Some elected officials are asking the mayor and governor to study whether Bruce Ratner's Atlantic Yards complex will be a target for terrorists.
The request expresses concerns that the streets around the project could draw drivers wanting to wreak 9-11 style havoc on the area around the project, particularly the arena that will be home for the Nets basketball team and will hold 18,000 people.
The letter to Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Governor Eliot Spitzer comes after the city of Newark decided to close streets around it arena, the Prudential Center.
“You can’t construct an arena and put it right against a street in a post-9/11 world,” Newark’s police director Garry F. McCarthy was quoted as saying.
Picking up on that assertion, Brooklyn elected officials requested a formal study on the matter as it would apply to Atlantic Yards. Signing the request were State Senators Eric Adams and Velmanette Montgomery; state Assembly Members Jim Brennan, Hakeem Jeffries and Joan Millman; and City Council Members Letitia James, David Yassky and Bill de Blasio.
“We want to know how the situation in Brooklyn differs from that which has just occurred in Newark,” Assemblyman Brennan said, according to The New York Times.
The Atlantic Yards project is one of the largest in the city's history and its basketball stadium is scheduled to be done and ready for fans in 2009.
(The above photo is of the current Atlantic Yards site. It is from citynoise.org.)
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