Becket Thy Name Is Eminent Domain
It’s official. Forest City Ratner finally admits what many have suspected for quite some time: Frank Gehry has been replaced as the architect for the Barclays Center basketball arena for the proposed Atlantic Yards development. Trying to save some coin, the developer hopes replacing Gehry with Ellerbe Becket and “value engineering” the arena that they can shave $200,000,000 from the $1,000,000,000 arena price tag.
It would still be The Most Expensive U.S. Arena. EVER.
You’d think $800,000,000 might buy you something elegant, but don’t get your hopes up. Here’s what the New York Times says about early looks at the new “value-engineered” design:
Officials who have seen the design for the Brooklyn arena say that while it resembles Conseco Fieldhouse, it also bears a likeness to an “airplane hangar”.
Nice.
I’d love to be a fly on the wall by the water cooler across the pond at Barclays. They had said they were willing to toss $20,000,000 per year for 20 years (that’s $400,000,000!) at Forest City Ratner for the honor of having their name and logo plastered all over a Gehry design. Becket? Who? Airplane hanger??! They have lots of web site updating to do over at www.barclayscenter.com.
[ Note: That $400,000,000 goes to Forest City Ratner, even though, technically, New York owns the arena. ]
If this is the kind of design $800,000,000 buys, I just cannot wait to see what we could get stuck with for $4,000,000,000.
