Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Report

The latest Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Construction Update (bottom), covering the two weeks beginning Monday, June 25, was circulated at 3:44 pm Friday (lead time) by Empire State Development (ESD) after preparation by Greenland Forest City Partners.

No new vertical construction is planned for now, and there's not much change from the previous update. However, the ongoing infrastructure work, especially the foundation work in the railyard, is supposed to position the project for later tower construction.

Barclays Center sidewalk work is nearly complete, with punch list work planned during the day and night time on Flatbush, Atlantic and Sixth Avenues. Work includes saw cutting, calking and minor concrete patching.

This both fixes cracked sidewalks and, as I wrote, obviates the need to clean sidewalks deeply stained by dripping rust. But it doesn't clean up all the rust.

Railyard work at East Portal

Installations of MPT [Maintenance and Protection of Traffic] for the East Portal…

Yes, the governor had an announcement on Thursday 6/21/18, New York Islanders to Play 68 Pre-Season and Regular Home Games Over the Next Three Years at NYCB LIVE, Home of the Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum.

That's 20 of 44 home games, including pre-season. They're expected to play 24 games a year over the next two seasons, splitting home ice with the Barclays Center. The extra games in Nassau are surely welcomed by BSE Global, which operates both venues, since it frees up the Brooklyn arena for more lucrative events.

As highlighted below, the press release called the project "entirely privately funded," ignoring the lowball lease and open-ended Long Island Rail Road costs, as I wrote. And, yes, more than a few people thought it was weird that the announcement came from the governor.

Also note, as Newsday's Jim Baumbach pointed out, that the arena is now slated to open during the 2021-22 season, not for 2021.

Still, as Newsday's Randi Marshall pointed out, …

A press release 6/21/18 from BSE Global, headlined BSE GLOBAL AND LIU BREAK GROUND ON REIMAGINED LIU BROOKLYN PARAMOUNT THEATRE, with the deck "Revival of Legendary Theatre Underway." The press release has been repurposed in Billboard, Curbed, the Daily Eagle, and others.
The projected opening is mid-2019.
Note that the deal was announced in January 2015. Renovation plans announced in April 2015 projected a 2018 opening, with no transparency about the rent paid to Long Island University. A lease was signed in May 2016, with renovations said to begin in 2017. A May 2017 announcement that renovations would begin in Fall 2017 noted "an anticipated opening before 2019."
In other words, they're behind schedule. (Also note that BSE Global is the new name for what was Brooklyn Sports & Entertainment, Mikhail Prokhorov's ownership vehicle.)
The press release:
BROOKLYN (June 21, 2018) – Executives from BSE Global and Long Island University (LIU) were joined by …

My bad. When I wrote three days ago about middle-income two- and three-bedroom apartments at the "100% affordable" 38 Sixth being marketed beyond the lottery to anyone who met the income qualifications, I failed to account for an increased upper limit, a consequence of a recalculation of Area Median Income (AMI).

Most dramatically, a six-person household can now earn nearly $200,000 and still qualify for a three-bedroom below-market unit.

Income eligibility stretches at the top

Since the original marketing last year, the income eligibility has stretched, not the bottom but rather the top. Below are the 2016/2018 income limits, by household size, for two-bedroom units, which have an upper limit of 165% of AMI.
2 people: $111,909 - $119,625/$137,7753 people: $111,909 - $134,640/$154,9354 people: $111,909 - $149,490/$172,095 Here are the income limits, by household size, for three-bedroom units:
3 people: $129,258 - $134,640/$154,9354 people: $129,258 - $149,490/$172,0955 people: …

Change your calendars. The next Atlantic Yards Project Quality of Life Meeting will be held on Tuesday, July 10, 2018, rather than July 17, as previously planned, according to a message from Empire State Development (ESD), the state authority overseeing/shepherding the project.

Project-related questions, concerns, or suggested agenda items for the meeting can be sent to atlanticyards@esd.ny.gov. The meeting is an opportunity to get an update on construction plans and potential neighborhood impacts.

The details:
Tuesday, July 10, 2018 @ 6 pm
Shirley A. Chisholm State Office Building
55 Hanson Place
1st Floor Conference Room
Brooklyn, NY 11217

I have an article in The Bridge headlined How the Borough President Is Essentially Backing 80 Flatbush, with a deck: "While he would chop one tower's height 39%, [Borough President Eric] Adams proposes just a 12% cut in bulk, plus benefits like a new subway entrance."
The relevance to Atlantic Yards is that Adams's basic support for the giant two-tower project suggests a precedent for the percolating--though not yet officially proposed--two-tower project suggested for Site 5 of Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park, just two blocks away down Flatbush Avenue.

Forest City Realty Trust (FCRT) stock jumped more than 14% yesterday, after Bloomberg reported that Forest City Realty Is Restarting Deal Talks With Brookfield, thus resuming a potential sale of the company to the giant, Toronto-based asset manager.

That suggests a reversal in strategy. FCRT in March, after its board concluded a six-month review of strategic alternatives, announced that it would remain a standalone company, albeit while replacing 9 of 13 board members, with new roles for hedge funds critical of the company, and further diminishing the role of the founding Ratner family.

(My long retrospective on Forest City Ratner/Forest City New York for The Bridge was timed to appear just before the parent company's expected decision.)

Two potential transactions before March

News coverage before that March announcement concerned two rumored transactions, one with Chicago-based Equity Commonwealth, the other with Brookfield Asset Management. A large company (Brookfield, suggested …

Update: the upper income limits have increased, based on 2018 Area Median Income.

It was predictable, wasn't it? As I wrote last November for City & State, in Simplistic math mangles the odds of affordable housing lotteries, it was a "good bet" that, as with the example of the "100% affordable" 535 Carlton that I described in City Limits in April 2017, "many of those not-so-affordable apartments" at the similar Pacific Park building, 38 Sixth, "will be hard to fill."

The building is all below-market, but 152 of the 303 units are for decidedly middle-income households. At least five such middle-income units are now on the open market, as described below, with two-bedroom apartments at $3,206 a month and three-bedroom ones at $3,695. (Studios are $2,121 and one-bedrooms are $2,663 at 38 Sixth.)

While 89,704 households filed applications for 303 apartments, the interest, understandably, skewed strongly toward lower income units. Only 1,876 …