Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Report

I was a little too generous, it turns out. I  wrote  2/21/21 that the most recent Construction Update, covering the two weeks beginning the next day, mostly continued the belated practice of accuracy regarding after-hours variances (AHVs), with one exception. (The document is circulated by Empire State Development after preparation by Greenland Forest City Partners.) However, there was one inaccuracy--and now another one, both of which obscure the extent of after-hours work. At the B4 tower (18 Sixth Ave.), weekday hours, including AHVs, were stated as being from 6 am to 10 pm , with Saturday work from 9 am to 5 pm . However, as I showed in a screenshot, the developer and construction company actually had an AHV to start weekday work at  5 am . "Saturday permits, when received, are for all work starting at 9 am until 5 pm," the document said, with no reference to Sunday work. Turns out that B4 this weekend and next  has since gained permits for Sunday work 9 am to 5 pm, for

From presentation The 3/2/21 Quality of Life meeting --supposed to be bimonthly but this time after only a five-week gap--was uneventful, lasting only about a half an hour and drawing just 23 participants on Zoom. The developer and Empire State Development had no news on big questions like the status of the platform over the Vanderbilt Yard, or plans to start any towers over that platform, crucial to delivering the required affordable housing.  Ditto for the contemplated plan for a giant two-tower project at Site 5, longtime home to Modell's and P.C. Richard across Flatbush Avenue at the arena. However, some incremental updates emerged. Construction at the B4 (18 Sixth Ave.) and B15 (662 Pacific St.) towers is on schedule, said Scott Solish of Greenland USA. which dominates Greenland Forest City Partners. (Of course--they work after hours !) He said B15 should be ready for initial move-ins this summer and B4 by the second half of the year. Each has 30% affordable units, though affo

Is this the next Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park surprise? (After all, there's always something.)   My annotations Apparently no--and I should've been more careful with the evidence--but it does raise some intriguing questions. A photo of a model of the Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park project, tweeted 2/25/21 by the 78th Precinct from a community meeting, seemingly suggests, as the excerpt at right shows, an additional tower associated with the project, on the south side of Dean Street, indicated by the pink arrow I added. That "vaportecture" tower--seemingly roughly comparable in height to the 27-story B15 (662 Pacific St.) looked to be just east of Sixth Avenue--at least according to my not-quite-accurate reading. However, a representative of developer Greenland Forest City Partners, in response to my query, said that building is not part of the project, and that pieces of the model are moveable, as I soon tweeted. (I've deleted my old tweets but screen-capped them h

Anyone building in New York City--private projects, at least--must be an optimist, because the crystal ball is very cloudy. The New York City Independent Budget Office yesterday offered Outlook for the City’s Economy: A Slow and Fragile Recovery , noting that, despite increased vaccinations, the rise of new variants of the coronavirus "suggests the city’s economic recovery will remain slow and fragile." The outlook is worrying: The largest impacts on employment and earnings in the city have been concentrated among industries that rely heavily on consumer behavior and tourism. Meanwhile, real estate sales have been depressed for most of 2020, particularly in the commercial real estate market. In the short run, personal income grew due to a large increase in government aid, while other income categories including wages and proprietors’ income have declined. All of these factors suggest the possibility of a substantial realignment to the local economy even after the threat of th

Last week, the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce released 2020 Year End Small Business COVID Impact Survey Results , indicating some grim news: 80% of all businesses, and 77% of M/WBE businesses had lowered revenues last year, and 47% of those losing revenue said it was by more than half. Of the 13% of businesses that reported an increase in revenue, they were concentrated in the healthcare, construction, and consulting sectors. (Here's coverage .) Note: revenue decline doesn't necessarily translate fully to financial losses, because they might have lowered costs somewhat. Indeed, 85% of all businesses cut their employee headcounts. The outlook is grim, since 33% of all businesses owe some back rent, and 49% of all businesses did not receive any rent concessions. Of those businesses receiving concessions, 20% got rent reductions and another 20% got rent deferrals. More than half those surveyed, 51%, said they increased debt. Some 75% of small businesses received a Paycheck Protectio

A 2/22/21 press release,  CBRE Group, Inc. Acquires 35 Percent Interest in Industrious, Leading Provider of Flexible Space Solutions , adding that the "world’s largest commercial real estate services and investment firm," which is headquartered in Dallas, is expecting to acquire another 5% in the coming weeks. The deal includes $200 million in cash and the transfer of CBRE's own "flexible-space solutions offering, Hana," which has ten locations in the U.S. and UK. The Commercial Observer quoted Industrious CEO Jamie Hodari: "Almost every Fortune 500 [company] is putting in workplace plans that explicitly say they’re going to massively increase their use of flex." "Industrious has more than 100 locations in more than 50 U.S. cities and specializes in asset-lite flexible workplace operating models," according to the press release, which added: The investment significantly increases CBRE’s participation in the flexible workplace sector and posi

Nope, nobody cares about the Nassau Coliseum switcheroo , in which the middleman for the building's EB-5 loan, an affiliate of Nicholas Mastroianni's U.S. Immigration Fund, curiously became the leaseholder, after Mikhail Prokhorov's Nassau Events Center (NEC) withdrew. Though I raised some significant questions about the candor of Nassau County officials and what County Legislators understood regarding the County-owned building, neither officials nor the press took it up. So the Legislature on 2/22/21 unanimously approved lease amendments allowing rent relief for the tenant and also--as Newsday  put it  in a brief summary, protected "the county from potential lawsuits against the leaseholder." And, as I describe below, the Legislature still doesn't understand the switcheroo, with the Presiding Officer confusing the lender and borrower--not surprising, given the convolutions. The upshot That means, as Patch reported 2/24/21, the New York Islanders will resume

How Brooklyn’s Office Market Is Getting Through COVID , the Commercial Observer reported 2/23/21, quoting broker Chris Havens of TerraCRG that, even though it was a tenant's market before the pandemic, now it's even more so: "There’s really nothing large happening.” So prices for office/industrial properties are going down, to $327 per square foot at the end of 2020 from $467 psf a year earlier, and rents to $39.03 a square foot from $40.37, with an availability rate in 2020 to 18.3% (Colliers Intl.) to 22.4% (CBRE). The article notes several major projects haven't panned out, including the former Jehovah’s Witnesses headquarters in Fulton Ferry, now called Panorama; Dock 72 at the Brooklyn Navy Yard; The Refinery at the Domino Sugar site in Williamsburg; and 25 Kent Avenue in Williamsburg.  (The Refinery strikes me as the most attractive property, given its placement near open space, but maybe people would rather work from their apartments.) Meanwhile, some 4 million

So, how do things really work in Albany?  Cuomo's new ethics chair ran governor's 'defense' program , wrote the Times-Union's Chris Bragg 2/21/21, offers a revealing anecdote: In 2015, longtime Cuomo aide Linda A. Lacewell set up a little-noticed program spanning the executive branch. Lacewell, at that point in the post of "chief risk officer" for the Executive Chamber, embedded highly paid senior attorneys in two dozen state agencies. ...A function of “special counsels” embedded at state agencies, according to sources speaking on condition of anonymity, has been helping flag and manage potentially troublesome Freedom of Information Law requests filed with those agencies by the media and others — exactly the sort of requests that are at the center of the administration's controversial handling of nursing homes during the coronavirus pandemic. Cuomo's administration often drags out, by months and even years, the release of public records. Hmm, so th