Category: New York Knicks Blog

The New York Times (Charles V. Bagli) reports: It’s official. Frank Gehry is out as the architect for the Barclays Center, an exotic, $1 billion glass-walled arena that is the centerpiece of the long-delayed and financially challenged Atlantic Yards development in Brooklyn, according to government officials and real estate executives who have been briefed on the plans. The design by Mr. Gehry, the award-winning architect behind the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles and the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, has been replaced with a less-expensive, $800 million arena. The new design comes from Ellerbe Becket, an architectural firm based in Kansas City, Mo., that specializes in convention centers, stadiums and arenas, and designed Conseco Fieldhouse in Indianapolis, where the Indiana Pacers play.

New York Newsday (Arthur Staple) reports: Madison Square Garden’s renovation won’t be completed until 2012, a slightly altered timeline announced Tuesday than the one Garden executives put forth a year ago in introducing a $500-million overhaul of the arena. “We made sure to get the planning right, because we don’t want to change it midway through,” said MSG and Cablevision vice chairman Hank Ratner, who Tuesday showed off to reporters the Garden’s Presentation Center, a state-of-the-art area near the Seventh Avenue entrance that will open this summer to give fans a preview of the renovations. Work has not yet begun on the renovation, though roughly 150 MSG Network and Garden facilities employees will move across the street to 11 Penn Plaza so that their offices can be converted into concourse space in the revamped arena.

The New York Daily News (Owen Moritz) reports: Madison Square Garden will undergo a $500 million top-to-bottom renovation that will feature wider concourses and more bathrooms in addition to a giant “supersuite” and lavish corporate boxes. There will even be a party deck and two 10th-floor bridges running the length of the arena with overhead views of the playing surface. The renovation will include 20 courtside “event-level suites” complete with kitchens and lounges. One top-of-the-line suite will even have a working fireplace.

The New York Times (Charles V. Bagli) reports: An hour after learning that a state appeals court had dismissed a major challenge to his long-delayed Atlantic Yards development project, the developer Bruce C. Ratner said he planned to break ground by October on an $800 million basketball arena for the New Jersey Nets in Brooklyn. The 20,000-seat arena is only one piece of a proposed 22-acre development at the intersection of Flatbush and Atlantic Avenues that would include an office tower and more than 6,000 apartments, including as many as 2,250 for low- and middle-income families. Given the anemic economy, the housing and the commercial building may have to wait for some time. But Mr. Ratner said he planned to complete the design for the arena, obtain final government approvals and issue the bonds for the project by fall.