Metro

Barclays Center in Brooklyn will create parking and traffic problems

‘UP’SET: A plan to stack cars near Barclays Center has Brooklynites fuming.

‘UP’SET: A plan to stack cars near Barclays Center has Brooklynites fuming. (Kendall Rodriguez)

An unconventional plan for parking at the new Barclays Center arena in Brooklyn has critics predicting a neighborhood traffic nightmare.

Stack-parking spaces — which use hydraulic lifts to stack anywhere from two to four cars atop one another — are expected to fill roughly half of an 1,100-spot parking lot going up next to the NBA Nets’ arena in Prospect Heights, according to renderings commissioned by project critics based on approved plans.

With nearly a square block— bordered by Carlton and Vanderbilt avenues, and Dean and Pacific streets— designated to be the only on-site event parking lot for many years, the renderings show what many feared: It’s mathematically impossible to fill a state-mandated 1,100 spots there without stacking spaces.

No current New York pro-sports venue uses stack parking.

The concern, neighborhood residents say, is that hydraulic systems and valet service associated with stack parking slow the entry and exit of cars from the lot, potentially creating bumper-to-bumper traffic on surrounding streets and sending antsy drivers to seek the area’s few remaining curbside spaces.

“Getting cars up and down after events and in and out of the lot will be a time-consuming, major undertaking that’s never been studied,” said Gib Veconi of the Prospect Heights Neighborhood Development Council, one of three civic groups that commissioned the renderings.

Joe DePlasco, a spokesman for arena developer Forest City Ratner, said the company agrees that reducing on-site parking is “important” — especially to “avoid” using “car stackers” and is “conducting an analysis that we hope will allow for this.”

Although the arena is set to open in September, the developer has yet to reveal a transportation management plan, causing neighborhood groups to fear the worst and lobby for permit parking.

New surface parking lots of this size require tree-lined medians to absorb heat and storm water, but that city law doesn’t apply here because it’s considered “temporary parking.” Under a scenario where the medians were enforced, the lot would only be able to hold about 500 spots, according to additional renderings.

A permanent underground lot is supposed to be built as part of the larger Atlantic Yards project. But with the development’s 16 residential and commercial towers on hold because of the slumping economy, the surface lot is expected to exist at least a decade.

Arena parking is one of several key topics expected to come up before an appellate panel tomorrow as the state tries overturning a July decision calling for a new environmental review for the larger, second phase of Atlantic Yards.

A state judge had found the Empire State Development Corp. illegally approved changes to the Atlantic Yards project in 2009 by relying on an out-of-date, pie-in-the-sky 10-year timeline rather than a more likely 25-year-old build-out.