http://www.brooklynpaper.com/stories...ll+articles%29
Save the date! Barclays Center to open on Sept. 28, 2012
New Jersey Nets player Kris Humphries stopped by the under-construction Barclays Center Monday to take a look at the future home of his team.
By Gary Buiso
April 5, 2011
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After years of false starts, economic malaise, local protests, lawsuits and atrocious basketball, New Jersey Nets officials finally unveiled some positive team news on Monday: The Barclays Center will be open on Sept. 28, 2012.
The grand opening of the $1-billion arena now under construction at the corner of Flatbush and Atlantic avenues will launch three weeks of concerts and events, according to Brett Yormark, the Nets chief executive officer, who led nattily attired team executives, the media, and Nets power forward Kris Humphries through the mud for a tour of the work site.
“It’s all coming together,” he said.
The grand opening will be preceded by public events and tours to introduce Brooklyn to the arena before the Nets 2012-13 season begins.
“The community will sample it first,” Yormark said, adding that construction is proceeding on schedule, with about 70 percent of the foundation done and 30 percent of the steel in place.
The building’s façade, designed by SHoP Architects, will be put in place beginning in July, and the roof would be set down the end of the year, added Linda Chiarelli, the deputy director of construction at Forest City Ratner Companies, the developer of the Atlantic Yards mega-project, which includes the new Nets home.
Nets tickets went on sale last week, another tangible sign that the arena will be a reality.
That’s good news for players, who said they are eager to win the borough’s loyalty.
“We want to have the best home court advantage in the league,” Humphries said before spinning a basketball on his index finger on the rubble-strewn spot that will one day be center court. “We are expecting to sell out form Day One.”
Humphries, a Minnesota native, said he’s yet to really hang out in Brooklyn, but plans to “explore it a little bit.”
Still, he offered a bit of advice to critics worried about traffic snarls once the arena opens.
“Just come to the game and you’ll be a part of the excitement,” he said. “You don’t want to be walking down the street and see everyone coming from the game — you want to come to the game and hopefully be a part of a great victory and a lot of excitement.”
Brook Lopez, the Nets superstar center, was scheduled to join Humphries for the tour, but did not show. Barry Baum, a team spokesman, said the big man “was delayed.”
Workers predicted that the arena would blow Brooklyn away.
”Its an absolute gem,” said Paul Wilson, general superintendent with Hunt Construction Group, which is performing the work. “It’s a gorgeous building.”
But building in a dense urban environment has been a challenge — particularly maneuvering the massive equipment to the site. “It’s tight along Flatbush Avenue,” he observed.
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http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...s_newyork_main
Turning Hipsters Into Hoopsters
Jason Gay
April 5, 2011
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On Monday I rode my bike in Brooklyn, because I live there, and because that's what terrible people do in Brooklyn—load up their hemp backpacks with baguettes and copies of "Das Kapital" and ride their bikes everywhere, ruining civic life in New York City.
But lo, the outlaw behavior gets crazier. I rode my Satan bike in a Satanic bike lane to see the Nets. The New Jersey Nets—currently rattling around the trunk of the NBA's Eastern Conference—are coming soon to the magnificent birthplace of Lena Horne and Woody Allen and the adopted home of a lot of dudes who can't stop yapping about the final LCD Soundsystem show. (To take every lazy Brooklyn stereotype to the extreme, please read this story while chomping an artisanal pickle. And growing a mustache. And converting your Satan bike to a single speed.)
This wasn't a Nets game, just a showcase with some steel and mud to excite the media. After years of community controversy—and some bad feeling still simmering—it actually is happening: NBA basketball is coming to Brooklyn, to the busy intersection of Atlantic and Flatbush Avenues. Monday it was announced that the Barclays Center is set to open for business on September 28, 2012. (The BC will have a "soft opening"—that's the Mario Batali version of a "soft opening," not the Boston Red Sox version.)
On hand was Nets forward Kris Humphries, who was fitted for a white hardhat and asked to pose for photographs of the growing coliseum. He wore a navy blue Brooklyn sweatshirt, and after he walked down a muddy ramp to the court level, someone pointed out to him where the center of the court was going to be.
"Lopez is going to be jumping the ball out here," Humphries said, referring to Nets center Brook Lopez.
Or maybe Dwight Howard tips it to Lopez? Any Brooklyn tipping won't come until another full season in Newark passes. Humphries took pains to say the Nets wanted to bring along all their fans from Jersey.
He said he wasn't sure if he would live in Brooklyn, though he'd heard "there are some real great places to stay." He said he didn't mind if parents wanted to bring their babies into Park Slope bars.
OK, just kidding about that last part.
But this is going to be a jarring shift for New Jersey. The Nets have long been tormented by their address; asking New Yorkers to come out to a Nets game is like asking them to help you move. Now Team Afterthought is set to plunge to the Red Hot Center of the Cultural Universe, the land of Talib Kweli and the Jonathans Ames, Lethem and Safran Foer.
Just wait: That first season, they are going to be spectacularly trendy. Everyone you know is going to go at least once. It will be weird.
And the Nets—or whatever Mikhail Prokhorov's team winds up being called—are not the only thing that's going to be happening at the BC. There will be concerts, boxing, tennis, a circus. They want NCAA Tournament basketball. You could probably sell out a Jennifer Egan reading.
And you will be able to ride your bike. Among Monday's revelations was that the arena—surrounded by train stations, but a lousy place to drive a car—will have parking for up to 400 bikes.
Four hundred bikes! There goes the neighborhood.
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NEW YORK is Back!
“Office buildings are our factories – whether for tech, creative or traditional industries we must continue to grow our modern factories to create new jobs,” said United States Senator Chuck Schumer.
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