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Major Issues for District 35




Building Basketball Arenas

April 29, 2005

The new owner of the New Jersey Nets wants to build a basketball arena in Flatbush. This chart compares the project to similar ones undertaken by other American cities. (Read More...)



Neighborhood Residents Divided Over Shopping Mall

December 10, 2004

by Tanangachi Mfuni

Yow Hong Tom remembers when Brooklyn’s Hanson Place was grim and dangerous, at a time when a wholesale meat market sat at the site now occupied by Atlantic Terminal Center Mall.

“You walk down here and somebody robs you,” the 80-year-old newsstand owner, said.

Now that has changed, and some residents give at least part of the credit to the shopping center at the corner of Flatbush and Atlantic Avenues. But not everyone shares the enthusiasm for the mall and its developer, Forest City Ratner Companies. Critics complain that Atlantic Terminal Center and its big-name franchise stores threaten the livelihood of surrounding businesses and create more traffic in the already busy area.

RATNER AND BROOKLYN: A COMPLICATED HISTORY

The complex relationship between Ratner and the neighborhood began in the mid 1990s. when Ratner built Atlantic Center. Although it featured popular stores, including a Pathmark supermarket and an Old Navy, its architecture was deliberately forbidding. To discourage loitering in the crime-plagued neighborhood, it offered few gathering spaces or public areas.

A second building, Atlantic Terminal, opened this year. To make it more inviting – and reflecting the lower crime rate in the area – it features open spaces and benches. The second building brought Target and a carnival of other retail stores like Bath and Body Works, Mandee, and Daffy’s to the area.

The new Terminal building and the older Center building are joined by an overpass and come under the umbrella name of Atlantic Terminal Center Mall.

Mall stores like the GameStop, a video game retailer on the ground level of Atlantic Terminal, say they owe a significant part of their business to the presence of Target, the anchor store of the mall. “Target has a lot to do with everybody’s success,” said Hamani Williams, the manager of the GameStop. “It attracts more of the customers, and those customers linger on down to the rest of the mall.”

But not every business’ cash register is ringing. Elias Moros, the 31-year-old owner of Hanson’s Place Restaurant and Deli, said that since the Atlantic Terminal debuted, business has been “up and down.” Moros worries that his customers will be lured away by Houlihan’s restaurant slated to open at the mall in a few weeks.

“We’re going to wait till they open up, to see how much business they take way from us. People tend to go to franchises. This is a mom and pop type of store, ” Moros said.

An influx of new customers also means increased traffic, and an ever-more intense hunt for a parking place. After driving around for about an hour to find parking Willnew Branter, a 26-year old investment bank employee and a first time visitor to the mall, decided to park in a garage at $2 per hour.

Todd Monroe, the manager of Vitamin Shoppe, the heath store located opposite the mall on 4th avenue was critical of the lack of parking in the area: “There’s no convenience. If you can’t park then what’s the sense, you’d have to take public transportation or you’d have to pay an exorbitant amount of money around here, $8 to $12 for about 3 to 4 hours.”

THE NETS ARENA: A NEW BOON OR ANOTHER BURDEN?

Some locals also worry about Forest City Ratner’s new plan to erect a 20,000-seat basketball arena and 17 high-rise buildings in the Atlantic Rail Yards, the three-block lot across from the mall that now functions as a garage for Metropolitan Transportation Authority trains.

Ratner’s new project has been as divisive as his last.

The community’s divided opinion on Ratner was evident on November 26, the day after Thanksgiving, when the Atlantic Terminal Center Mall was the target of two boycotts. The first, spearheaded by Downtown Brooklyn Leadership Coalition, a group of clergy members and community activists, urged shoppers not to shop at the mall to protest Ratner’s planned Nets project, which, it says, will push close to 1,000 people out of area homes and businesses.

The second boycott was a boycott of the boycott. Members of Brooklyn United for Innovative Local Development (BUILD) and House of The Lord Church, who support Ratner, encouraged people to shop.

That day, an estimated 45,000 people visited the Atlantic Terminal Center Mall.

“My sales were extraordinary,” said Williams of the GameStop.



Resistance to Proposed Arena

March 30, 2004

Plans to build a basketball arena over the rail yards near the Flatbush/Atlantic Avenue junction have Prospect Heights residents up in arms. Plans for the 21-acre site, which would be the new home of basketball's Nets, also include commercial space, apartments and parks. But the construction would force hundreds of locals out of their homes.



Waterfront Rezoning

July 25, 2003

The City Planning Commission introduced a waterfront rezoning plan that will remake the waterfront area into a mixed residential, commercial, and recreational area.



Childhood Lead Poisoning

July 25, 2003

According to a study of 59 apartments in Bedford-Stuyvesant conducted by the Pratt Area Community Council, one-third of the children living in the neighborhood are exposed to dangerously high concentrations of lead.



Multicultural Arts District

April 28, 2003

The Brooklyn Academy of Music is looking to create a vibrant, mixed-use multicultural arts district covering 14 square blocks in Downtown Brooklyn. (See BAM and the Cultural Districtby Mark Winston-Griffith on Gotham Gazette's Community Development Topic Page.)



Atlantic Avenue Terminal

April 28, 2003

Renovations at the Atlantic Avenue Terminal Complex, MTA New York City Transit and MTA Long Island Rail Road's busiest transportation hub in Brooklyn, have been ongoing since the summer of 2002.




Homepage of the Community Gazette for District 35

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ALL DISTRICT 35 MAJOR ISSUES
Building Basketball Arenas
(Apr 29, 2005)

Neighborhood Residents Divided Over Shopping Mall
(Dec 10, 2004)

Resistance to Proposed Arena
(Mar 30, 2004)

Waterfront Rezoning
(Jul 25, 2003)

Childhood Lead Poisoning
(Jul 25, 2003)

Multicultural Arts District
(Apr 28, 2003)

Atlantic Avenue Terminal
(Apr 28, 2003)

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