“Welcome To Brooklyn” Where the Game Is Frivolous Spending On Boondoggle Basketball Arenas- Getting the Image Right

Just the other day we were out crossing the Pulaski Bridge that connects North Brooklyn to Queens when lo and behold what did we espy but a “Welcome to Brooklyn” sign set up to flog the Forest City Ratner/Mikhail Prokhorov Nets basketball arena to the traffic going to and fro!

The sign was doubled-sided so it presented the same “Welcome to Brooklyn” message whether you were coming to or leaving Brooklyn (the shot above is the “Welcome to Brooklyn” you see when leaving Brooklyn- the shot below is what you see when arriving), but we found ourselves transfixed more by a second anomaly of this image that wasn’t gotten right: The picture is the really preposterous old rendering of the arena which by now ought to be discredited in the minds of most people. I am surprised it hasn’t been discarded. . . .

. . . For one thing, the preposterous old rendering used in the billboard still has, in the background, the notorious ghostly “vaportechture” that stands in for the buildings that aren’t being built, while blotting out both the real neighborhood being destroyed and the developer-created parking lots that are likely to be around for decades. The rendering also substituted a whoosh of orange glow for the inevitable slow-moving traffic jams that will surround the arena.

The fact is, after that old rendering came out quite a few of us spent a fair amount of time working on a corrected version of what things are apt to really look like.

With collaborative corrective efforts, the rendering thus went from this fantasy:

To this likely reality:

And thereupon it seemed like the image really needed to be overlaid with some visual reminders about how the arena New York taxpayers are subsidizing for the subsidy-collecting Bruce Ratner and his Russian oligarch financial pal will be a significant financial net loss* for the public.

(* It is true that an updated calculation of the extent of the net loss needs to be prepared and in this regard it is telling that the public officials responsible have not disseminated and probably not bothered to calculate such an update.)

For more on this see:

Friday, October 30, 2009
Getting The Image Right: Forest City Ratner’s Proposed Atlantic Yards Nets Basketball Arena

Saturday, September 12, 2009
Really Now! The subject of Rendering the Atlantic Yards Arena Realistically Revisited

All that remains now is to get this image up on a billboard so that all those entering or leaving the borough of Brooklyn will get the message (click to enlarge).