Venue:

The Barclays Center

Location:

620 Atlantic Avenue
Brooklyn, NY
Map and Satellite View

The Barclays Center is located near the intersection of Atlantic and Flatbush Avenues - two of Brooklyn's busiest thoroughfares. It sits, in part, above the Long Island Rail Road's Vanderbilt Yard.

The venue is close to a wide range of public transportation options, including nine different subway lines and the commuter rail line serving much of Queens, Nassau and Suffolk Counties.


Home of:

The Barclays Center will be the new home of the Nets. The franchise, formerly know as the New Jersey Nets, will be called the Brooklyn Nets starting with the 2012-13 NBA Season.

The venue will also host a wide variety of entertainment events. The first two performers will be Brooklyn natives Jay Z - a part-owner of the Nets - and Barbra Streisand, with big names like Bob Dylan, Neil Young and the Smashing Pumpkins slated to appear soon after.

The new arena does not have a regular tenant for college basketball as of yet, but will stage "neutral site" games featuring national powers like Kentucky, UCLA and Indiana and local schools like Fordham and LIU, and will be the new home of the Atlantic 10 Tournament.

One of the very first sporting events at the arena will be a hockey game - a preseason matchup between the New York Islanders and New Jersey Devils. The Barclays Center does not have an NHL tenant at present, but could seek one at some point in the future.

Profile:

The opening of the Barclays Center will bring professional sports back to Brooklyn for the first time since the Dodgers bolted for Los Angeles.

The arena is the centerpiece of a massive, 20-acre residential and commercial project from developer Bruce Ratner. It was originally slated to open in 2006, but opposition from community groups like Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn and financing trouble brought on by the crashing real estate market led to significant delays. Ratner purchased the Nets, in part, to guarantee that the arena would have an anchor tenant. He was forced to sell the franchise to Russian billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov in 2009, in part, to guarantee he'd have the financing to complete the development.

The arena has a unique exterior look. It is covered in panels of "pre-weathered" (read: rusted) steel. A layer of oxidation coats the surface of the panels, giving the building a weathered look designed to evoke the brownstone buildings common to the area.

Barclays Plc - a major London-based international financial services company and bank - will pay $400 million over 20 years for the naming rights to the venue.