Getting Barclays to a Billion

Off and on, the Nets have promoted Barclays Center as a "billion dollar arena", most recently in a Tuesday report in Metro New York. On occasion, they've called it the "first billion dollar arena". Bruce Ratner has said that with "everything", the cost is indeed a billion. So what goes into a billion dollar arena?

The latest accounting, noted by Atlantic Yards Report, shows that designing, managing and building the arena will cost $845 million, but as AYR reports that total doesn't include other costs, among them roughly $150 million to cover the re-alignment of the LIRR railyards that once ran through the arena footprint. Nor does it include the cost of land, which amounted to tens of millions more, putting the figure comfortably over the billion dollar mark. (Team sources also report that the totals don't include legal fees for the eminent domain fight or the cost of the original Frank Gehry designs.)

Among the costs in that $845 million: $524 million for the actual construction of the arena; $70 million for the Transit Connection; $19 million for site work around the arena; $109 million for architecture and engineering; $45 million for development management (paid to Forest City Ratner), $2 million for legal fees.