Rally Against Atlantic Yards Demolition of Prospect Heights for Parking

There will be a rally next Sunday, April 15, at 2PM to protest planned demolitions of two blocks of buildings in Prospect Heights that will be used as parking lots. The rally is sponsored by Brooklyn Speaks and will take place on Pacific Street between Carlton and Vanderbilt Avenues — the location of one of the proposed parking lots. The rally will ask the state to stop the demolition of the two blocks in Prospect Heights--including the historic Ward Bakery--to create three enormous parking lots for 1,400 cars.

A member of the Prospect Heights Neighborhood Development Council says the lots "will blight Brooklyn for decades." The develope calls the parking lots "temporary" because they plan to construct the second phase of the project on them. Recently, however, project landscape architect speculated that Phase Two won't be done for 20 years or longer. Hence, two blocks of Prospect Heights will be vast empty spaces most of the time, except for game days, when they will be seas of cars.

Brooklyn Speaks quotes Andy Wiley-Schwarz, vice president of Project for Public Spaces, as saying, “No other large-scale project in the city has required the demolition of two city blocks for parking. This is 1950s-era Detroit-style urban planning.”