http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/...antic_yar.html
Architectural firm Ellerbe Becket tapped to reevaluate Frank Gehry's Atlantic Yards arena design
BY Jotham Sederstrom
May 27th 2009
A midwest architectural firm that has designed dozens of professional sports arenas could bump Frank Gehry and his glitzy arena vision from the Atlantic Yards project.
Ellerbe Becket, a Missouri-based firm, was tapped last fall to reevaluate the extravagant arena design Gehry conceived for developer Forest City Ratner to lure the NBA's New Jersey Nets to Brooklyn.
"We are working with Forest City," said Bill Crockett, Ellerbe Becket's sports director. "We've been working with them for some time, doing some analysis for them on the arena."
Headquartered in Kansas City, Ellerbe Becket is known for designs that are more cost-efficient than Gehry's projects, which tend to be full of ruffles and flourishes.
The firm, which has designed basketball arenas for the NBA's teams in Memphis and Charlotte, was hired around the same time Gehry axed nearly every one of his employees who had been working on the stalled project.
A Forest City Ratner spokesman Tuesday insisted the firm had been hired to implement cost-cutting measures for the estimated $800 million arena, but observers familiar with how Frank Gehry works suspect that could soon change.
"Because Gehry's designs are fairly complex, any real changes would probably end up looking like an Ellerbe Becket project," said a former Gehry architect who worked on Atlantic Yards until being laid off late last year. "[Gehry's projects are] relatively difficult to execute."
Ratner spokesman Joe DePlasco said a reevaluation of Gehry's design would be completed by July, at which point Ratner will determine whether the world-famous architect would remain on the project.
He insisted Gehry is now the master architect of the $4.2 billion Atlantic Yards project, which was expected to include the arena and 16 residential and commercial towers to be developed in Prospect Heights.
"As we have said repeatedly, we are talking to a lot of people in an effort to identify savings given the realities of the current economic environment," said DePlasco. "We should complete the process this summer and will have more to say about it at that time."
Daniel Goldstein, a member of the anti-Atlantic Yards group Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn, questioned Ratner's stated commitment to break ground at the site as early as September, even though a final design for the arena has yet to be determined.
"[Developer Bruce] Ratner claims he can finance [the] arena and break ground this coming fall," Goldstein said. "That's impossible. He doesn't even know who's designing the arena or what it costs."