Is The Business of Jay-Z Bad For Brooklyn?
One of the few Brooklyn politicians to endorse the project, John L. Sampson, the state senate majority conference leader on Atlantic Yards, stakes his support on job creation. “While the wrangling continues about how many jobs, how much tax revenue, and how many affordable homes that the project will generate, it is fair to say that the project has the potential to generate thousands of badly needed new jobs in Brooklyn where unemployment now stands in the double digit range.”
Jay-Z echoed those sentiments at the groundbreaking. “This project, when you look at the numbers at the end of the day, was so overwhelmingly in favor of the people: the job creation, the housing that’s being built,” he said.
Goldman disagrees, and in so doing joins many experts skeptical of sports stadiums’ contribution to the financial health of their host communities. Governing officials supporting the project are promoting the stadium as an economic generator, “despite the fact that the City Independent Budget Office said the arena would be a loss for the city,” he said.
“There is very little research to substantiate the public investment in the stadium as an economic development tool,” said Dr. Stacey Sutton, an assistant professor of urban planning at Columbia University and a Brooklyn native herself. “They don’t typically generate the jobs for the residents that they claim in the beginning, so they’re typically not good investments for public dollars.”
Even if there is a net benefit to be realized, Sutton is convinced that the stadium is best situated elsewhere in the borough. “We’re not trying to stymie development,” she said. “We’re trying to place it smartly, and if I had a say early on, I would have supported developing it somewhere [like] Coney Island.” Goldman adds that studies have supported this popular argument. “The city and state, on 3 different occasions over the past 30 or 40 years, had done studies of where to put an arena in Brooklyn and each study resulted in with those [analysts] saying that the best place is Coney Island.”
Aside from the controversial use of eminent domain and the process by which the project was greenlit, concerns range from increased congestion to the dilution of the borough’s unique aesthetic and dynamism. “Brooklyn has a very specific flavor,” said Bed-Stuy native Craig Samuels, owner of restaurants Peaches in Bed-Stuy and The Smoke Joint in Fort Greene, a direct neighbor of Atlantic Yards. “People come to Brooklyn for that. They want a place where they can decompress, where they know their neighbor, where they could walk down the sidewalk and feel as though they’re in a small town.”
As a business owner in the neighborhood, Samuels should be an example of the kind of person the projects’ supporters are claiming to help; however, he’s yet to be convinced by the rhetoric around the stimulus for the local economy. “Do I want to see Brooklyn progress? Absolutely,” said Samuels. “Would this be the best method for progress? I’m not so sure.”
Which begs the question, Does Brooklyn need this? The Atlantic Yards site is located in Prospect Heights, a community adorned by historical architecture, thriving small businesses and surrounded by vibrant (read: not blighted) neighborhoods.
While much of his global fan base wouldn’t know this, as a Bed-Stuy native raised less than two miles away from the development, it’s safe to say that Jay-Z is aware of the dynamics of these neighborhoods. “Rappers are in many ways journalists and ambassadors of hip-hop,” said cultural critic and columnist Tolu Olorunda. “So what people around the world know of Brooklyn is what Jay-Z has said about it, what Talib Kweli and Mos Def said about it, what Biggie was saying about it.”
