Rhonda Sherman wasn’t always a Barclays Center fan. Having lived in Park Slope throughout the project’s development, Sherman says she was “pretty much opposed” to not just the stadium — home to the Brooklyn Nets — but Forest City Ratner’s entire Atlantic Yards complex.
Her concerns peaked after starchitect Frank Gehry dropped out of the project in 2009. Without Gehry’s aesthetic vision, Sherman worried the Barclays would be similar to Forest City’s Atlantic Center, which she calls “pretty awful … I was like, ‘Oh, gosh, Bruce Ratner is going to make another horrible building.’ ”
What a difference a debut makes.
Barely 12 months after Barclays opened its doors in September 2012, Sherman and her son have moved from Park Slope into a two-bedroom condo at 123 Fort Greene Place, less than two blocks from the new stadium. And so far, Sherman concedes, she’s “delighted” by her new digs.
“I’ve come around,” she says. “When I was looking [to buy at 123 Fort Greene], I walked by several times during concerts, and there was no noise that I could hear from Barclays.”
It was then that Sherman grew confident the Center would actually add to her quality of life. “I really opened up to the idea that I could take my son to basketball games, that we could go to shows.”
Sherman is hardly the only Brooklynite to evolve from Barclays naysayer to singing its tune. According to Corcoran broker Lindsay Barton Barrett — who represented the now-sold-out, six-unit 123 Fort Greene Place, which was built by her husband Alex Barrett, of Barrett Design and Development — Sherman’s trajectory has been common among Barclays-area buyers.
Over the last year, Barrett has sold units in three buildings close to Barclays. Initially, she says, concerns about the stadium’s opening “slowed things a bit.” But as buyers have gotten a chance to see the arena in action, Barrett says their fears have largely subsided.
She cites two three-bedroom apartments she sold at 328 Bergen St., a condo building in Boerum Hill. The first unit went on the market last September, just before the stadium opened, and sold for $875,000. The second, a similar unit, went to market in February, months after the center opened, and sold this summer for $996,000 — a 14 percent bump.
“Now, obviously, there are market forces at play,” Barrett says. “But I think that since [Barclays] opened, that question mark just went away and people view it as a positive for the neighborhood.”
Corcoran broker Mary Lowe saw an even more dramatic payoff from the Barclays debut.
In the last year, Lowe has sold four units in Prospect Heights’ 173-unit Newswalk condo loft building, which, at 535 Dean St., is less than a block from the Atlantic Yards construction site. The first unit, which she sold last September, went for $567 per square foot. The second sold in June for $719. The third went in August for $889. And last month, Lowe says, she put a Newswalk apartment into contract at $913 per square foot.
“The first sale, there were lots of questions from buyers, a lot of nervousness and uncertainty about what Barclays would become,” Lowe says. “My last sale, I got very few questions. Buyers can walk around the neighborhood, and they see more amenities, more services, more restaurants.”
The arena’s opening has also rounded out the area’s cultural offerings, says Halstead broker Isaac Halperin, who has sold units in Fort Greene’s One Hanson Place, which overlooks the arena.
“You have highbrow cultural activities at Brooklyn Academy of Music, and now you also have more mainstream entertainment at Barclays,” he says.
The arena is just the first element of the larger 22-acre Atlantic Yards site. When completed (which could be as late as 2035), the complex should feature 6,000 housing units. Forest City is now constructing the development’s first residential building, B2, a modular, 363-unit rental scheduled to open next year.
New buildings from other developers are also arriving in the area. In June, Two Trees Management won city council approval for its BAM South building, a 32-story, Enrique Norten-designed tower with 300 rental apartments along with performance spaces and a Brooklyn Public Library branch.
On a smaller scale, Barrett Design and Development is preparing to launch a new eight-unit condo development at 438/440 Atlantic Ave. this spring. And this week the city released info about BAM North II, a 109-unit building with 42 affordable units and a 2,700-square-foot restaurant space.
Of course, not everything about the Barclays arrival has resulted in a winning streak. In particular, parking has emerged as a major complaint, with residents now having to battle arena-goers for spots.
Parking is “very, very difficult,” says Aguayo & Huebener Realty Group’s Roslyn Huebener, a Fort Greene resident. Huebener says she returns home late on event nights to avoid arena traffic.
According to Forest City’s VP of External Affairs Ashley Cotton, the developer has invested in mass transit infrastructure — particularly the $76 million Barclays Center Subway Station — and marketing programs to discourage arena patrons from driving.
Nonetheless, a recent Department of Transportation study shows what many locals already know: That competition for parking around Barclays increases significantly during events.
And, with years of work still to go at Atlantic Yards, area residents will no doubt face additional future disruptions.
Still, Sherman says, she’s now willing to give the complex the benefit of the doubt.
“I was frightened, but Barclays turned out much better than I thought it would be,” she says. “I’m willing to be optimistically skeptical about the rest of it.”