Renderings of luxury suites courtesy Barclays Center. Lawsuits from community and environmental groups, a tanking economy, and outcry over slavery money aren’t stopping Forest City Ratner from pushing forward with the $950 million Barclays Arena in Brooklyn, possible future home of the New Jersey Nets. Yesterday a luxury suite showroom opened in the New York Times building as an attempt to woo big-ticket investors and shift public opinion. Renderings for the proposed project have gone......

Bronx legend Clive Campbell, who as DJ Kool Herc is widely credited as one of hip-hop’s founding fathers, is not suing Jay-Z, developer Bruce Ratner and Barclays bank, as previously reported by the Observer online. The $5 billion lawsuit is being brought by a much less famous Brooklyn activist also named Clive Campbell, and the mix-up is probably a big publicity boon for his lawsuit, as it echoed far and wide across the internets before......

We noticed two YouTube videos, taken from an apartment with a view of Dean Street, documenting some late night construction activity at the Atlantic Yards site in downtown Brooklyn. How late? Well, one video takes place at 11:42PM (video) while the other is in the 4AM hour (above!). For reference, according to 311, construction hours are generally 7AM to 6PM on weekdays (there may be emergency work in the middle of the night, but......

A video artist and teacher visiting from San Francisco claims she’s the latest victim of police harassment of photographers in New York – and this time the overzealous cop may have been acting on behalf of Forest City Ratner, the corporation behind the controversial Atlantic Yards project in downtown Brooklyn. Katherin McInnis tells Atlantic Yards Report that she was on the Pacific Street sidewalk shooting “blurry, arty video” of the rail yards on Sunday when......

Jason Kidd trade rumors are hardly new, but this time, they're probably for real. Nets President Rod Thorn and the guard have made no secret of the seemingly obvious incentives for both parties to want a deal before the Feb. 21 NBA trading deadline. Richard Jefferson and Vince Carter, the younger parts of the Big Three, have expensive contracts. Kidd has had enough of playing well for a team that is inconsistent at best and......

A rendering of Brooklyn's proposed City Tech Tower, designed by Renzo Piano, at Tillary and and Jay Street sent some into speculation mode, especially since its height seemed to be up to 1,000 feet tall. Which would make just about twice the height of the 512-foot tall Williamsburgh Savings Bank, currently the tallest building the Brooklyn. However, the rendering of the building is apparently old. A representative at Forest City Ratner, the development company which......

Yesterday, people critical of developer Bruce Ratner's massive, billion dollar Atlantic Yards project held the Third Annual Walk Don't Destroy Walkathon. And leading opponent Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn held a press conference asking a new question that goes beyond eminent domain and the size and scale of the plan. Now the question is whether the Atlantic Yards will be safe from a terror risk. Earlier this week, Newark Police Director - and former NYPD......

The city and state have worked out their differences and will move forward on overhauling the 421-a tax abatement program for new development. The City Council had passed a version last year that would have increased the amount of affordable housing and limited how much of the subsidy could go towards luxury housing, but then the Legislature's version, passed in June, included more neighborhoods, more units available to people with even lower incomes, and $300......

The most charming weddings article in the NY Times today is not in the Styles section, but the City section: It's about the many Queens couples who get married at Queens Borough Hall, a three-and-a-half story brick building designed by William Gehron and Andrew J. Thomas. About 9,000 couples got married there last year, and after being married by a deputy city clerk, sometimes they pose in front of a retired Redbird Subway car that......

So this is how borough presidents wield power: Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz has flexed his BEEP muscles by dismissing five members of Brooklyn's Community Board 6 - and their common quality was that they were vocal opponents of the Atlantic Yards project. And City Council members David Yassky and Bill DeBlasio also didn't reappoint four other members who opposed the massive $4 billion project that has been the source of community tension. Gowanus Lounge......

One couple who got married this weekend had a leg up on many other brides and grooms: They know event planning. As Lauren Berger and Stuart Ruderfer's NY Times wedding announcement explains, Berger works for NYC Big Events, a city agency that works on landing and promoting high-profile events, while Ruderfer is the founder and CEO of Civic Entertainment Group, which creates marketing opportunities and events. And they met when Berger worked at Civic......

Yesterday morning, a 200-foot long chunk of a rooftop parapet on a Brooklyn building collapsed onto the street. While this would be news no matter what or where it happened, the building is the Ward Bread Bakery, which happens to be one of many buildings that are being demolished for the massive Atlantic Yards project in downtown Brooklyn. The Department of Buildings is inspecting neighboring buildings and 350 people, including those living in a......

As planned since a judge okay'd Forest City Ratner's demolition of buildings in downtown Brooklyn, Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn held a protest this morning. FCR says that they own all the buildings and therefore should be allowed to tear them down, but DDDB says one concern is that the land will remain vacant if the project doesn't happen. DDDB's Ron Shiffman told NY1, "I find it very ironic that the day after Earth Day......

The organizers at Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn are planning a protest for this upcoming Monday in reaction to a judge's ruling that allows Forest City Ratner to proceed with its demolition plans, refusing a group of 26 co-plaintiffs' request for a temporary restraining order. The protest will begin at 8 a.m. in front of 191 Flatbush Ave. between 5th Ave. and Dean St. The state lawsuit maintains that an environmental impact study of the......

A NY State Supreme Court judge ruled that Atlantic Yards developer Forest City Ratner must return two properties after deciding that the properties' tenant had improperly given them to the developer. You ask, how can a mere tenant sign over properties he doesn't even own to a developer for demolition? So do we! The properties in question are at 762-766 Pacific Street and 535 Carlton Avenue, an office building and a parking lot, owned by......

The Atlantic Yards Report's Norman Oder weighs in on the financial documents on the Atlantic Yards project. Developer Forest City Ratner only released three pages after Freedom of Information Act requests. Oder sent the docs to an affordable housing expert, David A. Smith, who was unimpressed and said, "They make one hungry for more detail, without which it is impossible to have a properly informed opinion." Oder also notes there are "unexplained gaps" in the......

"Across from the Port Authority Bus Terminal" is becoming the new benchmark in swank office location. Crain's reports that the New York Times Building (pictured right) designed by Renzo Piano and FxFowle has "breathed new life into the formerly moribund area" across from the Port Authority Bus Terminal. The proof? Sky-high rents from high-end corporate tenants. While Class A office space in the formerly "tawdry" district rented for about $30 per square foot in......

Developer Bruce Ratner has been letting the media know that construction will begin on the Atlantic Yards project. The controversial development will bring an arena for the Nets as well as commercial and residential space in the millions of square feet, as well as displace residents in its 22 acre footprint. Metro reports that for the first phase of prep work, a "temporary rail yard" will be set up on the eastern side so......

Today the NY Times introduces us to the man behind some of the city’s most boring buildings. Costas Kondylis, aka the Developer’s Architect, is a skyscraper-embracing traditionalist whose clients have included Donald Trump, Larry Silverstein, Related Companies (developer of the Time Warner Center), Forest City Ratner Companies (developer of The New York Times building and, of course, the Atlantic Yards project) and Vornado Realty Trust (the Penn Plaza towers), among others. Kondylis, who's worked on......

Yesterday, officials welcomed Barclays as the winner in the $400 million naming rights derby for Bruce Ratner's Atlantic Yards project. The NY Times reports that the Nets looked at various entities to pitch the idea of becoming lucky one to pay lots of money to have its name on the Frank Gehry-designed arena and decided Barclays Bank "needed a game changer, that they don’t have as big a presence or brand recognition here as......

The hard-hitting polemical film, Brooklyn Matters, lucidly articulates and amplifies the movement to stop Bruce Ratner's Atlantic Yards plan. Directed and produced by Isabel Hill, the film portrays the AY project as an outrageous scam to be perpetrated upon hoodwinked Brooklynites. Numerous interviews with critical residents, planners, critics, and elected officials portray a scenario in which a cynical developer and corrupt State agencies have hired gullible community allies and a star architect to conceal......

The City Planning Commission has spoken and says the Atlantic Yards Project should be reduced by 8%. This is only a "recommendation," but since the project's developer the Forest City Ratner had been considering a 6-8% downsizing, given all the public outcry, this seems like something the group may well do. Especially since the City Planning Commission "raved," the Post puts it, about the tallest skyscraper in the group, Frank Gehry's "Miss Brooklyn" structure that......

If you're a registered Democrat or Republican, get your primary shoes out. Here's a list of candidates (PDF), but the shortlist of primaries is: - Governor: For the Democrats, Attorney General Eliot Spitzer vs. Nassau County Executive Tom Suozzi - Attorney General: For the Democrats, Andrew Cuomo vs. Mark Green - Senate: For the Democrats, Senator Hillary Clinton vs. Jonathan Tasini; for the Repubilcans, John Spencer vs. Kathlen T. McFarland - Congress, 11th District in......

The NY Times is reporting that Atlantic Yards developer Bruce Ratner will cut the size of the project by 6-8%. How? By reducing the amount of market-rate housing. And also from the Times: "[Ratner's company] Forest City is also considering reducing the height of the project’s tallest tower, which is known as Miss Brooklyn, to get it under the height of the borough’s tallest building, the nearby Williamsburgh Savings Bank tower, according to real estate......

- Two groups, representing some big names in racing, are combining their bids for New York State's thoroughbred racing franchise. - A 24-year-old Harlem woman was found bound and stabbed to death inside her apartment yesterday. - Bloomberg has a new pet issue: Oil-rich countries using U.S. oil money to arm terrorists. Not running for President, eh? - The Tappan Zee Bridge has worms!? - Spitzer and Quinn want some more time to moan......

Public hearings tend to be impassioned and last night's Atlantic Yards gathering was no exception. With three community board hearings held simultaneously in different locales, we opted, sans body armor, for the homey confines of Community Board 6 (where we happen to live). And yet, sitting among a crowd of just 60 in the sterile Long Island College Hospital conference room with pale pink walls, a blank blackboard and a television with AV-style accouterments......

- Forgotten New York heads to Green-Wood Heights - A Jesus statue on West 33rd Street gets a plexiglass case since people keep stealing Jesus's right hand - Stone Phillips has a really nice apartment - too nice for those Dateline Internet perv stings, though - Dianne Wiest's daughter pleads guilty to robbing and roughing up a kid at her school (yes, it was an iPod) - No Land Grab has Forest City Ratner's......

We were biking down by City Hall park this afternoon and noticed they had finished installing the new Alexander Calder sculptures. They look good! Fun fact: the exhibit is organized by the Public Art Fund, but sponsored by Forest City Ratner, the company building the Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn. [Via NLG. Related: Calder.org has a great set of Alexander Calder images, and a biography of the artist.] UPDATE: here's a picture showing what......

- New Yorkers may not always be polite but New York City has become a shining example of how to fine your citizens into polite behavior. - The News reports that New York City Cafeteria food is fairly healthy. Fairly. - Yesterday a ship was grounded between Staten Island and New Jersey. - Looking at the tenuous relationship between bloggers and Forest City Ratner. - Forgotten NY hits up Jackson Heights. - "A severely......

$2.5 million a month. That's how much Forest City Ratner officials are claiming that they are losing on their $3.5 billion Atlantic Yards project now that it has been brought to a "screeching halt" by the removal of state attorney David Paget from the project. A judge said that Paget's conflict of interest (he represents Ratner in other matters) had a "severe and crippling appearance of impropriety. And it does sound like that to......