Barclays Center - History

History

Barclays Center was conceived by Bruce Ratner of real estate developer Forest City Ratner, the New York office of Forest City Enterprises, who acquired the New Jersey Nets basketball team in 2004 with the purpose of moving them to the neighborhood of Prospect Heights in Brooklyn and have them play in the arena that would be the center piece of his Atlantic Yards commercial and residential development project. The site is located adjacent to the Atlantic Avenue – Barclays Center subway station (2, 3, 4, 5, B, D, N, Q, R trains) and the Long Island Rail Road’s Atlantic Terminal in Brooklyn, and was one of the most transit-accessible locations in the city. The move marked the return of major league sports to Brooklyn, which has been virtually absent since the departure of the Dodgers to Los Angeles in 1957. Coincidentally, the original proposal for Brooklyn Dodgers proposed domed stadium was just north of the Atlantic Yards site, where the Atlantic Terminal Mall, also owned by Forest City Ratner, is currently located.

Barclays Center was initially projected to open in 2006, with the rest of the Atlantic Yards complex to follow. However, controversies involving local residents, the use of eminent domain, as well as a lack of financing, delayed the project. Due to these legal and financial troubles, the development deal seemed headed towards failure or collapse, and Ratner at one point explored selling the team.

On May 16, 2009, the arena's opponents' attempts to halt the project on claims that eminent domain could not take place, were thwarted, when a New York Supreme Court justice ruled in favor of Ratner. However, groundbreaking was still not a sure thing: Ratner claimed to have financing in place, but it was reported that he had gone to the MTA and asked it to lower the amount owed them up front. The developer successfully bid on the land for $100 million, but now was asking to lower the down payment to as little as $25 million, suggesting that his "in-place financing" wasn't so "in-place" after all.

Also, opponents appealed the court decision. A hearing for the appeal was scheduled for October 14, 2009, with a decision to be issued no sooner than November 25. Ratner needed to break ground by the end of the year. If the case were held up in court beyond December 31, 2009, he would have lost the right to tax-free bonds, which would be issued to make financing more feasible. Had he lost those bonds, it would have cost him about $150 million.

On September 23, 2009, Russian businessman Mikhail Prokhorov agreed to a $200 million deal to become a principal owner of the Nets and a key investor in the Brooklyn arena.

In October 2009, the Nets played two preseason games at the Prudential Center. The two preseason games were successful, and a deal that would have the Nets play at the Prudential Center for the 2010–11 and 2011–12 NBA seasons became more likely. Negotiations nearly fell apart, when the New Jersey Sports and Exhibition Authority refused to release the Nets from their lease at Izod. Negotiations resumed, and on February 18, 2010, the Nets finalized a deal that would move them to the Prudential Center in Newark, until Barclays Center opened.

On November 24, 2009, the New York Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the state using eminent domain for the project. Empire State Development Corporation Vice President Warner Johnston indicated that the agency is committed to seeing the project completed and said "we can now move forward with development."

Another potential roadblock to this development resulted from the Appellate Court's negative decision regarding a similar eminent domain case, brought against Columbia University. This landmark case could have given new life to the case being brought by the community group Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn (DDDB).

However, on March 1, 2010, Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Abraham Gerges struck down a challenge by property owners, regarding the state's use of eminent domain, which allowed the private property to be condemned. Groundbreaking for the project occurred on March 11, 2010.

On June 29, 2010, the first concrete was poured into Barclays Center's foundation. The arena began vertical construction on November 23, 2010, with the erection of the first steel piece. The arena topped out on January 12, 2012, and was opened to the public on September 21, 2012. It held its first event with a Jay-Z concert on September 28, 2012 even though it was not technically finished.

On October 24, 2012, the New York Islanders of the National Hockey League (NHL) announced that the franchise will be moving to the Barclays Center in 2015, following the expiration of their lease of the Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum, which the team has called home since its inception in 1972. Whereas the original design would have featured a hockey configuration with capacity typical of the arenas used in the NHL, the final design for Barclays Center is designed mainly for basketball use. It can nevertheless accommodate an NHL-size rink, though the arena will only be able to seat 14,500 fans in its hockey configuration, which would give it the lowest seating capacity in the NHL, 504 seats smaller than the current smallest NHL arena, the MTS Centre. However, there are plans to increase seating capacity for hockey to 15,000 seats.