While reporting on the ever-controversial Barclays Center across from Atlantic Terminal, is typically outside of Brooklyn Heights Blog’s purview, a lengthy essay in New York magazine is worth exploring, with its analysis of the impact of the arena on the future of the borough as a whole.
Barclays “is now part of the new Brooklyn reality. It is the centerpiece of how the borough, and the city, will be seen for generations to come,” writer Will Leitch surmises. “Imagine it is nothing less than the literal and symbolic centerpiece of a new, 21st-century Brooklyn, one as gleaming and modern as the shiny new structure itself.” Developer Bruce Ratner adds, “People will know this arena from Brooklyn, and people will know Brooklyn from this arena,” which he describes as “another leap forward” for the borough.
The story says: “Ratner & Co. believe Brooklyn as a whole is already well on its way to super-premium status and will never go back. They believe Ratner has built exactly the sort of architectural showpiece and modern sports-and-entertainment megaplex that newly gentrified Brooklynites want. They believe that the idea of Brooklyn itself—the Brooklyn brand, the actual word Brooklyn—has commercial power.”
On page 4 of the New York mag article is an odd observation: “Even in Brooklyn Heights, the borough’s most expensive neighborhood, no one fetishizes being ostentatious with one’s wealth; they’re all spending their money on the illusion of healthy food and preschool.” Uh, huh?
Read the entire piece here. You might want to pour a tall one first. Mighty long.
