Forget The 1,500 Construction Jobs, This Is Sure To Provide Beat Reporters With Years Of Work

Sure to occupy the mental space of Brooklynites for years to come, the first in a series of high-profile, high-intensity meetings about the controversial Atlantic Yards project took place yesterday:

An overflow crowd vehemently laid out the pros and cons of the proposed Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn for seven hours last night at a raucous public meeting. Their passions suggested that opinions had only hardened in the three years since development plans were announced.

“This project essentially separates the neighborhoods of Brooklyn rather than uniting them,” said Jonathan Barkey, a photographer, brandishing posters he had generated of proposed skyscrapers towering over existing brownstones and playgrounds. “I would call this development a Great Wall of Brooklyn.”

Bring it on, said Dan Jederlinic, an ironworker. “Bulldozers are coming,” he warned the project’s opponents to whooping applause, “and if you don’t get out of the way they’re going to bulldoze right over you!”

. . .

Umar Jordan, 51, a black resident of Bedford-Stuyvesant, said he had come to “speak for the underprivileged, the brothers who just got out of prison,” and he drew loud cheers when he mocked opponents who had moved to Brooklyn only recently. Mr. Jordan suggested that they “just go back up to Pleasantville.”

“People complaining about the size of a building, the height of this or that?” Mr. Jordan said. “Welcome to the hood; this is Brooklyn!”

. . .

Outside the auditorium, meanwhile, hundreds from the housing group Acorn, which supports the project, chanted, “This is our neighborhood, and we know what is good.”

The Rev. Herbert Daughtry, a civil rights activist whose church nearly abuts the project site, was talking to reporters about the need for lower-income housing when Mr. Barkey, the photographer, interrupted him.

“Like this?” Mr. Barkey said sarcastically, pointing to his posters of huge, blank building faces towering over a neighborhood. “This is rich folks’ housing. Look at these walls.”

Mr. Daughtry was not impressed. “Don’t you understand that all we’ve been around is walls all our lives?” he said. “You need to take that somewhere else.”

(Say what you want about the Ratners — they really built up a solid flank . . .)

Location scout: Atlantic Yards.

Ground Breaks On The House That Construction Jobs Built

The House That Ruth Built is a sacred cathedral that inspires great reverence . . . which is why it must be demolished to make way for a more functional version of itself:

Declaring the start of a new era for the Yankees and for the Bronx, officials broke ground yesterday on a $1.2 billion project to build a 51,000-seat replacement stadium. The ceremony took place as throngs of police officers cordoned off protesters who oppose the project because it will eliminate most of two parks and require $400 million in public subsidies.

Gov. George E. Pataki and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg dismissed those complaints. The governor said the project would create more parkland than it would destroy and noted that the team would be responsible for any cost overruns. The mayor said the stadium would help revitalize the long-neglected South Bronx and create 6,500 construction jobs over the next four years, as well as 1,000 permanent jobs.

The ceremony, which drew the likes of the former Yankees catcher and manager Yogi Berra and the actor Billy Crystal, occurred on the 58th anniversary of the death of Babe Ruth.

The groundbreaking seemed to put to rest decades of speculation that the Yankees might return to Manhattan, where they played until 1923, or abandon New York altogether for New Jersey.

. . .

Bud Selig, the commissioner of Major League Baseball, recalled discovering Yankee Stadium as a teenager with his mother. “To many fans, the ballpark is a cathedral, because it’s a place that inspires great reverence, and it is a place for comfort. If ballparks are indeed cathedrals, then Yankee Stadium is one of the most revered.”

The five-level, open-air stadium will replicate the entry facade, roof frieze, auxiliary scoreboards and right-field bullpen of the current stadium, which opened in 1923 and was substantially modified in a 1974-75 renovation. The stadium is to be completed in 2009, and the Yankees will pay the $800 million construction costs using tax-exempt bonds.

The groundbreaking occurred on a running track at Macombs Dam Park, which will be largely eliminated, along with John Mullaly Park. Across River Avenue, where the No. 4 subway line runs overhead, demonstrators from Save Our Parks, a community group, chanted and shouted. Metal police barricades kept the demonstration separate from the ceremony.

Previously on . . .

Upper East Side Infestation In Chelsea; “Hetero Outposts” Torn Down Too Soon

The so-called last “Hetero outpost in Chelsea will fall to the wrecking ball”:

Phil Alotta pulled down the heavy metal gate outside his restaurant Chelsea Grill last Sunday afternoon. Then he and his wife, Carolyn, attached several heavy padlocks to secure it. They would only close up one more time. An auction of the place’s contents was scheduled for Monday, after which Chelsea Grill’s 15 years at the location would come to an end.

A new six-story, residential building with upscale retail on the ground floor is slated for most of the block on the west side of Eighth Ave. between 16th St. and 17th Sts., extending back through the block to Dr. Gertrude B. Kelly Playground. Several one-story buildings, as well as three early 19th-century, four-story houses will be razed to make way for the new building.

. . .

Tim Gay, a former Democratic district leader who lives in the corner building at 17th St. that isn’t being torn down, said the strip of restaurants was one of the places straights congregated in Chelsea.

“Chelsea Grill was a major hangout for the heterosexuals,” he said.

But in an odd twist, the forces of gentrification mean that a new hetero outpost may be needed sooner than expected:

But Alotta said his customer base in Chelsea was a 50/50 mix of gays and straights. Priced out of Chelsea, gays have already been leaving for a while already, Alotta said. He said he hears that, after Hell’s Kitchen, the next gay exodus will be to Washington Heights.

. . .

Passersby who were reading the farewell sign on the door of Chelsea Grill last Friday evening said they just hope the new building won’t resemble the high-rise across the street — the Grand Chelsea — the design of which most consider an abomination. The neighborhood keeps upscaling and affordable stores that sell things people who live in the neighborhood need are disappearing, said Lee Fergusson, who lives around the corner.

“It’s not good because the whole neighborhood is becoming generic,” said Fergusson. “The deli on the corner just had its rent raised from $10,000 to $30,000. So the neighborhood loses its deli and what goes in there? Gay T-shirts . . . .”

Three other old buildings on 18th St. were also recently demolished. State Senator Tom Duane said the hope was that the Chelsea Plan, which was passed in 1998, would preserve low-rise buildings on Eighth Ave. by downzoning Eighth Ave. and allowing taller buildings on Sixth Ave. and 23rd St. But, clearly, the downzoning isn’t stopping the wrecking ball.

“The Grand Chelsea was the one that spurred everyone into action,” Duane said. “That’s when people realized, ‘My God, Eighth Ave. could turn into the Upper East Side with towers.’ These new buildings will be low-rise — but they’re still destroying buildings.”

Omerta Is Sicilian For “Courts 6 And 7 Are Ours, Motherfuckers”

The latest front in the war between old timers and hipster carpetbaggers is the McCarren Park tennis court:

Hipsters, beware: Brooklyn’s old-timers are protecting their turf. Or at least they are at the McCarren Park tennis courts, in Greenpoint, where a gang of 50 retirement-age ralliers — a de facto tennis mafia — calls the shots, swearing at those who try to uproot them from “their” two chosen courts.

“They seem to own the place,” complained one young player from Williamsburg, who said that in the past the men cursed at him when he asked them to move after their scheduled time was up.

Another irate — and intimidated — player corroborated those claims, saying that the men have hurled “more Polish at me than I know what to do with.”

Many of the McCarren racketeers are old friends, and have met at the park for tennis for more than two decades.

“Over the years, courts 6 and 7” — the two most-secluded courts, on the Berry Street side of the park — “kind of became the Polish courts,” explained Amleto Mazza, a rare Italian member of the group.

. . .

And although they might not be playing nice, technically these Greenpoint goodfellas aren’t breaking any rules. For instance, by rotating players on their own, no one violates the one-hour per player per court time limit.

But try explaining that to the players who end up stalled on the other side of the fence — a crowd that has doubled in the past five years.

A few spats over the years got so bad that police had to intervene and toss the guys out.

The group’s bad reputation has grown, and the threat of conflict seems to have effectively aced would-be interlopers. A handful of McCarren’s younger regulars hesitated when asked to comment on the gang.

“Trying to get them off is a big headache,” one tennis player finally said. “They don’t want anybody else playing on their courts.”

Another player said he sometimes gets to play with the geezers, “but it took me years to get to that point,” the player told The Brooklyn Papers — as long as we promised anonymity.

He refused to answer additional questions. “I’ve pretty much said all I can say,” he explained.

The Face Of Gentrification Is . . . Heath Ledger

Heath and Jennifer Connelly are driving up prices:

There’s a certain breed of New York celebrity who’s too cool for uptown, but craves a brownstone block. They seek leafy streets with the scale of the West Village, but shy away from the throngs and the spotlight.

Meet fame on the down-low — celebs who live in Brooklyn.

The roster of Hollywood A-listers, music-industry powerhouses, authors and artisans who reside in the Borough of Kings is top-notch.

Wander over to the Grand Army Plaza subway station in Park Slope and you might catch Jennifer Connelly looking “beautiful and fragile, with no makeup on and dressed in jeans, a brown sweater, and sleeveless green vest,” as one fellow Brooklynite described her, as she takes her eldest son to school weekday mornings.

Over on Atlantic, see Heath Ledger — who, with Michelle Williams, is raising a daughter, Matilda, in Boerum Hill — ducking into a deli Sunday morning for bottled water.

Later in the week, Williams may pop by Smith Street lingerie store Andie Wee while actors Emily Mortimer — spotted having trouble finding her wallet in Cobble Hill’s Pacific Green grocery — and Alessandro Nivola push a stroller along the sidewalk outside.

. . .

While hardly a new phenomenon — there’s always been a diaspora of celebrities eking out low-profile lives in nearly every part of New York — Brooklyn has outgrown its edgy, destitute-art-student reputation of years gone by. It has come into its own as a magnet for some of the most sought-after talents in the entertainment industry.

Yes, can’t wait for “A Beautiful Mind II: The Really Senile Years.”