Barclays Center's new meditation room "counts essentially as an asterisk in the long list of promises that Forest City Ratner" made to the borough of Brooklyn "after years of tense negotiations and bitter disputes," according to a front-page piece by Andrew Keh of the N.Y. TIMES. The room is a "locked, windowless, cinder-block room tucked near the arena’s first aid office and a sushi stand" on the Barclays Center main concourse. The space "appears to sometimes double as a storage room; several pieces of luggage sat in the corner on a recent night." It has been "mostly ignored since its official opening last week, but a few fans have stopped to puzzle over it." Brooklyn residents "can visit the new meditation room -- provided they buy a Nets ticket and come on a game day, and visit the guest services office to request that the room be unlocked." The room was the brainchild of the Rev. Herbert Daughtry, "a Brooklyn pastor who has long been one of Atlantic Yards’ most ardent supporters." Daughtry at one point "had dreamed of constructing an atrium for a chapel inside the stadium." Instead, the "vision was scaled back to this modest room," in which "inspirational quotations line the walls, and a decorative water fountain recently sat unplugged." Not a "single fan entered the room during the hour and a half before a recent game" against the Suns (N.Y. TIMES, 3/21).
