Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Report

The latest Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Construction Update (bottom), covering the two weeks beginning Monday, May 27 (or, perhaps, a day later, given the holiday), was circulated at 6 pm yesterday (lead time) by Empire State Development (ESD) after preparation by Greenland Forest City Partners.

The document is supposed to mark new work in red, and only one paragraph is in red, a warning of late-night work in the Vanderbilt Yard:
Contractor plans to work second shift to excavate and install necessary TMSC (train toilet servicing cleanouts) between 6:00pm and 3:00am pending LIRR support availability. Appropriate noise, light, and dust mitigation practices will be observed. This follows up two separate last-minute announcements of late-night work this past week, covering four nights. It also provokes the supposition that future Long Island Rail Road schedule needs may require more late-night work.

No Saturday residential work?

Unlike in the previous Construction Update, there's no ann…

Hey, remember that site plan dated June 30, 2014 map that predicted project completion by the bizarrely optimistic year of 2022?

It was shared with immigrant investors in "Atlantic Yards III," the third round of fundraising under the EB-5 program, in document dated October 3, 2014 and distributed by the loan packager (aka regional center) U.S. Immigration Fund, as I wrote.

That was misleading, I wrote, because an updated and significantly less optimistic map, dated August 13, 2014, had already been prepared to be shared with locals in Brooklyn. (Given that it predicted project completion by 2025, it too was way overoptimistic.)

Guess what? There's even more evidence that immigrant investors were misled. An updated site plan had already been prepared, dated June 11, 2014, and shared by the developer with the city (clarified: and possibly Brooklyn advocates) negotiating the settlement that led to the 2025 affordable housing deadline. (I acquired the map via a Freedom of In…

Yep. As I wrote in 2007: "when it comes to #AtlanticYards, de Blasio remains ill-informed, relying on the progressive allies he trusts... but failing to keep up with crucial changes in the project or to take a close look at some controversial aspects."https://t.co/1FZtgpTSG9https://t.co/MmSFqI5qP9 — Norman Oder (@AYReport) May 23, 2019more on Bdb & #AtlanticYards (now @pacificparkbk)
I interviewed him in 2007. He was way uninformed:https://t.co/1FZtgpTSG9
He played dumb when confronted with #affordablehousing way different from what he championedhttps://t.co/ZPR4e76UjE
he never pursued accountability. https://t.co/RBXkGqioAN— Norman Oder (@AYReport) May 16, 2019

A second straight (here's the first) last-minute notice of night work came in a message last night from Empire State Development stated that "Night work is expected tonight, Tuesday, May 21 to Thursday, May 23 in the railyard":
LIRR Yard Activities – Night/Weekend Work
● Due to new LIRR Train Service Plan utilizing all 7 tracks in the Yard, Track Extension work must be rescheduled to the night shift and will take place from Tuesday May 21 until Thursday May 23, between 6pm – 3am. Light, Noise, Dust mitigation procedures will be put in place to mitigate impacts of this work. That, at least, offers a rationale. But overnight work for three nights deserves more of a warning, right?

In February, the TrueHoop media property, known for incisive coverage of NBA basketball, was revived as a newsletter (mostly subscription-only, but here's a link for a free month) and, wouldn't you know, founder Henry Abbott delivered an eight-part series on Mikhail Prokhorov, principal owner of the Brooklyn Nets and the Barclays Center operating company.

And that series concerns only Prokhorov's background, not his post-purchase performance.

No smoking gun, but...

Abbott doesn't find any smoking guns, but he does synthesize an enormous amount, and leaves us with the lingering sense that much about Prokhorov is "tricky," tough to truly suss out, but shrouded with questions and whiffs of impropriety. And that means that the NBA didn't do a serious job vetting the new owner with the deep pockets.

That's a significant achievement for a sports publication. At the very least, the series reminds us how both the sports and mainstream press mostly embraced the…

In an interview recently with a US Lacrosse Magazine podcast, incoming Brooklyn Nets owner Joe Tsai, who owns 49% of the team and is slated to buy the rest--and, perhaps, the Barclays Center operating company--told Paul Carcaterra about his "serendipitous" path to buying the team.

(This was first reported by the New York Post, and then NetsDaily.)

The Taiwanese-Canadian billionaire, a co-founder of Alibaba, was a high school and college lacrosse player, so the interview mainly focused on lacrosse. In August 2017, he announced he'd establish the San Diego Seals of the National Lacrosse League. He and his family have a house in La Jolla, Ca., though his main residence is in Hong Kong.

Presumably they also have a place in New York. He went to the Lawrenceville School in New Jersey and then Yale, and lived in New York City after law school.

A "serendipitous way"

Unlike Mikhail Prokhorov, it didn't sound like Tsai had been angling for years to get into the NBA.

“…

A message last night from Empire State Development:
Attached is a supplement to the Atlantic Yards Project construction activity update. Due to a last minute change, night work is expected tonight, Monday, May 20, within the East Portal Maintenance and Protection of Traffic (MPT) barriers on the Atlantic Avenue roadway.
(Emphasis added)

Thing is, that doesn't explain anything.Come to think about it, "Due to a last minute change" is an essentially meaningless explanation.
It *was* a last-minute change, but the reason--convenience? a problem?--was not explained.#AtlanticYards#accountability— Norman Oder (@AYReport) May 21, 2019

Laura Nahmias and Sally Goldenberg of Politico had an interesting scoop yesterday, within an article headlined As some 2020 rivals forgo corporate cash, de Blasio imposes few limits. The second paragraph:
De Blasio has run aggressive and occasionally reckless fundraising operations since the start of his political career, when he was censured for exceeding the legal spending limit in a City Council race. And now that he is vying for president and needs to show the country his fundraising prowess, he is going back to donors who want things from his administration — a practice he readily points out is not barred by law, even though it is the exact behavior that landed him in the crosshairs of federal prosecutors in 2016. The article notes that, while de Blasio and colleagues have escaped sanction, there's been some questionable behavior:
One of his campaign donors pleaded guilty last year to attempting to bribe the mayor in exchange for government help with his property. Last week, …

From Curbed Atlanta, 5/15/19, Atlanta’s latest ‘Yards’-titled project is expected to rise from the Gulch:
Quarry Yards, Pittsburgh Yards, Atlantic Yards, Pullman Yard, Madison Yards, Amour Yards, Artisan Yards, Assembly Yards, Stockyards, The Railyard, Hulsey Yard, Tilford Yard, Switchyards, Saltyard, Kirkyard, Iron Yard (RIP), English Avenue Yards, Scotland Yard, Yard House, unkempt yards of Atlanta ... meet the new yard in town.
While certainly not unique to Atlanta, the city’s yard-naming craze has extended down to the Gulch and the most substantial nongovernmental development in the region, which is henceforth to be called “Centennial Yards.” Wow. 
In New York, we do have Hudson Yards, but, as readers of this blog know, the name of "Brooklyn Atlantic Yards"--an official name, from which "Brooklyn" was soon dropped--was changed to "Pacific Park Brooklyn"--known most frequently as "Pacific Park"--in 2014, after Greenland USA took majority contr…

The announcement that 561 Pacific Street--the 12-story building replacing Church of the Redeemer on the west side of Fourth Avenue--has topped out suggests the changing scale of Boerum Hill/Gowanus as it nudges up against Downtown Brooklyn and the Pacific Park site.

Notably, it changes the scale near Site 5, currently home to Modell's and P.C. Richard, but not nearly as dramatically as either the approved replacement building at that Pacific Park parcel or the potential replacement.

As I wrote in May 2017, the already approved Site 5 building, 250 feet tall, would be twice the height of the condo building. The floated but not yet unofficially proposed massive two-tower project at Site 5, involving a shift of bulk from the arena block and a new state approval plan, could stretch 785 feet, a much more dramatic transition.

The new building, developed by Adam America Real Estate, is touted as "a tranquil refuge at the nexus of four of Brooklyn's most exciting neighborhoods.&…