Image by getty images

Bruce Ratner may not have Barbra Streisand’s voice or Jay-Z’s rep on the streets of Bedford-Stuyvesant. But the developer had every right to trumpet himself as the King of Brooklyn after his long-delayed Barclays Center finally opened its doors.

Ratner beamed as the arena opened to sold-out shows by Babs and hip-hop’s big- gest star, both of whom were playing their first major shows in the borough of their birth.

Even more significant, he presided over the arrival of the NBA’s Nets. The move made the team the first major sports franchise to play in the borough since baseball’s Dodgers (underdogs immortalized as “Dem Bums”) moved to Los Angeles half a century ago.

Forwarding the News

Thoughtful, balanced reporting from the Forward and around the web, bringing you updated news and analysis each day.

Terms(Required)

I agree to the Forward's Terms of Service and Privacy Policy

Email(Required)

Before the first tipoff, Ratner scored another coup when hockey’s Islanders announced that they too planned to jump on the Brooklyn bandwagon.

Ratner, 67, didn’t put the bounce back in Brooklyn’s step single-handedly. Property prices have been rising for decades, and the brownstone neighborhoods around his arena were drawing A-list names even before (some would say in spite of) the arrival of his Atlantic Yards project.

The scion of a well-connected Jewish family from the Cleveland area, Ratner is loved and hated in equal measures for his grandiose plans to transform a gritty but communally valuable stretch of downtown Brooklyn into a fancy and financially valuable arena and string of condos.

But after successfully negotiating nearly a decade of tricky political maneuvering and stop-start lawsuits, Ratner could be forgiven for popping the champagne as Streisand and Jay-Z showered praise on his plans.

Somewhere up there, Dem Bums might be smiling.

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. We’re in the middle of our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we have a very ambitious goal of $127,000 by April 21.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a Passover gift today!

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Make a Passover Gift Today!

$90 $180

$360

Other amount