The Brooklyn Nets Arena is a proposed sports arena, business and residential complex to be built on a platform over the Metropolitan Transportation Authority-owned Atlantic Yards at Atlantic Avenue in the New York City borough of Brooklyn as a new home for the New Jersey Nets, currently based at Continental Airlines Arena in East Rutherford, New Jersey.
The complex is a project of Brooklyn developer Bruce Ratner , who acquired the Nets in 2004, with the purpose of moving them from peripheral New Jersey to this site which is the most centrally located for the New York City Subway in Brooklyn, and one of the most accessible in the city. The move would mark the return of major league sports to Brooklyn, which has been absent since the departure of the Dodgers to Los Angeles in 1957, whose proposal for a new stadium at the Atlantic Yards to replace the unprofitable Ebbets Field had been turned down by the city.
The project is endorsed by the MTA and mayor Michael Bloomberg, has been strongly supported by Brooklyn Borough Presdient Marty Markowitz , and is popular among some Brooklynites, but has been opposed by a number of community groups in the area, who point to the mixed successes of Ratner's previous projects, what they see as the unfair exercise of eminent domain to remove residents for a commercial interest, and the negative effects of increased traffic congestion.
See also
- KeySpan Park, a Coney Island minor league baseball stadium opened in 2001
- West Side Stadium, a proposal for a stadium and business complex over the MTA's Hudson Yards