Phasing revealed for open space: southeast block by 2018, promenade at east likely by 2020; continued construction staging

Open space on southeast block, likely after February 2018
landscape design by Thomas Balsley

So, what happens between now and 2025, when those pretty renderings of Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park open space fully come to fruition?

We finally have a clue.

At the 6/24/15 Community Update meeting, as I wrote 7/7/15, residents were shown a presentation about the promised open space, but "no renderings of interim phases have been released, though segments of green will nudge up against construction sites for the next decade."

Surely those renderings existed, and now they've surfaced.

They were not shown publicly at the 7/28/15 meeting of the Atlantic Yards Community Development Corporation (AY CDC), but they were included in the board materials, which were finally posted this past Monday.

Arriving in phases

Original plan, by Laurie Olin, started from west

As shown above, not until 2018 does the open space on the southeast block come together, when four towers are finished.

Not until B8 and B9 on the northeast block are completed in 2020 will there be the central promenade and passageways to Atlantic Avenue. See sequence below.

Note the dotted lines in the designs above and below indicate temporary open space, which will shift, as construction continues.

Also note, above left, the original plan, at least as suggested in renderings by original landscape architect Laurie Olin, was to move clockwise east of the arena. (That was illustrative, but not binding.)

That sequence would have removed the "blight" of the open railyard more quickly. But it also would be more expensive to build a deck over the railyard. Hence the developer's decision to build first on terra firma.