The story of something "not quite right": Battle for Brooklyn documentary released on DVD (though Markowitz called it "pure propaganda")

The story behind Atlantic Yards, via the 2011 documentary Battle for Brooklyn is now available as a DVD and download.

It's unchanged in narrative--it ends essentially with the groundbreaking and arena in mid-construction. The movie is thus dated--the arena itself is now a juggernaut for publicity and a residential building, long delayed, is finally under way. Some statistics need an update.

Still, as I wrote in my review, it's "most valuable in the camera’s witness to the palpable insincerity and cold-blooded indifference of the developer-government alliance."

The addendum--an interview with the filmmakers (Michael Galinsky, Suki Hawley, David Beilinson), and protagonist Daniel Goldstein--offers worthy perspective. Hawley points out that, however much people cheer the arena, they know "something happened that wasn't quite right."

Indeed. Sure, arena-related traffic isn't as bad as feared, nor is there much crime, though the Times still soft-pedaled the impacts yesterday.

But the controversy will continue, so the story in Battle, and the skepticism it provokes, should endure.

After all, didn't developer Forest City Ratner get away with lying to City Council last month about whether their steel subcontractor was a union shop? Doesn't Forest City continue to say, with impunity, that it has no plans to hire the Independent Compliance Monitor promised as part of the Community Benefits Agreement (CBA)?

And didn't Brooklyn United for Innovative Local Development (BUILD), the Community Benefits Agreement signatory that was criticized in the film, close in November in the wake of funding troubles and tax arrears?

And what about that arena as sub-woofer, barely mentioned in the Times??

A Markowitz review

The movie got mostly good reviews, and the DVD box I have quotes the Daily News critic: "The movie has heart, soul, and chutzpah."

I don't think I'd seen a quote from Borough President Marty Markowitz until I found one in the 4/27/12 Forward:

“The documentary is pure propaganda and produced by filmmakers who have an agenda and are obviously opposed to the project,” he told the Forward. “No other single decision could have had as significant an impact on economic development in this area. The Nets will be the first professional sports team in Brooklyn since our beloved Dodgers left in 1957.”

Wow, a charge of "pure propaganda" from an elected official who claimed that "Brooklyn is 1000 percent behind Atlantic Yards"?

After all, hasn't the developer spent a lot more money on public relations, lobbying, and political contributions, which might add up to "propaganda"?

While the documentary is less balanced than C-SPAN, that doesn't make it propaganda. It means there's a point of view, based on reporting and analysis.

And it's a reminder that, however Markowitz cheers "his" beloved Brooklyn Nets, the government and media have not done their job--as I say in the film--to evaluate the promises and process behind Atlantic Yards. It was never a fair fight.

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"My Brooklyn" documentary tackles Downtown Brooklyn rezoning, gentrification; week of screenings begins tonight

There's much going on in the valuable, if flawed, documentary My Brooklyn, rather aggressively capsuled as "Unmasking the takeover of America's hippest city."

It will screen for a week beginning tonight at reRun Theater in DUMBO, with a special guest each night (tickets).

"My Brooklyn" includes an investigation of the Downtown Brooklyn rezoning, a broad look at the history of and changes at the Fulton Mall, an uneasy personal meditation by director Kelly Anderson on gentrification, and a discomfiting portrait of some class if not race divides in Brooklyn.

One lesson of the film, as with Atlantic Yards, is that land use decisions do not merely reflect the market but are steered by policy and money. (The AY doc Battle for Brooklyn is even more powerful in this matter.) In this case, the mayor's office worked with the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership, led by key landowners, to craft the rezoning plan.

The trailer


My Brooklyn trailer from Kelly Anderson on Vimeo.

The rezoning

After all, as the Brian Lehrer Show segment yesterday reminded us, Mayor Mike Bloomberg, endorsing the 2004 rezoning, declared confidently, "When completed, it will make Brooklyn a rival to Los Angeles for office space."

Nothing of the sort happened; there's been no market for office space. Instead, as Anderson stated, there have been 6,300 units of luxury housing, with real estate tax abatements. 

In most cases, there's been no accompanying subsidized housing as a tradeoff for the vastly increased value of the land. The wealthier demographic means that not only are national chains moving in to a mall previously dominated by urban wear and hip-hop gear, the smaller stores--like those marketing African-American books--get squeezed out.

As producer Allison Lirish Dean stated, "many of the buildings... would've been OK had there been more equity... It's more about who gets included, and who gets to be there."

The next mayor, she added, "needs to work off the existing strengths of communities" rather than, as the Bloomberg administration has done, "reduce planning to zoning."

Also see a HuffPost essay by Dean and this Q&A with Anderson:

The city encourages luxury residential development through subsidies to developers that are unnecessary in a hot real estate market like Downtown Brooklyn's. Residential subsidies totalled more than $200 million in 2011 alone, and they will continue for 10-25 years! This is money that could be distributed in ways that could benefit a wide cross-section of Brooklynites instead of just giving the most affluent residents a gigantic break on their real estate taxes.

The divide

Dean worked on a March 2005 Pratt Center for Community Development study of the Fulton Mall, which described a social divide between those who shop at the mall and those who live nearby:

This divide appears to be based as much on economic class as on race, as we frequently heard non-users criticize the merchandise at the Mall, saying it was “cheap” or “ghetto.”  Interestingly, young African-Americans also used the term “ghetto” to describe the merchandise, but when probed they explained that they meant this as a compliment.

The Pratt study  recommended improvements in the mall appearance, a mix of uses in the old buildings, an improved public realm for visitors, an effort to "promote and enhance the current retail themes," and to engage a broad and diverse group of stakeholders.

Not all of that happened. Why does it matter that poorer black residents feel a loss? Because as historian Craig Wilder explains in the film, public policy has long disadvantaged black Brooklynites.

Also see the July 2007 report, Downtown Brooklyn’s Detour: The Unanticipated Impacts of Rezoning and Development on Residents and Businesses, prepared by the Pratt Center for FUREE (Families United for Racial and Economic Equality). FUREE worked with Anderson and Dean on the film.

The Brooklyn Paper review, while praising the film, suggests it "feels sentimental toward an era when landlords torched their buildings and Myrtle Avenue was called 'Murder Avenue.'" (Here are reviews from the Village Voice, Slant, the Daily News, the Times, and Variety.)

I think the film could have been a bit broader, mentioning, for example, how the very popular Brooklyn Tabernacle Church moved into a movie theater that closed after a shooting, and changed some of the dynamic along the mall.

But the issues remain ever relevant. Do you know who's offering cheap financing for the new City Point complex at the site of the old Albee Square Mall, itself the site of an old movie theater? EB-5 immigrant investors getting green cards in exchange for purportedly job-creating investments.

The backdrop

Behind all this is demographic change. The New York Times reported last May:

Brooklyn, which accounted for 49,000 of the city’s 100,000 loss in black residents, experienced its own version of suburbanization as blacks moved from the borough’s densely populated center to the fringes in Canarsie and East New York.
Blacks were replaced by younger non-Hispanic whites — in the Bedford portion of Bedford-Stuyvesant, the white share of the population soared, from 4 percent to 26 percent — and to a lesser extent by Hispanic and Asian New Yorkers along a corridor flanking the L subway line. Brooklyn gained white, Hispanic and Asian residents.

The Daily News reported:

A surge in the number of black residents has made East New York one of the fastest growing neighborhoods in Brooklyn, even as the black population across the borough and citywide fell dramatically.
The black population increased by 13% in East New York from 2000 to 2010, according to a new analysis of census data by the Department of City Planning - absorbing many residents who were priced out of other neighborhoods as the borough’s black population fell by 6%.
Moving out of neighborhoods like Bedford Stuyvesant, some black residents left the city altogether, decamping for the suburbs or the South - but many of those who stayed in the borough ended up in East New York.

And how about this, from the Daily News last May: I scream, you scream: Prospect Heights’ pricey ice cream battle: Waits up to 30 minutes for $4.49 ice cream cone attracting nabe newcomers:

A pricey foodie ice cream wave has hit Prospect Heights with competing shops taking advantage of the once-gritty neighborhood’s rapid transformation into Brooklyn’s latest family utopia.
Hot weather crowds are packing into the stores where customers can wait up to 30 minutes for scoops of the highbrow organic and handmade treats that cost as much as $4.49 for a small single cone.
The confection craze is a reflection of the area’s change: Prospect Heights’ population of whites under the age of 18 doubled from 2000 to 2010, while the number of young blacks shrank by half, U.S. Census data shows.

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Barclays Center round-up: Gratz on the bait-and-switch; gluten-free; blight on the sidewalk; costly suite snacks; a book about the Nets' first season; update on activists

Author and urbanist Roberta Brandes Gratz wrote a 10/5/12 column on Citiwire, The Great Brooklyn Bait-and-Switch:

With at least $305 million in public subsidies already (yet no Tea Party complaints have been heard here), Ratner promises to break ground in December and meet a legal deadline on the first residential tower, with additional public subsidies which might provide 181 affordable units. Note, however, that 171 affordable units were bulldozed to make way for the project. Public funding here, in the form of tax-exempt bonds, means less of that limited funding will be available elsewhere in the city, where it could buy more units. No Ratner money will go into fulfilling what is a fraction of that original commitment for 2,250 units.
But the real point in all of this – if you can look past the broken promises, excessive use of public funds and a process in which this huge development was never approved by an elected government body – is that it uses a failed and destructive approach to urban change. Much more is lost than is gained, including the opportunity to do it right with minimum damage.
From the start, a wrongful definition of blight was applied.

...By the definition of “blight” allowed here, most of Brooklyn and many areas of New York City could be declared blighted. Not much seems to stand in the way of this bad project beyond occasionally successful civic resistance, rare court victories or the possibility of financial implosion.

The Brooklyn Paper

Synergy in this week's Brooklyn Paper at right, with an article about the Barclays Center plus a sponsored news article.

(Really, the opening of the arena should've been front-page news, though it was teased there, with the gluten-free article below on the front.)

Going gluten-free

The Brooklyn Paper reports, in a 10/4/12 article headlined Barclays Center concession will serve organic, gluten-free food:

Snack vendors at the Barclays Center plan to serve organic pumpkin seeds and gluten-free beer and hot dogs from a portable cart, says the company providing grub at the new home of the Brooklyn Nets.
The firm Levy Restaurants decided to make the new arena the only NBA stadium with an organic-and-gluten-free concession after conducting a survey that revealed a demand for foods that would fit right in on the shelves of the Park Slope Food Co-op.
...The diet-conscious cart-on-wheels will feature a Kinnikinnick-bunned hotdog that’s gluten free ($5.95), cheesy popcorn that’s fine for folks suffering from celiac disease ($4.95), and Redbridge beer made without wheat or barley ($9) after the basketball season begins this fall.
...Levy Restaurants previously set up gluten-free carts baseball and soccer stadiums in Seattle, Chicago, and Salt Lake City — but the concession will be the first of its kind for hoops fans.

The New York Post reported, in a 10/5/12 article headlined Nice feed by Nets:

The gluten-free offerings will include beer ($9), hot dogs ($5.25) and chocolate bars and other snacks ($4.75) as part of a well-received effort by arena officials to offer Brooklyn-centric food.
...News of the health-conscious Barclays food received rave reviews from arena neighbors yesterday — especially members of the Park Slope Food Co-op.
“Normally, I would never buy food in an arena because it’s junk, but it’s really exciting to know there’s healthy food there,” said Barbara Mazor, who led the fight earlier this year to block a controversial boycott of Israeli products at the cooperative.

Nothing like beer, hot dogs, and chocolate bars when you're going "healthy."

The soda ban

The Village Voice reported 10/2/12, You Can Get a 1,200-Calorie Burger at Barclays Center. But You Can't Get a 20-Ounce Soda:

Mayor Mike Bloomberg's ban on big-boy cups for non-diet sodas at New York City restaurants, theaters, and sports venues has yet to take effect. However, the newBarclays Center arena in Brooklyn already is voluntarily adhering to the new guidelines, which limit cup sizes for "sugary drinks" to 16 ounces.
But don't worry, fatsos -- while you can't get a 20-ounce Pepsi, you can still get a 1,200-calorie burger.
...But let's say you want to keep things simple with your standard Nathan's hotdog -- you're still consuming more calories (296) than you would if you were to drink a Bloomberg-banned 20-ounce Pepsi, and that's assuming you add no condiments.
In fact, you'd be pretty hard pressed to find any food item at Barclays Center that has fewer calories than a 20-ounce Pepsi...

Some costly suite snacks: $46 for peanuts

Ryan Sutton writes on The Price Hike:

We know these are large format snacks, but ask yourself this: Did you ever drop $26-$46 on peanuts while entertaining friends? Didn’t think so. So we’ll call this one a STRONG SELL. Oh, prices are not reflective of a 20% administrative charge.
Allow us to suggest a menu addition: SMALLER PORTIONS, LOWER PRICES.
FYI: A reply to this post by another Tumblr user says that these are standard prices for corporate suite dining. Be that as it may, we’re gonna say $46 is still rather spendy for peanuts. Just because everyone else jumps of a bridge… .

From Michael D.D. White's Noticing New York

9/29/12: Report: How The Times Expunged Its Own First Draft Of History On “Barclays” Center Opening To Replace It With The Pro-Ratner Narrative It Favors

10/1/12: New York Times Ghost Article: The Searchable Remnants On The Web Of Banished (Anti-Ratner/Anti-Jay-Z?) “Barclays” Center Opening Article

10/2/12: Scourge of Sidewalk Cracks, Once Used As Excuse To Clear Neighborhood For Ratner, Now In Evidence At Brand-Spanking-New “Barclays” (LIBOR) Center:

The frightful scourge of sidewalk cracks, the excuse that was used to clear a neighborhood for its takeover by Forest City Ratner is now very much in evidence around the brand-spanking-new Ratner/Prokhorov “Barclays” (Libor) Center arena. Oh my! Wasn’t everyone promised that if the neighborhood were eliminated, Ratner’s munificence, exemption from taxes, and superior ownership abilities would mean that we wouldn’t have to continue to live with sidewalk cracks?

10/3/12: Media and Activists: Putting The News Of The Jay-Z Concert Opening Of The “Barclays” Center In Context:

Until Ratner’s monopoly is taken away from him nobody has the power to enforce promises, to demand quality, keep costs in check, or to get back our public streets and sidewalks.

The Observer on the protests

The Observer's Kit Dillon wrote A Party, a Vigil, a Protest, a Concert: the Festivities and Fanaticism of the Barclays Center Opening, dated 9/28/12 but clearly updated after a few days:

But the fears of New York surrounding Hurricane Barclays may have been much like fears of New York surrounding another recent hurricane warning, memorable more for it’s bluster than it’s blow.
To date Jay-Z has given three concerts in a staggering series of eight nearly back to back shows (he is taking one night off on Oct. 2, which seems a rational step for a 42 year old man) and so far they have gone off with only minor hitches and no major traffic jams. There did seem to be an unconfirmed police ramp-up on Saturday to help control the after show crowds that poured across Atlantic Avenue, either unknowing or uncaring of the Escher like crosswalks that zig-zag across the strange intersections created by the arena and the confluence of so many major streets.
Likewise there were sporadic reports of idling limos and tour buses encroaching on the once quiet residential side streets. A quiet, which is in all likelihood a thing of the past for this neighborhood. Then again, Park Slope is still a part of New York.
...Not that Barclays didn’t find a way to reach out and perturb a greater Brooklyn by firing a not insubstantial, FAA-permit-required laser at the Prison Ship Martyrs Monument in nearby Fort Greene Park. It was a move that makes sense in it’s necessity (you can’t have a laser just shooting anywhere it pleases) but staggers in its acute cultural and historical insensitivity. It was a direct hit that was reported both by Norman Oder and the Post. “You wouldn’t want to see a laser on the Vietnam Monument in Washington,” Ruth Goldstein, founding chairwoman of the Fort Greene Park Conservancy, told the tab.
It was new new Brooklyn taking a shot at old new Brooklyn and old old Brooklyn all in one single, surprising, impressive, incipient millisecond.

A book about the Nets' first season

The New York Observer reported 9/28/12, Jake Appleman Nets a Book Deal

Sportswriter Jake Appleman has inked a deal with Scribner to cover the Brooklyn Nets debut season. Mr. Appleman has written about basketball for The New York Times, NBA.com, Vibe and NBC Sport and is a senior writer at SLAM magazine. Mr. Appleman tweeted the news this afternoon.
Other sportswriters throughout Brooklyn are surely kicking themselves right about now for not writing that book proposal they thought of back when they first heard that the Nets were moving to Brooklyn.
...Update: “Inside the Nets first season, set to the backdrop of gentrifying Brooklyn,” Mr. Appleman described the book in an email. “It’s been a blast so far. Very excited for the season

MSG v. Barclays

From the New York Post, 10/4/12, MSG belts Barclays with its own suite life:

Just days after the rapper helped Brooklyn’s Barclays Center steal some of the city’s entertainment buzz with a gala opening, Madison Square Garden is moving to prove it is still the center of the sports and concert universe.
The World’s Most Famous Arena is ready to take the wraps off 58 new lower-bowl, open-air luxury suites — and executives are boasting the spaces, up to 620 square feet, top anything Barclays is offering.
...[Hank] Ratner is referring to the fact that in the new Madison Level Suites, the court or rink is visible from any point inside the suite.
That is not true in any other suite around the New York City area — even Barclays’ much-ballyhooed Jay-Z-designed Vault suites.
The new, closer-to-the-action Garden luxury suite — just 23 rows away from the court versus five stories away for the older suites — are part of the ongoing $1 billion top-to-bottom transformation project.
Ratner declined discussing prices, but industry sources said the “Madison Level Suites” have leased for up to $700,000 a year. That’s nearly twice the rate of the old suites and much more than what Barclays was able to charge.

USA Today on Ratner and the Nets

USA Today reported 9/27/12, Nets return major pro team sports to Brooklyn:

"Even I underestimated the power of Brooklyn. Brooklyn is the only place that's a non-city or non-state in this country that has its own team, and it's the only place that could," Ratner said.
With 2½ million residents, Brooklyn is the most populous of the five New York boroughs. Alone, it would be the USA's fourth-largest city.
"As big and as diverse as Brooklyn is, it was truly underserved in the area of sports and entertainment," Yormark said.
The Nets are on the verge of becoming a serious moneymaker.
"By virtue of this move, the Nets move into the top tier of performing teams in terms of revenue," Silver said. "While it's an enormously expensive venture, there's no question, over time, this will grow revenue for the benefit of the league and for the players and potentially set a new standard for teams around the league."
...Ratner won enough court and public relations battles to proceed. Many still oppose the development, and he realizes he won't win over everyone: "You had a controversy, and it was like watching an election. Who's going to win? It heightened the interest. There is some serendipity that, in a 10-year period, Brooklyn changed dramatically. It was remarkable before, but now it's beyond anything anybody could have imagined."

An update on "activists": Goldstein, Galinsky, O'Finn, Oder 

The Indypendent, 9/28/12 Activists Respond to Barclays Center Opening, some excerpts:

How are you feeling now that the arena's opening? 
[Daniel Goldstein, DDDB] I feel that Brooklyn has been swindled. And while I completely understand that there is some level of excitement about the arena, it doesn't justify the process by which we came to this day: the ongoing broken promises and the failures to deliver the promised and critically needed affordable housing and living-wage jobs. Sadly, this is no surprise to opponents of the project. While I'm not bitter about the arena, I am bitter and enraged about most of the media coverage of the Barclays opening, because most of these reporters are newbies. It's as if collective amnesia has hit the press corps, and few remember the corrupt manner in which this arena came to be. 

How are you feeling now that the arena's opening?
[Donald O'Finn, Freddy's Bar & Backroom] There's not much to say now; eulogies, perhaps. The corporations and the politicians won, the neighborhoods and the small business owners lost. I feel it's sad; I don't think that any small communities put up any better of a fight than we did against overwhelming odds, and I am very proud of that. The battle was lost, but the war continues, a war fought all over this country and world. And a war that we best not lose, or no one's property will be safe...
I always said the best neighborhoods were always the ones that grew organically from the efforts, struggles and lifetime investments of small time entrepreneurs, not large corporations.  

How are you feeling now that the arena's opening?
[Norman Oder] I'm a little dismayed that you're not asking me about the ongoing series, "Atlantic Yards & the Culture of Cheating," on my blog. The round-up page is here.

I don't think I count as an "activist."

Barbra in the Forward

In the 10/4/12 Forward, On a Clear Day You Can See Flatbush: Memories Light the Corners of Streisand’s Old Neighborhood:

Was the diva’s upbringing really as grim as she makes it sound? We’ll probably never know. But Streisand did “get out,” of course. In October, after a half-century spent performing anywhere but her native borough, Streisand returns to Brooklyn to perform at the Barclays Center, just blocks from where she was raised. Here, in honor of Streisand’s homecoming, is a tour of her old haunts — from the yeshiva where she sang her first concert to the Chinese restaurant where she first tasted moo shu pork.
There’s beauty in these streets, too, Barbra.

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