As the Nets get ready to play their first games at the Barclays Center in the upcoming NBA season, the arena’s neighborhood “still is waiting for housing and other benefits once touted” by developer Forest City Ratner as part of the planned $4.9B Atlantic Yards project, according to the Eliot Brown of the WALL STREET JOURNAL. As “one of the largest mixed-use projects under way in the country, Atlantic Yards was meant to transform a swath of Brooklyn.” But the unfinished portions of the project “highlight the challenges many U.S. cities face with large-scale real-estate developments that have become stalled amid a slow economic recovery, leaving them without taxes, jobs and amenities once pledged to the public.” In Brooklyn’s case, “benefits were crucial to tempering a vocal community opposition when the project was approved in 2006.” Nets minority Owner and Forest City Chair & CEO Bruce Ratner “pledged to reserve nearly one third of 6,400 planned apartments for low and middle-income families, along with a community health-care center and other givebacks.” But these and other selling points have been “deferred, or in a few cases scrapped, as the company has struggled amid a chilly climate for new development.” The entire project was once “slated to be completed by 2016,” but Forest City “hasn't broken ground yet on any of the planned apartment towers.” Forest City execs said that they are “committed to building the housing and living up to their promises as fast as they can in a real-estate market far more inclement than they had anticipated" (WALL STREET JOURNAL, 9/8).
HOME-COURT ADVANTAGE: In N.Y., Rich Calder notes the basketball court at Barclays Center “includes a ‘one-of-a-kind’ herringbone pattern of wood panels that stands out above anything hoop fans have ever seen." At center court is the Nets’ “circular, black-and-white logo with the iconic ‘B’ inside," surrounded by the words "Brooklyn New York.” The logo is “flanked on two sides by the ‘Barclays Center’ name in powder-blue lettering.” The court “consists of 240, four-foot by seven-foot Hardwood Maple panels weighing 185 pounds each.” The panels “create V-shaped patterns through a herringbone design.” The baselines are “black with ‘Brooklyn Nets’ boldly spelled out in white lettering.” To “further promote the team’s new brand, the @BROOKLYNNETS Twitter name is spread along a black-colored out-of-bounds area by the visitor’s bench while the team’s web address is spelled in the same white lettering by the home club’s bench” (N.Y. POST, 9/11).
