What a deal! Developer Forest City Ratner is only paying the MTA $4 million to add the Barclays Center name to the Atlantic Terminal station for 20 years.
It’s a bargain compared to the $5.4 million AT&T will pay to turn Philadelphia’s Pattison Avenue SEPTA station into the AT&T station for five years.
“The MTA doesn’t seem to drive a hard bargain,” said Daniel Goldstein of Develop, Don’t Destroy Brooklyn, an opponent of the arena. “Barclays is getting their name spread across the subway system and to get only $200,000 a year out of it is offensive.”
Atlantic Terminal will be a gateway to the Barclays Center, future home of the Nets. SEPTA is renaming a station entirely after a corporation, said an MTA spokesperson, while the MTA will merely tack Barclays name onto the Atlantic Ave./Pacific St. station in 2012.
Barclays hasn’t said what it is paying the Nets — hundreds of millions, according to reports — for naming rights to the sports complex. But Forest City Ratner, on behalf of Barclays, will only give the cash-strapped MTA $200,000 each year.
“They should have gotten more money for what they’re doing,” Gene Russianoff of the Straphangers Campaign.
The MTA is open to selling corporate naming rights to more stations, said a spokesperson.
