Daily News gets first look at new subway entrance opening Monday, accepts Forest City's claims about budget and timing; exec claims they don't want anyone driving to arena

Sycophantic Daily News Real Estate correspondent Jason Sheftell gets the exclusive look at the new subway entrance serving the Barclays Center arena that opens Monday morning--yes, it's an impressive addition, but a clearly self-serving one, especially given the revisionist mythology described below.

And Sheftell delivers, in an article today headlined First look at the $76 million Barclays Center subway station: A new station where Flatbush meets Atlantic in downtown Brooklyn will connect subway travelers on nine lines to the Barclays Center. He writes:

Life is about moments. So is New York City. The first time you see a doorman in a top hat and tails in front of the Plaza Hotel. When you lay eyes on the Statue of Liberty. Every time you take the Long Island Expressway to the Midtown Tunnel and the skyline opens up before you. Yankee Stadium. Landing at LaGuardia.
There’s a new one. Opening this Monday at 8 a.m., subway travelers on nine lines will be able to walk up the stairs of a new station where Flatbush meets Atlantic in downtown Brooklyn and see the rusted metal oculus of Barclays Center spread before them like a moment in a science-fiction film. It’s as grand as Lincoln Center, as Brooklyn as the Boys of Summer, and as New York as a skyscraper.

The cost and the financing

He continues:

It cost $76 million. No, it’s not paved in gold. But not a cent of it came from taxpayers’ pockets. Forest City Ratner Companies (FCRC), the developer of the arena, the housing around it, MetroTech and Atlantic Center Mall, agreed to pay for the station as part of financing in return for the air rights from the MTA above the arena’s plaza, where one day a world-class commercial building could stand.

Hold on. Maybe Forest City spent $76 million, in their accounting. The contract for the station is $57.8 million, according to a report from the construction monitor for arena bondholders.

And of course taxpayers helped: Forest City's commitment to build this was part of why the MTA accepted a $100 million cash bid for development rights for the Vanderbilt Yard--not just the area above the plaza--at less than half the appraised value.
...

Using mass transit

Sheftell quotes Forest City Executive VP MaryAnne Gilmartin: "The new entrance is the key component to making this arena work. Under no circumstances do we want anyone driving to the arena, ever.”

Ever? Is that why the Barclays Center website includes a link to prepaid parking?

“We want this to be magical,”  Gilmartin said. “The canopy, oculus, all of this is part of what will define Brooklyn for the next century. The amount of collaboration between city agencies that had to come together just for this one station is mind-boggling.”

Of course, the plan initially was for an Urban Room, an atrium within the office building that would deliver the tax revenues justifying the project...