Gehry: Atlantic Yards Project Won't Happen

Starchitect Frank Gehry really stepped in it during a recent interview with industry journal The Architect's Newspaper, admitting he doesn't think developer Bruce Ratner's $4.2 billion plan to build a Nets basketball arena, office towers and thousands of apartments in Brooklyn will become a reality. In an interview on the occasion of his 80th birthday, Gehry dropped the bombshell when asked about unrealized commissions he most wishes had been built: "The Corcoran Gallery in DC, the Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn—I don’t think it’s going to happen."

Gehry's team has designed and redesigned the basketball arena and other buildings as the project has spun its wheels under the weight of enormous community opposition, lawsuits, and, now, a foundering economy. In November, it was learned that Gehry quietly dismissed more than two dozen staffers working on fresh designs, then Ratner stopped all work while fending off lawsuits, one of which (a challenge to the development's use of eminent domain) is still winding its way through the courts.

Ratner has enlisted different architects to redesign the $950 million stadium at a lower price point, but the next question, according to Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn spokesman Daniel Goldstein, is, "Will Barclays pay $400 million for the naming-rights for a cookie-cutter concrete box rather than a landmark, Frank Gehry arena? They signed on for a Gehry arena, so it's very doubtful." But Ratner is keeping up a brave face; in a statement sent out last night, he deemed Gehry's doubts "understandable," and even acknowledged that "others have concerns about this project happening in the worst economic environment since the Great Depression." But excelsior! Ratner insists, "Atlantic Yards will get built."

And earlier this week Mayor Bloomberg also expressed confidence in the project's future, telling reporters, "It would be sad if Atlantic Yards gets built without the Gehry design, which would've been phenomenal for this city. I gather at this point it looks like that the only ways Ratner's going to get that done is to do it at a lower cost and not to do everything at the same time." As for Gehry, he's subsequently backpedaled on his comment, saying it was "misconstrued as a prediction," and that he remains "hopeful it will come to fruition."