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Community Corner

Coming Soon to Atlantic Yards: Stacked Parking Spaces?

New renderings show that developer Forest City Ratner will have to stack cars to achieve 1,100 vehicle capacity for lot near Barclays Center.

The Barclays Center may have to rely on stacked parking spaces, which use hydraulic lifts to place between two and four cars atop each other, to fulfill its promise of 1,100 parking spaces, according to the New York Post.

Atlantic Yards Watch, a partnership between local community groups like Boerum Hill Association, Prospect Heights Neighborhood Development Council and Park Slope Civic Council, commissioned a set of renderings that show what the parking lot would look like if it complied with the city's design standards. 

The Post says that the Barclays parking location has been able to skirt these design requirements thus far because the lot is considered “temporary parking"—even though the lot could be in place for up to 12 years, according to Atlantic Yards Watch.

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The proposed lot, called Block 1129 by Forest City Ratner, is bounded by Carlton and Vanderbilt avenues and Dean and Pacific streets.

Under Department of City Planning guidelines for surface parking, planting islands and trees are required in lots to mitigate storm water runoff and reduce overheating. Following DCP guidelines, with one tree required for every eight cars, there would be room for only about 500 parking spaces at Block 1129 if cars were not stacked.

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But critics fear that the stacking and unloading of cars would create a traffic mess in and around the arena. 

“Getting cars up and down after events and in and out of the lot will be a time-consuming, major undertaking that’s never been studied,” Gib Veconi of the Prospect Heights Neighborhood Development Council told the Post.

“The EIS and supplemental analyses contemplated the use of stackers in the interim parking lot on Block 1129," said Forest City Ratner spokesman Joe DePlasco on Monday. "However, I think everyone agrees that a reduction in the parking requirement on this block is an important goal and certainly a reduction to avoid the use of car stackers. We are conducting an analysis that we hope will allow for this.”

Atlantic Yards Report says that one of the alternatives that FCR has been working on is the construction of a modular, temporary parking structure, like those built by More Park.

Worried about the threat of traffic problems during basketball games, concerts and other major events at the arena, community groups and some local elected officials for the neighborhoods surrounding Atlantic Yards.

However, Assemblywoman Joan Millman, D-Cobble Hill, doubted that necessary approval by state legislators for the permit parking plan .

Paul Leonard contributed reporting for this story.

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