Design for Atlantic Yards Project Scaled Down

Architect Frank Gehry and landscape architect Laurie Olin present a more compact plan in Brooklyn. Also, two international architecture luminaries will design new towers at the World Trade Center site.

Atlantic Yards Plan Trimmed

The design team on the proposed $3.5 billion Atlantic Yards development in Brooklyn unveiled a new, slimmer design this spring. The new plan manifests the decision by Forest City Ratner Cos., the Brooklyn-based developer, to reduce the scope of the project by 475,000 sq. ft. and cut a total of 23 stories from the overall height compared to a plan unveiled last year.

Redrawn by Frank Gehry of Los Angeles-based Gehry Partners and landscape architect Laurie Olin of Philadelphia-based Olin Partnership, the new plan for the 22-acre site cuts down the height of several buildings and trims the number of market-rate units. The bulk of the cut was in residential space, down from 7.2 million sq. ft. proposed last year to 6.79 million sq. ft., all from market-rate space, according to Forest City, which reaffirmed its pledge to set aside 50 percent of the planned 4,500 rental units for low- and moderate-income families.

The change leaves 2,360 of the units as market-rate condominiums. The 850,000-sq.-ft. basketball arena and the amount of affordable housing units remain the same compared to last year's plan.

The new design still features 16 mixed-use buildings ranging from 190 to 620 ft., or 15 to 58 stories, anchored by the 18,000-seat arena that will house the National Basketball Association's Nets. While several buildings were cut in height, the tallest building, dubbed Ms. Brooklyn, remains 620 ft. in the proposal. Brooklyn's current tallest building, the nearby Williamsburgh Savings Bank, is 512 ft. tall.

A grassroots community group, Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn, which now counts Hollywood and New York celebrities and U.S. Rep. Major Owens on its advisory board, has criticized the development as out-of-scale with the predominantly low-rise neighborhood. It also has contended that the development will result in eminent domain proceedings to force resistant owners to sell parcels within the proposed site.

The Brooklyn group has also criticized the use of public funds to finance the project. Daniel Goldstein, a spokesman for the organization, called the new designs "window dressing." The opponents also point out that the new plan is still 600,000 sq. ft. bigger than a version unveiled in December 2003.

Rogers, Maki Tapped for Towers

British architect Lord Richard Rogers and Japanese architect Fumihiko Maki have been selected to design two towers at the former World Trade Center site.

The design by Richard Rogers Partnership of London for Tower 3 at 175 Greenwich St. will incorporate 2 million sq. ft. of office space, five floors of retail at the base, and an underground concourse connecting to the World Trade Center transit hub for the PATH subway system to New Jersey. Occupancy of the tower is slated for 2012.

Rogers, a winner of the Pritzker Prize for architecture who is best known for co-designing Centre Pompidou in Paris, is designing three other New York projects: a new mixed-use complex for Silvercup Studios in Long Island City; a 2-mi. stretch of parkland along the East River in Manhattan; and the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center expansion on Manhattan's West Side as part of a joint venture.

The design by Maki and Associates of Tokyo for Tower 4 at 150 Greenwich St. will include 1.8 million sq. ft. of office space, as well as five floors of retail and an underground concourse. Also a winner of the Pritzker Prize, Maki is best known in the U.S. for his design of the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. In New York, Maki is designing the proposed United Nations expansion in Midtown East.

A drawn-out renegotiation between the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the site, and Silverstein Properties, the site's main developer, has resulted in Silverstein handing over control of Towers 1 and 5 to the authority and promising to speed up the construction of Towers 2, 3, and 4.

Tower 1, dubbed Freedom Tower, was designed by David Childs of New York-based Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, while Tower 2 will be designed by British architect Lord Norman Foster of London-based Foster and Partners. Though Silverstein had announced that French architect Jean Nouvel would design Tower 5, the Port Authority has not revealed whether it may change plans for the site now that it has taken control. The overall World Trade Center site plan was put together by Daniel Libeskind, a New York-based architect.

Bronxville Town Hall Redesigned

An expansion and renovation project is transforming the 1942 Village Hall in Bronxville, N.Y., adding 5,000 sq. ft. to the 18,500-sq.-ft. structure and fully upgrading its facilities.

The $5 million project in the small Westchester municipality will enlarge spaces for the police department, village art gallery, and other features in the two-story building. The plans also call for adding handicapped accessibility and upgrading mechanical systems with features such as geothermal cooling.

Designed by Peter Gisolfi Associates of Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y., the project will also involve building a new slate roof to replace existing tile roofing and to match the village library across the street. The project is getting underway with St. Francis Construction of Larchmont, N.Y., as general contractor, Calgi Construction of Mt. Kisco, N.Y., as construction manager, Robert Silman Associates of New York as structural engineer, and Werner Tietjen of Rye, N.Y., as heating, plumbing, and electrical engineer.

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