State Reduces Parking at Barclays Center Lot from 1,100 to 550

The state has halved the number of required parking spaces at the Barclay’s Center surface lot, enabling developer Forest City Ratner to throw out its plan for the loud and slow “stack-parking." 

The technique uses hydraulic lifts to load as many as four cars on vertical structures. But the process has been criticized as being loud and tedious, slowing traffic to a crawl when the 18,000-seat arena .

At Wednesday night’s forum with Atlantic Yards-area stakeholders at Brooklyn Borough Hall, Empire State Development Corporation head Kenneth Adams said the state organization has agreed to reduce the number of mandated spaces from 1,100 to just under 550 at the lot located between Carlton, Vanderbilt, Dean and Pacific, according to Atlantic Yards Report and the New York Post.  

Councilwoman Letitia James, D-Prospect Heights, called the change of heart “good news for the community.”

“I had asked some time ago about the issue of stacking and I’m glad they’ve finally seen the error of their ways,” she said.

But Dean Street Block Association President Peter Krashes criticized the ESDC for shortchanging the community by not requiring developer Forest City Ratner to comply with city standards for surface lots, which he said would require a 7-foot fence around the lot and about 65 trees inside.

Plans for a permanent underground lot are on the books, but with construction on the second phase of the Atlantic Yards Project stalled, the surface lot is expected to exist for years.