No Cheers in Brooklyn for Replacing Freddy's Bar

NEW YORK (May 22) -- Mikhail Prokhorov, the new owner of the New Jersey Nets, blitzed the media earlier this week, entertaining the press with an artillery of one-liners. In some ways, the story of Prokhorov's latest purchase does seem like a joke: A 44-year-old Russian billionaire, known for being a playboy, buys the NBA's worst team and then moves it from New Jersey to New York, where it's renamed "the Nyets."

But New Yorkers displaced by plans to build a new arena for the team -- the crown jewel in a 22-acre development project in Brooklyn -- feel as if the joke is on them. To make way for the new commercial space, office buildings, condos and arena, the state used eminent domain to seize homes and evict iconic neighborhood businesses, like Freddy's Bar and Backroom, located in the project's footprint. Opponents complain that city's gritty, patchwork neighborhoods are being replaced with a shiny, plastic megalopolis.

"It's sort of cleaning everything up for people," Donald O'Finn, the manager of Freddy's, told AOL News. "I feel like the two greatest cities -- New Orleans got raped by nature, and we got raped by Walt Disney."

Freddy's inhabited one of the low, red-brick buildings in the path of the $4.5 billion project, called Atlantic Yards. Earlier this month, after fighting for years, O'Finn had to turn the lights out on the bar where he spent the last 13 years nurturing its place in the community. In Freddy's place, Forest City Ratner, the developer behind the project, plans to put a residential building.

"Freddy's has been an institution. A pub where everyone knows your name. It's a community pub where people go to drink away their sorrows," said New York City Council Member Letitia James, who opposes Atlantic Yards. "I just think this is a complete sham."

Freddy's holds a spot in the pantheon of classic American bars. Its storied walls date back to the days of Prohibition. The space was dark and dingy, filled with beat-up tables and chairs and adorned with trinkets, far from the Hollywood polish and bright lights of TV's Cheers bar.

"We're much darker," O'Finn said. "We're much more real."

He discovered the bar was in the redevelopment zone in 2005. "It's probably the only time I really cried. I just sat down in a booth, and I teared up."

His patrons demanded a fight. They held rallies and joined lawsuits. Velmanette Montgomery, a state senator representing the area, said she would lie down in front of the construction trucks.

"Everybody wanted to chain themselves to the bar, so I installed chains on the bar," O'Finn said. But after New York's highest court ruled against Freddy's supporters and the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the case, there was little more to be done.

"We were in every lawsuit. We tried to get as much attention on the issue of eminent domain as we could," O'Finn said. "I think it's completely wrong. I mean, I think it's fine if it's actually for the public good. If it's a church, if it's a highway."

The state's ability to seize private land for public use is a constitutionally granted power. The Supreme Court affirmed its legality in a landmark case in 2005, Kelo v. New London, leading 43 states to amend their laws to restrict eminent domain powers. New York was not one of those states.

"You can say anything is for the public good. A basketball stadium is for the public good, houses are for the public good," said Dana Berliner, a senior attorney at the Institute for Justice, which argued on behalf of Susette Kelo. "New York is the worst state in terms of the abuse of eminent domain."

Critics say the state used eminent domain for private investment, not public good, while at the same time handing the developer more than $300 million in public funds. Supporters, like New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, say the project will bring jobs and economic benefits to Brooklyn. Forest City Ratner, which declined to comment for this article, estimates the project will create $5 billion in tax revenues over the next 30 years. The Nets are expected to begin playing in the arena in 2012.

Atlantic Yards has been plagued with trouble, however. When credit markets froze in the wake of the recession, Forest City Ratner couldn't get the money needed to finish its financing. Eight months ago, Prokhorov stepped in to save the day. Then, in April, U.S. Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr. of New Jersey demanded an investigation into the Russian after a report said one of his businesses was involved with the Zimbabwean government, a violation of American sanctions.

But on March 11 a groundbreaking ceremony was held. As New York Gov. David Paterson, Bloomberg and rapper Jay-Z, who owns a minority stake in the Nets, grinned for the cameras, a group of protesters rallied nearby, having congregated at Freddy's.

In April, O'Finn announced the bar would have to close.

During Freddy's last week open, O'Finn couldn't buy enough alcohol to supply all the customers who came by to pay their respects and mourn the loss of a community landmark.

"I consider it my second home," said Ian Ference, a 29-year-old photographer wearing a green "Develop don't destroy Brooklyn" T-shirt. "I've easily drank over a thousand beers in this place. It's where we came to cry when we had to put our cat down, where we watched the election."

After closing night's "victory party," O'Finn packed everything up -- including the bar itself, still wrapped in the "chains of justice." He plans on opening a new incarnation of Freddy's somewhere nearby.

"I've always thought of this as a battle," O'Finn said. "And I wasn't convinced we were gonna win the battle, but we needed to win the war."