Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Report

This is the first of two articles about 38 Sixth Avenue. Last July 24, City Limits published my article about troubles at 38 Sixth Avenue (B3),  Despite New Owner’s Promised Upgrades, ‘100% Affordable’ Atlantic Yards Building Endures Hot Water Outages, Broken Door, Even Bees . While some of the problems mentioned have been addressed, albeit belatedly, new issues have emerged, which I'll write about separately.  Still, a fundamental question persists about 38 Sixth, which was built by Greenland Forest City Partners, the joint venture involving Greenland USA and original developer Forest City Ratner, and opened in 2017.  (The building, along with similar "100% affordable" 535 Carlton Avenue, was sold by the joint venture in May 2022 to Irvine, CA-based Avanath Capital Management.) Looking south at 38 Sixth. Photo: Norman Oder Why no super? How could a 23-story building with 303 apartments open without an on-site superintendent?  It was never a secret, but evidence sugg...

Bi-Weekly Digest: Can "Public Engagement Process Planning" Restore Legitimacy? ( link ) Much has been lost. Meanwhile, an "art" exhibit on Ticketmaster Plaza just happens to feature the Liberty, the Barclays Center's main tenant right now. Plus: a DJT irony.

So Empire State Development (ESD)  has released the Agenda for the July 15 meeting of the purportedly advisory Atlantic Yards Community Development Corporation (AY CDC), and the scope is beyond what I suspected when I initially wrote about it. While ESD, the state authority that oversees/shepherds the project, may (as I suspect) announce that it has approved a permitted developer for at least the railyard development parcels--a joint venture involving Cirrus Real Estate and others--it also will discuss "Public Engagement Process Planning, as shown in the screenshot at right. That sounds like the outline to a process, aiming to find a way to ensure legitimacy to a project that now faces widely embedded skepticism.  AY CDC Director Gib Veconi had previously asked, backed by a board majority, to request a review of the scope before it's finalized. (Note that the meeting is at 3 pm, not 3:30 pm, as initially stated.) Also, as explained below, Cirrus has ramped up lobbying with s...

Atlantic Yards has had its history of strange bedfellows, such as when opponents of the project allied themselves with libertarians challenging eminent domain. (Well, liberal jurisprudence, especially in New York, has stood for unfettered power for condemnors, including dubious "blight.")   Another example recently surfaced in this harsh tweet from the new, Bay Ridge-based Donald J. Trump Kings County Republican Club : The criticism is valid: Atlantic Yards was supposed to bring 2,250 affordable units to Brooklyn. Fast-forward nearly two decades... and 876 units are still missing. What’s the solution? Extend the deadline. Postpone the fines. Bend the rules. The people of Brooklyn were promised real homes. Instead, they’re getting real estate bait-and-switch. Let’s be clear: Penalties were meant to protect the public. Now they’re being “paused” to protect the developer. And you wonder why trust in government is gone? This is what systemic failure looks like, dressed in bu...

Note: despite initial conflicting information, the meeting will start at 3 pm, not 3:30 pm. More than six weeks state officials suspended a deadline to enforce $2,000/month penalties for each of the remaining 876 (of 2,250) required Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park affordable housing units, saying they wanted to see a new proposal from a new development team, a moment of (perhaps limited) transparency may emerge. Empire State Development (ESD), the state authority that oversees/shepherds the project, has set a July 15 meeting of the (purportedly) advisory Atlantic Yards Community Development Corporation (AY CDC) at a Brooklyn location, thus more accessible for Brooklynites, though it is during the workday.  No agenda has been released; such agendas are typically opaque and released closer to the meeting date. The meeting will be: Shirley A. Chisholm State Office Building, 55 Hanson Place – 3rd Floor Conference Room, Brooklyn,  Tuesday, July 15, 3 :30 pm Due to purported building ...

A June 29 New York Times article,  The Sheikh Who Conquered Soccer and Coddles Warlords , offers a skeptical portrait of the enigmatic Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan, whose older brother rules the United Arab Emirates. About the younger one: The Emirati vice president is best known as the owner of Manchester City, a top English soccer team. Behind the scenes, he has been described as the “handler” guiding his country’s secret foreign wars. More on that: Yet in interviews with more than a dozen American, African and Arab officials, he is described as being at the sharp end of his country’s aggressive push to expand its influence across Africa and the Middle East. In places like Libya and Sudan, they say, Sheikh Mansour has coddled warlords and autocrats as part of a sweeping Emirati drive to acquire ports and strategic minerals, counter Islamist movements and establish the Gulf nation as a heavyweight regional power. The Fortress connection From the Times: As deputy prime m...

City & State NY on June 30 announced the  2025 Brooklyn Power 100 , and missed something important about the owners of BSE Global, as I explain below. 43. Joseph Tsai & Clara Wu Tsai Co-Owners, Brooklyn Nets and New York Liberty: A Brooklyn basketball power couple, the Tsais got game. Joseph Tsai, the billionaire co-founder of Alibaba Group, chairs BSE Global and owns the Brooklyn Nets and New York Liberty. He recently sold a minority stake at a $6 billion valuation while backing a franchise rebuild he calls a “labor of love.” He’s also a founding board member of The Asian American Foundation. Clara Wu Tsai, governor of the New York Liberty and BSE Global vice chair, brought the Liberty back to Brooklyn, recruited Breanna Stewart and helped lead the team to its first WNBA title. As founder of the Social Justice Fund, she’s also directing a $50 million, decadelong investment in racial equity and economic mobility across Brooklyn, including capital access for Black-owned busi...