Nets, Atlantic Yards Ditch Gehry -- Get Gymnasium

From the Bergen Record:

The Nets have replaced world-renowned architect Frank Gehry as designer of the proposed Barclays Center in Brooklyn, they said today, in a move that could knock hundreds of millions of dollars off the $950 million projected price tag for the basketball arena.

Ellerbe Becket, a Minneapolis-based architectural firm, will take over from Gehry.


Gehry's design for the Atlantic Yards is similar to his other work and would be the most unique basketball arena to date. But, in a cost-sutting measure, the Nets decided with a company that proposed this beauty:

Nicolai Ouroussoff of the New York Times called this "new design by the firm Ellerbe Becket has no such ambitions. A colossal, spiritless box, it would fit more comfortably in a cornfield than at one of the busiest intersections of a vibrant metropolis. Its low-budget, no-frills design embodies the crass, bottom-line mentality that puts personal profit above the public good. If it is ever built, it will create a black hole in the heart of a vital neighborhood."

Damn, Nicolai. That's cold... but true.

Pray extra hard tonight, people. This cannot be built.


--Max Caster