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dozen subway lines to the area empty out directly into
the arena’s plaza; that express trains are provided at
night; and that shuttle buses at remote parking areas
pick up those who choose to drive. The concerns
about crowds prompted about 100 residents to attend
a community board meeting last Tuesday night to fight
an application for a liquor license by Barclays and the
arena concessionaire, Levy Restaurants. Residents
have also been fighting other proposed drinking
establishments in the area. The 14 promised
residential towers, with 6,430 apartments, and two
commercial buildings are so far in the future that they
are not much on residents’ lips. Mr. DePlasco said that
work would start this year on the first of the apartment
buildings, and that others could be built two decades
from now. But the company has repeatedly scrapped
or scaled back more ambitious plans for the area,
including the original design by Frank Gehry. A ruling
by a state appeals court last week, stemming from one
of the lawsuits over the project, may cause additional
delays in putting up most of the housing — though not
in building the arena itself — by requiring the state to
conduct a new environmental impact statement. The
ruling by the Appellate Division of State Supreme
Court said that the Empire State Development
Corporation conducted its environmental review based
on a 10­-year time frame, but that a 25­-year schedule
The New York Times/ ­- Politics, Ter, 17 de Abril de 2012
CLIPPING INTERNACIONAL (Supreme Court)
could force residents to “tolerate vacant lots,
above­-ground arena parking and Phase II construction
staging for decades.” Yet Danae Oratowski,
chairwoman of the Prospect Heights Neighborhood
Development Council, said the shift from stores selling
things people need to those selling things people want
was already taking its toll on organically functioning
neighborhoods and complicating residents’ lives.
“People who live in Prospect Heights still need to get
their clothes dry cleaned and shoes repaired,” she
said, “and these businesses won’t be around in a
year.” Though some stores, like the prosthetic device
shop, are protected because their owners also own the
buildings and are not worried about skyrocketing rents,
others, like Flatbush Hardware, already fear what will
happen when their leases expire. Paul Nation, a
Jamaican immigrant who owns the hardware store, is
negotiating with his landlord for a new lease. “It’s
ridiculous what they’re asking for,” he said. Yagil
Kadosh, who opened Kulushkät Gourmet Falafel 10
months ago and bicycles to work from his nearby
home, expects an upsurge in demand once the arena
opens, though he denies that the arena motivated his
choice of location. “As a businessman it’s good,” he
said. “As a resident not so much. It turns a
neighborhood into Midtown Manhattan.”
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