Trending
Tenants displaced by Barclays Center still divided as they prepare to move home
The 17 tenants who accepted a relocation deal to leave their homes on the site of what is now the Barclays Center may soon be moving back home. But seven years later, some of those displaced residents are still fuming, the New York Daily News reported.
Under the unique deal, Forest City promised tenants living within the blueprint of the new Nets stadium affordable units in the B2, the new 32-story residential complex in Atlantic Yards, when completed in the summer of 2014. In the interim, tenants got nearby apartments at the same rent, in return for moving.
Seventeen of the 209 residents living in the area took the relocation agreement, while others took a cash payment, which averaged around $85,000. At the time, many were scared that Forest City wouldn’t hold up its end of the bargain, but as move-in day draws nearer some are satisfied.
“I worried they were going to renege on the contract but they really stuck to their word,” Karl Nussbaum, a tenant who took the relocation offer, said.
But some of the displaced residents are still livid. “I did not want them determining where I was going to live,” David Sheets, who stayed in his 479 Dean Street apartment until 2010 when he was forced to take a buyout and move, said. “I wanted them out of my life. I didn’t want to be on the same planet with these people let alone having them suggesting where or not I was living.”
Forest City will break ground on what is soon to be Brooklyn’s tallest apartment complex, located on the corner of Flatbush Avenue and Dean Street, next month. The building will also be the largest modular residential tower in the world, with 930 prefabricated modules, composing 363 apartments, half of which will be subsidized with city affordable housing bonds. [NYDN] —Christopher Cameron