For any visitor to Brooklyn in the past 30 years, the future of the area surrounding the confluence of the major streets of Flatbush and Atlantic Avenues has loomed like an unanswered question. There, in what could be considered the fourth-largest city in the United States, the Long Island Railroad disgorges in a complex where 11 different subway lines converge, all adjacent to the formidable barrier of the Vanderbilt rail yards. At the heart of what should be vibrant and urbane, punctuated by the optimism of the 1927 Williamsburgh Savings Bank tower, lies a kind of crummy blankness.
Enter the developer. Forest City Ratner Corporation, led by Bruce Ratner, proposed moving his NBA New Jersey Nets basketball franchise into a new arena in the borough, bringing big-time professional sports to a place still grieving the loss of the Dodgers in 1957. Moreover, the city’s strong need for housing, together with a resurgence in interest in Brooklyn (spurred in part by Ratner’s own investments in the borough), led Forest City to a strategic plan that has emerged as the impending Atlantic Yards development project. So far, so good.
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