment
suggests the troubled relationship between Gehry and developer Bruce Ratner
is over."
On February 6, I suggested
that Gehry wasn't talking about AY because he didn't want to jeopardize his
relationship with Ratner, the developer of the Beekman Tower.
Now that the Beekman Tower may be compromised, Gehry may feel more free to
talk...
And the Daily News takes its look at the Gehry quote. We don't think Gehry was saying the project is dead. Rather he was basically saying the projec is dead...to him.:
Atlantic
Yards project in Brooklyn is dead, says its architect Frank Gehry
By Jotham Sederstrom
The multi-billion Atlantic Yards development in Brooklyn is dead, according
to one who should know: the "starchitect" who was going to build
it.
Asked by a trade paper about "unrealized commissions" he most wishes
had been built, famed 80-year-old architect Frank Gehry brought up Atlantic
Yards.
"I don't think it's going to happen," he told the Architect's Newspaper
in an interview published online.
The comment suggests the troubled relationship between Gehry and developer
Bruce Ratner is over.
"While Ratner's project is a big question mark, it appears to be clear
that his star architect - a key selling point for the project, its sponsors
and Barclays bank - is no longer working on the project," said Daniel
Goldstein, a member of the anti-Yards group Develop Don't Destroy.
...
Mayor Bloomberg this week suggested the project may still get built - but
on a smaller scale and without Gehry.
"It would be sad if Atlantic Yards gets built without the Gehry design,
which would've been phenomenal for this city," Bloomberg said. "I
gather at this point it looks like that the only ways Ratner's going to get
that done is to do it at a lower cost and not to do everything at the same
time."
Posted: 3.24.09
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