Changes Eminent In Brooklyn

When developer Bruce Ratner first announced a plan to build a new basketball arena in the New York borough of Brooklyn six years ago, residents resisted. Now, just a handful remain.

The Atlantic Yards project, which originally included designer Frank Gehry and a district of restaurants and high-rise buildings, has been reduced to a dome-covered arena. But it is still well on its way to being built and housing pro basketball’s New Jersey Nets.

Meanwhile, the neighborhood has become nearly a ghost town. Many residents sold their homes to the developer, at twice the original value, years ago. Others are about to be escorted from their property because of a recent state decision to invoke eminent domain on the holdouts.

One of them is Daniel Goldstein, the lead spokesman for a neighborhood group opposed to the arena plan. He bought his condominium a few months before the plan was announced and, on principle, decided he would not move.

“I made a commitment to myself that I wasn’t going to be forced to sell,” Goldstein said. “I wasn’t going to be pressured or bullied.”
Now his family is the only one left in a nine-story condo building. The state recently offered him $510,000 for his condo, which he says is about $80,000 less than what he paid in 2003.

“We’ll have to find somewhere to live,” he said. “Look, we’re human and rational. We need to think about it now.”

Daniel Sheets was offered $75,000 for his apartment but turned Ratner down rather than sign a gag order and stop criticizing the project. That offer has not returned and Sheets is just getting some help finding a new place to live. Because of nearby construction, Sheets spent much of 2008 without gas or electricity.

“We were overrun with rats. The jackhammering went 22 hours a day,” he said. “If I had any idea what a living nightmare this would be, hell no, I wouldn’t have stayed around.”

A tavern called Freddy’s, located near Sheets, recently installed chains so patrons can resist eviction by handcuffing themselves to the bar.

Arena boosters have said that affordable housing will replace the inexpensive rentals that are being torn down.

Meanwhile, a judge overseeing a similar eminent domain case recently ruled the state’s process for declaring healthy neighborhoods “blighted” so they could be seized for redevelopment was farcical, at least in that instance.