Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Report

The controversy over the tweet by the Houston Rockets' Daryl Morey, followed by an NBA apology and then a statement backing free speech, coupled with a withdrawal by Chinese broadcasters and sponsors and a disturbing history lecture by Brooklyn Nets' owner Joe Tsai, has subsided somewhat, but it won't go away, neither regarding sports nor general business issues.

N.B.A.-China Spat Shows Sports Isn’t (and Shouldn’t Be) Just About Games, the New York Times's John Branch summed up 10/11/19:
“The N.B.A. has always been a league that prides itself on its players and coaches being able to speak out openly about political and societal affairs,” the reporter said. “I just wonder if after the events of this week, and the fallout we’ve seen, whether you both would feel differently about speaking out in that way in the future?”
A team representative chimed in immediately, saying they were accepting “basketball questions only.”
Irony died on the spot. (The league later apologized.) .…

The latest Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Construction Update (bottom), covering the two weeks beginning tomorrow, Monday, Oct. 14, was circulated Friday at 6:23 pm (lead time) by Empire State Development (ESD) after preparation by Greenland Forest City Partners.

As in the previous update, they're announcing disruptive overnight work, albeit this time with at least one week of lead time.

For B15 (664 Pacific) foundation concrete work is scheduled for Friday, October 18 in the evening through Saturday, October 19. For B4 (18 Sixth), foundation concrete work is scheduled for Friday, October 25 in the evening through Saturday, October 26.

For both, work will begin at approximately 10 pm Friday night and will likely run all day until Saturday evening. In both cases, concrete trucks will be staged on Atlantic Avenue before entering the site. Trucks will then move to the Pacific Street queue area for truck washout measures before departure.

Will that "Pacific Street queue area" s…

I noticed the work of artist William Powhida years ago, in a Williamsburg gallery. It's mesmerizingly in the world, not out of it.

Some of his work essentially an infographic, dissecting webs of "Complicities," as his show at the Postmasters Gallery in TriBeCa is called. (It's ending today. Go: 54 Franklin Street, 11 am to 6 pm.)

From the description:
Complicities is a show of painfully obvious, politically didactic, research-based, and precisely rendered works on paper. Produced over the last ten months in the wake of the crisis at the Whitney Museum, the work makes visible generalized and abstract systems -- investment, real estate, museum boards, private family-owned companies, curation, public policy -- illuminating the connections between art and the ruling class. Here are somereviews.

Below is my photo of his Hudson Yards piece--though here's a better version, allowing close-ups--which would be a great resource for urbanists. Heck, the work includes EB-5 f…

The open space wrapping around the 535 Carlton rental tower, closed (likely) since some time in August, is still closed.

As I wrote 9/23/19, a spokesman for developer Greenland Forest City Partners said:
Regarding the courtyard, there is a small area closer to Pacific Street that needs to be repaired. For safety purposes, the insurance company asked to close the courtyard temporarily while the engineers and contractors investigate the issue. We hope to have it re-opened shortly. That hasn't happened. At least a sign on the wall indicates that it's temporarily closed for construction--and, presumably, repairs.

Residents of the tower who recently attended a North Prospect Heights Association meeting indicated that a sinkhole--"a depression or hole in the ground caused by some form of collapse of the surface layer"--had caused the closure, I reported.

That wasn't confirmed.

But as the close-up photos below suggest, the area of concern--near Pacific Street but a dec…

The Barclays Center sold slightly more concerts and show tickets in the first half of 2019 compared to the first half of 2018, according to the trade publication Pollstar. Still, it ranks #31 on the worldwide chart, as opposed to #20 after the half-year mark last year.

That said, the arena typically increases ticket sales in the second half of the year. In 2018, Barclays went from #20 (274,866 tickets) to a year-end #8 (816,980 tickets), which was the lowest annual rank since the arena opened. The current mid-year rank is based on 279,579 ticket sales.

The 2017 mid-year figure was 376,230 tickets, #9 in the world, and the arena reached #5 by the end of the year.

The totals exclude sporting events. Given that Barclays will be housing fewer Islanders games than last year, that should open seven more slots for other shows.

An early peak, then a rebound?

Note that the total of 816,980 tickets sold in 2018 was less than 991,752 in 2013, its first full year, when Barclays was ranked #3 world…

Well, that didn't take long. Former Barclays Center/Nets/BSE Global CEO Brett Yormark has a new job, reuniting with his identical twin Michael Yormark heading a sports and entertainment agency founded by Jay-Z.

A 10/3/19 press release, Roc Nation Taps Brett Yormark As Co-CEO Of Roc Nation Unified, President of Business Operations & Strategy
NEW YORK, Oct. 3, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Roc Nation has named leading sports and entertainment executive, Brett Yormark, as co-CEO of Roc Nation Unified and President of Business Operations & Strategy. In this role, Brett will work with the Roc Nation COO, CEO and entire board to develop and execute long-term organizational objectives and will bolster the company's operational framework to support its continued growth. Brett's brother, Michael Yormark, will also serve as co-CEO of Roc Nation Unified.
Roc Nation Unified is the newly branded, full-service agency that will support artists, athletes, events, venues, leagues, teams, an…

Russian oligarch Mikhail Prokhorov, he of spy-villain accent and valuable media coaching, seems to have had a rather uncontroversial stint as an NBA owner, after all, despite his association--however tempered--with the Russian regime.

Comment of the day yesterday on NetsDaily, from "il temuto": "Given the current day’s geopolitical climate, I *cannot believe* that I am sitting here wishing that the *Russian oligarch* who owned this team still owned the team."

A lot of people might not have expected new Brooklyn Nets owner, Joe Tsai, the Taiwanese-Canadian billionaire educated (h.s., college, law school) at elite U.S. institutions, to be pushed into a geopolitical conflict as both business peacemaker (on behalf of the NBA) and provocateur (toward those less disposed toward authoritarian China).

But he made his fortune in China with Alibaba.

A tweet sets off a storm

So when Houston Rockets GM Daryl Morey tweeted, “Fight for Freedom. Stand with Hong Kong," that p…

New York City Apartment Prices Hit Four-Year Low, the Wall Street Journal reported 9/30/19:
Manhattan apartment sales tumbled during the third quarter and prices fell to their lowest level in four years, a Wall Street Journal analysis showed.
Much, but not all, of the decline was triggered by a higher state transfer tax on luxury Manhattan real estate that took effect in July, brokers and market analysts said. While the median price of a Manhattan apartment in the second quarter rose 19.3%  to nearly $1.4 million, it dropped to just over $1 million, a reference to the tax-driven sale clusters.

According to StreetEasy:
For fiscal year 2020, the statewide mansion tax will remain at 1 percent for property purchased for $1 million or more. For properties in New York City, however, the new mansion tax will rise incrementally with purchase prices of $2 million or more, capping out at a total of 3.90 percent for properties sold at $25 million or above. That figure includes the 1 percent stat…