I hate dust and I hate noise.

I tried explaining to a friend why I'm purposely ignoring apartment listings in neighborhoods near where the new Atlantic Yards is being built, even when they seem less expensive than the neighborhood I'm in. This article, in the New York Observer, discusses the impact the approved Atlantic Yards construction is expected to have on those living nearby:

Then, as the arena, the train yard and five other commercial and residential buildings get underway late next year, as many as 470 trucks will make deliveries each day during the peak period, in winter 2009, according to the final environmental-impact statement issued in November. An average of once or twice a week, workers would be on the job until 11 p.m. For 10 months, one of the lanes of Atlantic Avenue would shut down. Side streets would close for longer periods, some of them forever. The levels of fine particulate matter—soot and dust—would exceed the threshold level that the Environmental Protection Agency considers dangerous to human health along two different stretches around the construction site (including down the street from Newswalk) for year-long periods.

And the equipment would be noisy enough that, even with various technological (electric, not diesel) and geographic (move them farther away) mitigations, Forest City is planning on buying and installing air conditioners or double-pane windows for nearby residents in sensitive spots—a move that even ur-booster Marty Markowitz, the Brooklyn borough president, told the state economic-development agency “is not a solution for these problems, only a way to mask them while residents are inside their homes.”

Although the articles goes on to say that if you plan on living beyond the 5 or 6 years of construction, it would be worth it, I still am not jumping aboard. Personally, after it's all completely finished, I wouldn't be that thrilled to live close to something that draws hoards of basketball fans anyway.