Love that photo of the puddle under what I assume is the arch. I worked for the Prospect Park Alliance for a decade and I'm very familiar with Grand Army Plaza.
Also love the shot of the protective plywood on the brownstone steps, and that you opened the photos with YO and closed with OY.
Interesting piece, Rob, and thanks much for the reference and links.
A couple of persnickety clarifications:
--Atlantic Yards is a 22-acre project site, and the railyard is about 8.5 acres, so most of it would not be built over the MTA rail yard
--"Goldstein vacated his apartment in spring 2010" because he had lost title due to eminent domain," and by then was a tenant of the state. A judge helped negotiate a settlement and the timing of his departure, which was accelerated due to the developer's desire to close the deal to sell the NJ Nets to Mikhail Prokhorov.
Thanks for such taking on such a monumental task Norman! Very grateful to have it as a reference. I know, from your reporting, that the "blight" of the rail yard was used as the justification for the eminent domain so specifying that the rail yard was less than half of the site is an important detail. I'll clarify that Goldstein was compelled to accept a settlement after all legal challenges to the eminent domain claim were exhausted
I didn't point it out in the above-linked article, but as your essay+ photos shows, it's difficult to see how a neighborhood worthy of being a historic district could be dragged down by "blight".... rather than having an underdeveloped railyard put out for bid and having public agencies abate conditions like weeds and cracks in the sidewalk.
The Atlantic Yards saga should be an object lesson for everyone studying development (or how not to do development). On the one hand, housing and neighborhood advocates have spent literally two decades at this point stamping their feet until every last demand of theirs is met, to the point where nothing is getting built on most of the site. On the other hand, developers have spent two decades trying capitalize on what should have been the most lucrative developable location in Brooklyn, and yet countless schemes have lost these real estate experts zillions of dollars. As far as I can tell, no one has succeeded in getting rich on this plan, and what we're left with is a handful of meh apartment buildings, lots of empty and/or under-developed lots, and a generation of missed opportunity. And the Barclays Center.
I’m not sure you should blame housing and neighborhood advocates for asking the developers to fulfill the promises they made to get the project approved.
There have been winners: the 2nd/3rd owners of the Brooklyn Nets and the Barclays Center operating company, the Russian oligarch Mikhail Prokhorov and then the Alibaba billionaire Joe Tsai. Huge gains, thanks to the rising tide of NBA values and the state enabled arena in Brooklyn.
At one point when the owner of the overall project as well as the arena company were the same, it would’ve made it easier to cross-subsidize the affordable housing, for example, with the gains on the team and the arena.
Still, I have argued that New York State could use its powers to get some of the benefits from the arena/team.
I'm not sure that Prokhorov and Tsai are winners because of Atlantic Yards specifically. Both were billionaires before, and their investment in Atlantic Yards is a rounding error on their balance sheets. Inasmuch as they profited from their ownership of the Nets, that investment would have had huge returns regardless of where the team was playing.
I also think that it is fair to blame neighborhood advocates (as well as the developers and the state - lots of blame to go around). By holding up the development for, again, decades, they made anyone with the capital invest miss not one but two real estate booms. Their role in the process is to demand shake-downs from the actual owners of the site simply because, well, they rent property nearby. And as you noted above, there were neighborhood advocates who made off like bandits because of their "advocacy", which is never a good look. The advocates came across as selfish and greedy, which is tough when their competition in New York real estate developers. The result is that apart from the Barclays Center, which I think counts as more good than bad, a site with some of the best transit connections in the city has remained vacant for decades. Decades! Making sure that nothing at all gets developed there feels spiteful, and cloaking that spite under the guise of "advocacy" is toxic.
I agree that the Nets were a more valuable property in Brooklyn than they were in NJ (confirming all of my native New Yorker biases against the Garden State). But you're overlooking the fact that Prokhorov and Tsai bought the team long after the original real estate deal was made. Would you argue that any owner of the Nets into perpetuity owes the "community" freebies because a prior owner once did a deal with a government agency to develop the arena? I'm highly skeptical of any dealing between local government and major league sports - pretty much every deal that gets made should outrage the taxpayer (cough, Kathy Hochul, cough, Bills' stadium). But Prokhorov and Tsai aren't the specific billionaire villains you should be angry at.
As for "every last demand", I would point you to every single step of decades of litigation and every line of the community benefits agreements that got negotiated. I've heard community advocates complaining about the quality of the brick used on the buildings that actually got built. I'm not sure that issue got litigated, but it wouldn't surprise me given how litigious they are.
To be sure, self-appointed community advocates aren't the only bad guys here. I have plenty of bile for the incompetent developers and the feckless government agencies who dropped the ball so often. The only difference is that they don't demand that we think they're saints.
I'll confess that I only skimmed that (very thorough) post, but I think in many ways it proves my point that community advocates demanded the moon and then tied the project up in litigation for years when the (also villainous) developers didn't deliver the moon and the stars.
Fun fact: while the song Tom's Diner might not be about the Washington Tom's, Gus Vlahavas (who owned the restaurant for 60-some years) apparently insisted to the day he died that it actually was about it, not the one on the Upper West Side (despite the many lyrics obviously about the UWS). His proof for it was a letter he claimed Suzanne Vega herself had written him in the 90s telling him that it was actually about his Tom's, though he conveniently refused to ever show the letter to anyone.
Thanks, Rob. Tons of stuff in here I never knew about the neighborhood. I lived in PH for a year in the early 1990s. It was relatively inexpensive then ($700 for a one-bedroom in a nice building right off Grand Army Plaza), but a bit on the rough side. I was mugged twice near the Plaza, the only times in almost 50 years in NYC that someone went through my pockets without permission. Once, I had to hit the ground to avoid some crossfire shooting. Good times! I moved back to Staten Island not long after. Otherwise, the park was gorgeous, and that quick hop on the IRT to my job in Manhattan was sweet. I probably couldn't afford to live there now.
Somehow, the early 1990s doesn’t seem like that long ago, but I guess it really is. A completely different place now. It’s the landlords who do all the mugging these days
Yo! Great photos this issue. I used to think about the time it took to build great monuments and castles and such in our past, wondering how people could work on something for 20 years, 100 years, not guaranteed to see it completed in their lifetime. Here we see the same thing going on, something which I thought was fully in the past. Oy!
Thanks, Justin. I think about that all the time. And you're right about Atlantic Yards. In an era when skyscrapers seem to go up overnight, seeing a project (even one this massive and contested) drag on for over twenty years is a rarity.
I remember reading that the Brooklyn Dodgers were considering moving their stadium to where Barclays Center is today and Robert Moses put the kibosh in it because wow, what a terrible place to put a stadium, where was already total chaos in the fifties. So alas, they moved to California, a state that apparently cannot legally form their own sports franchises, so must purchase them from other places.
Whoa, I got punked. But maybe only a little. That article says that the Dodgers would have played 'across a wide avenue' so close enough? As much as I loathe Barclays I would be over the moon if we had baseball right there...
Great article. Although Red Hook may be the coolest in NY according to TimeOut, Prospect Heights is changing far more rapidly (mostly due to superior access). This entire section of North and Central Brooklyn is being rapidly developed — not only Atlantic Yards but new development plans for east along Atlantic Ave, north in Fort Greene as well as across Flatbush in Boerum Hill and downtown Brooklyn. The coming redesign of Flatbush will also affect the character of the neigborhood.
Thank you for a great post of my beloved neighborhood. I’ve been here since 2006 and watched it change over the years and I still think it is the best neighborhood to live in all of NYC. You are next to an incredible park, world class museum, huge library and some really great restaurants and shops. It’s also the neighborhood that reminds me the most of one of my favorite children’s books “A little house” — to watch these glassy towers go up around that tiny Baptist church building…I just hope that prices don’t get so crazy that Vanderbilt turns into a lot of shuttered storefronts and Duane reades like parts of smith and court street….the soulless stretches w no character….
If any of you neighborhood enthusiasts would like to help Friends of Mount Prospect Park deconflict Mayor Adams' unfortunately ongoing plan to erect a regional-scale poured-concrete skateboard facility on historic Mount Prospect Park, please get in touch at FriendsofMountProspectPark@gmail.com.
Another great post of a (once-)great neighborhood! I was hoping to see the front of my favorite library on earth, but I think you got a picture of the side.
The front of the library, unfortunately, is obscured by scaffolding. I’m sure I have an older pic but I could not find it. And good call about the side view! Thanks C.L.!
Can you tell me anything about the large painting of other paintings? It’s intriguing. Loved this week’s tour through history, real estate and people’s lives. I do, however, have an overwhelming desire to add a big exclamation point to the OY.
Love that photo of the puddle under what I assume is the arch. I worked for the Prospect Park Alliance for a decade and I'm very familiar with Grand Army Plaza.
Also love the shot of the protective plywood on the brownstone steps, and that you opened the photos with YO and closed with OY.
Thanks Ehren! When did you work there? Glad you noticed the Yo and Oy bookends!
I worked there from 2002 to 2011 or so.
Yes love that puddle image!
Interesting piece, Rob, and thanks much for the reference and links.
A couple of persnickety clarifications:
--Atlantic Yards is a 22-acre project site, and the railyard is about 8.5 acres, so most of it would not be built over the MTA rail yard
--"Goldstein vacated his apartment in spring 2010" because he had lost title due to eminent domain," and by then was a tenant of the state. A judge helped negotiate a settlement and the timing of his departure, which was accelerated due to the developer's desire to close the deal to sell the NJ Nets to Mikhail Prokhorov.
Here's the latest news: https://normanoder.substack.com/p/new-developers-seek-to-supersize
Thanks for such taking on such a monumental task Norman! Very grateful to have it as a reference. I know, from your reporting, that the "blight" of the rail yard was used as the justification for the eminent domain so specifying that the rail yard was less than half of the site is an important detail. I'll clarify that Goldstein was compelled to accept a settlement after all legal challenges to the eminent domain claim were exhausted
Thanks, Rob, the purported blight at the railyard and adjacent properties was pretty bogus: https://normanoder.substack.com/p/eminent-domain-reminders-from-battle
I didn't point it out in the above-linked article, but as your essay+ photos shows, it's difficult to see how a neighborhood worthy of being a historic district could be dragged down by "blight".... rather than having an underdeveloped railyard put out for bid and having public agencies abate conditions like weeds and cracks in the sidewalk.
“Mount Prospect reservoir became obsolete and was eventually filled.”
With mayonnaise?
Cronuts
Wow this issue was a banger! Will read it again next week!
Yeah I went a little long this week…
Nice write-up of the neighborhood near my office.
The Atlantic Yards saga should be an object lesson for everyone studying development (or how not to do development). On the one hand, housing and neighborhood advocates have spent literally two decades at this point stamping their feet until every last demand of theirs is met, to the point where nothing is getting built on most of the site. On the other hand, developers have spent two decades trying capitalize on what should have been the most lucrative developable location in Brooklyn, and yet countless schemes have lost these real estate experts zillions of dollars. As far as I can tell, no one has succeeded in getting rich on this plan, and what we're left with is a handful of meh apartment buildings, lots of empty and/or under-developed lots, and a generation of missed opportunity. And the Barclays Center.
Do better, people!
I’m not sure you should blame housing and neighborhood advocates for asking the developers to fulfill the promises they made to get the project approved.
There have been winners: the 2nd/3rd owners of the Brooklyn Nets and the Barclays Center operating company, the Russian oligarch Mikhail Prokhorov and then the Alibaba billionaire Joe Tsai. Huge gains, thanks to the rising tide of NBA values and the state enabled arena in Brooklyn.
At one point when the owner of the overall project as well as the arena company were the same, it would’ve made it easier to cross-subsidize the affordable housing, for example, with the gains on the team and the arena.
Still, I have argued that New York State could use its powers to get some of the benefits from the arena/team.
I'm not sure that Prokhorov and Tsai are winners because of Atlantic Yards specifically. Both were billionaires before, and their investment in Atlantic Yards is a rounding error on their balance sheets. Inasmuch as they profited from their ownership of the Nets, that investment would have had huge returns regardless of where the team was playing.
I also think that it is fair to blame neighborhood advocates (as well as the developers and the state - lots of blame to go around). By holding up the development for, again, decades, they made anyone with the capital invest miss not one but two real estate booms. Their role in the process is to demand shake-downs from the actual owners of the site simply because, well, they rent property nearby. And as you noted above, there were neighborhood advocates who made off like bandits because of their "advocacy", which is never a good look. The advocates came across as selfish and greedy, which is tough when their competition in New York real estate developers. The result is that apart from the Barclays Center, which I think counts as more good than bad, a site with some of the best transit connections in the city has remained vacant for decades. Decades! Making sure that nothing at all gets developed there feels spiteful, and cloaking that spite under the guise of "advocacy" is toxic.
A lot more than a rounding error. And the Nets would not have gotten the sponsorships, attention, ticket prices if they'd remained marooned in NJ. https://normanoder.substack.com/p/the-big-atlantic-yards-winners-billionaire
If you think advocates held up the development for decades, you need to be a lot more specific about "every last demand."
I agree that the Nets were a more valuable property in Brooklyn than they were in NJ (confirming all of my native New Yorker biases against the Garden State). But you're overlooking the fact that Prokhorov and Tsai bought the team long after the original real estate deal was made. Would you argue that any owner of the Nets into perpetuity owes the "community" freebies because a prior owner once did a deal with a government agency to develop the arena? I'm highly skeptical of any dealing between local government and major league sports - pretty much every deal that gets made should outrage the taxpayer (cough, Kathy Hochul, cough, Bills' stadium). But Prokhorov and Tsai aren't the specific billionaire villains you should be angry at.
As for "every last demand", I would point you to every single step of decades of litigation and every line of the community benefits agreements that got negotiated. I've heard community advocates complaining about the quality of the brick used on the buildings that actually got built. I'm not sure that issue got litigated, but it wouldn't surprise me given how litigious they are.
To be sure, self-appointed community advocates aren't the only bad guys here. I have plenty of bile for the incompetent developers and the feckless government agencies who dropped the ball so often. The only difference is that they don't demand that we think they're saints.
The CBA? https://atlanticyardsreport.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-atlantic-yards-cba-promised-path-to.html
I'll confess that I only skimmed that (very thorough) post, but I think in many ways it proves my point that community advocates demanded the moon and then tied the project up in litigation for years when the (also villainous) developers didn't deliver the moon and the stars.
Fun fact: while the song Tom's Diner might not be about the Washington Tom's, Gus Vlahavas (who owned the restaurant for 60-some years) apparently insisted to the day he died that it actually was about it, not the one on the Upper West Side (despite the many lyrics obviously about the UWS). His proof for it was a letter he claimed Suzanne Vega herself had written him in the 90s telling him that it was actually about his Tom's, though he conveniently refused to ever show the letter to anyone.
That's funny! I wonder how many people made the mistaken pilgrimage to Brooklyn over the years.
Thanks, Rob. Tons of stuff in here I never knew about the neighborhood. I lived in PH for a year in the early 1990s. It was relatively inexpensive then ($700 for a one-bedroom in a nice building right off Grand Army Plaza), but a bit on the rough side. I was mugged twice near the Plaza, the only times in almost 50 years in NYC that someone went through my pockets without permission. Once, I had to hit the ground to avoid some crossfire shooting. Good times! I moved back to Staten Island not long after. Otherwise, the park was gorgeous, and that quick hop on the IRT to my job in Manhattan was sweet. I probably couldn't afford to live there now.
Somehow, the early 1990s doesn’t seem like that long ago, but I guess it really is. A completely different place now. It’s the landlords who do all the mugging these days
Some absolutely beautiful colours, textures, reflections and shadows in this week's batch of pictures. You were blessed with amazing light!
Thank Jon! It helps to live within walking distance!
You may want to talk to this guy:
https://gothamist.com/news/running-the-rails-brooklyn-man-finishes-quest-to-jog-along-every-nyc-subway-line?utm_source=sfmc&utm_medium=nypr-email&utm_campaign=Gothamist+Daily+Newsletter&utm_term=https://gothamist.com/news/running-the-rails-brooklyn-man-finishes-quest-to-jog-along-every-nyc-subway-line&utm_id=524076&sfmc_id=53635401&utm_content=20251126&nypr_member=False
If I can catch up to him!
Yo! Great photos this issue. I used to think about the time it took to build great monuments and castles and such in our past, wondering how people could work on something for 20 years, 100 years, not guaranteed to see it completed in their lifetime. Here we see the same thing going on, something which I thought was fully in the past. Oy!
Thanks, Justin. I think about that all the time. And you're right about Atlantic Yards. In an era when skyscrapers seem to go up overnight, seeing a project (even one this massive and contested) drag on for over twenty years is a rarity.
This is so cool! Love it!👏👏😁
Thanks for reading!
I remember reading that the Brooklyn Dodgers were considering moving their stadium to where Barclays Center is today and Robert Moses put the kibosh in it because wow, what a terrible place to put a stadium, where was already total chaos in the fifties. So alas, they moved to California, a state that apparently cannot legally form their own sports franchises, so must purchase them from other places.
I had read that too, but, according to Norman Oder who has chimed in here and is the authority on all things Atlantic Yards, it's not true! https://www.cjr.org/behind_the_news/a_sports_myth_grows_in_brooklyn.php
Whoa, I got punked. But maybe only a little. That article says that the Dodgers would have played 'across a wide avenue' so close enough? As much as I loathe Barclays I would be over the moon if we had baseball right there...
Great article. Although Red Hook may be the coolest in NY according to TimeOut, Prospect Heights is changing far more rapidly (mostly due to superior access). This entire section of North and Central Brooklyn is being rapidly developed — not only Atlantic Yards but new development plans for east along Atlantic Ave, north in Fort Greene as well as across Flatbush in Boerum Hill and downtown Brooklyn. The coming redesign of Flatbush will also affect the character of the neigborhood.
Yeah it seems to be radiating out from Downtown BK. Red Hook is undeniably coolest
Thank you for a great post of my beloved neighborhood. I’ve been here since 2006 and watched it change over the years and I still think it is the best neighborhood to live in all of NYC. You are next to an incredible park, world class museum, huge library and some really great restaurants and shops. It’s also the neighborhood that reminds me the most of one of my favorite children’s books “A little house” — to watch these glassy towers go up around that tiny Baptist church building…I just hope that prices don’t get so crazy that Vanderbilt turns into a lot of shuttered storefronts and Duane reades like parts of smith and court street….the soulless stretches w no character….
Anyway thanks for a great post.
Such a great neighborhood, thanks Desiree! Pretty amazing that that little building (though not the church) held on.
What a great read!
If any of you neighborhood enthusiasts would like to help Friends of Mount Prospect Park deconflict Mayor Adams' unfortunately ongoing plan to erect a regional-scale poured-concrete skateboard facility on historic Mount Prospect Park, please get in touch at FriendsofMountProspectPark@gmail.com.
(Background here https://www.friendsofmountprospectpark.org/backgroundsummary. Press release and link to historic evaluation here https://www.friendsofmountprospectpark.org/historic-register-eligibility-designation:)
I meant to bring that proposal up. Thanks Hayley. It’s a pretty special little park as is.
Another great post of a (once-)great neighborhood! I was hoping to see the front of my favorite library on earth, but I think you got a picture of the side.
The front of the library, unfortunately, is obscured by scaffolding. I’m sure I have an older pic but I could not find it. And good call about the side view! Thanks C.L.!
Can you tell me anything about the large painting of other paintings? It’s intriguing. Loved this week’s tour through history, real estate and people’s lives. I do, however, have an overwhelming desire to add a big exclamation point to the OY.
It's a handball wall at a school that was painted as a memorial for a student who died from brain cancer. Here is the backstory: https://www.bkreader.com/arts-entertainment/memorial-mural-turns-prospect-heights-school-giant-work-art-6543042
Thank you.
That would throw off the YO!