Less Dense? Not Daniel

In a story in the NY Times this morning the paper reports on the efforts by FCRC to address some of the criticism of its Atlantic Yards project by downsizing the development by some 750,000 square feet. This news, first reported by the Sun's Dave Lombino last week, has predictably not changed the position of Dan the destroyer.

As the Times tells us Dan's position is that the entire project, including the arena that 60% of New Yorkers want to see built, needs to be scrapped and if anything is to go up in its place it will have to conform to the Goldstein footprint (the "not in my livingroom" footprint). What Goldstein has managed to do is to convert a latent sympathy that everyone has for folks who might lose their homes into a suspicion that he doesn't give a rat's ass about developing something that will benefit thousands of his fellow citizens. It's become all about Daniel.

Well Daniel, as we have found out over the past twenty five years, it's never just about you! (or even me). The all or nothing approach is never going to succeed unless you have the full support of an impacted community, and even then it won't be enough if a development has a larger public impact that will affect people well beyond the footprint of a project-which is exactly what AY does have.

The attack on the arena underscores the scorched earth nihilism of the DDD agenda. The arena and the Nets team will be the centerpiece of a resurgent Brooklyn that will link all of its diverse neighborhoods into one unified whole. This is what we have found in our organizing efforts on behalf of the Brooklyn Sports Alliance. It's not all about writers who live in Park Slope and pontificate endlessly about intellectual sterility and infidelity.

Let's Go Nets!