Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Report

The Brooklyn Nets overachieved, this past season, exceeding expectations and making the playoffs. They even won their first playoff game, on the road in Philadelphia, then lost some tight games before being defeated soundly two nights ago by the 76ers, a team with more size and more talent.

Still, the Nets have established an identity and a culture, in contrast with the grotesquely mismanaged New York Knicks, and that could help the Nets land a major free agent (like Kevin Durant) in the offseason. The team, wrote the New York Post's Brian Lewis, "could look completely different next season." Plus: New York.
Dudley re: #Nets edge: "You can live in the city, live in Brooklyn, the practice facility is right here. It’s a Top 3 best practice facility. So yes, the word is out. People know about it. People know how good Kenny & Sean Marks are and what they’ve done to develop this culture." — Brian Lewis (@NYPost_Lewis) April 24, 2019Meanwhile, though the team cam…

In April 2018,  as I wrote 4/26/18, the Commercial Observer's always debatable Power 100 list ranked the three L&L MAG founders, including former Forest City New York CEO MaryAnne Gilmartin, at 26, which I thought premature.

Now that they have a couple of projects going, in Chelsea and Long Island City, plus other milestones for the larger parent company, they've risen to 17. Gilmartin was 43 in City & State's more recent inaugural Real Estate Power 50, while Greenland USA CEO Hu Gang was ranked 27, which I found debatable, given his company's general caution toward development.

Indeed, now that Greenland is selling even more pieces of Pacific Park, it's notable--and understandable--that Hu--who ranked 42 last year on the Commercial Observer list--is not in the publication's latest list.

AY connections

But there are several parties with Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park connections.

Notably, tops on the list are Ric Clark and Brian Kingston, Chairman of Brookf…

Update: the press release, at bottom, indicates 258 units of affordable housing--which was announced in March, actually--but otherwise adds no insight.
Brodsky Organization doubles down on Pacific Park complex wrote the New York Post's Steve Cuozzo late last night in another scoop--remember, he was fed the exclusive last September when Brodksy and TF Cornerstone bought development rights at three sites.

What precisely that means is unclear. The deal to join Greenland Forest City Partners (95% owned by Greenland USA) to jointly develop 18 Sixth Avenue, the 859-unit tower (aka B4) at the northeast corner of the arena block, does not necessarily "accelerate progress at Pacific Park," since GFCP had already said that's on the way.
But it's not quite a joint venture with that building: Greenland Forest City executive vice-president Scott Solish told The Post that Brodsky is “doing 18 Sixth Avenue 664 Pacific on their own but within the framework of the project’s master…

New evidence I've seen suggests that immigrant investors in "Atlantic Yards III," the third round of fundraising under the EB-5 program, were provided misleading information by the U.S. Immigration Fund (USIF), which packaged the $100 million loan, and perhaps by the developer, Greenland Forest City Partners.

It has to do with a misleading and already out-of-date map.

That map of the potential project buildout, dated June 30, 2014 and shared with investors in October of that year, estimated that the final tower would open by February 2022.

That would have been an astonishingly fast pace, with 14 towers rising to completion in less than eight years, including six rising from an expensive, elaborate platform covering the Vanderbilt Yard.

While that was likely aimed to reinforce the reliability of the plan to investors, it wasn't just overly optimistic. An updated and significantly less optimistic map, dated August 13, 2014, had already been prepared to be shared with l…

Brooklyn retail rents are “starting to flatten”: REBNY, the Real Deal reported 4/18/19, citing a new report from the Real Estate Board of New York, noting that rent increases were visible along "Flatbush Avenue between Fifth Avenue and Grand Army Plaza in Prospect Heights," which is, of course, near the Barclays Center.

Actually, if you talk to people in the know, or just look at the empty spaces at the Barclays Center perimeter and down the block at 461 Dean and Heritage Dean Street, it seems like a very mixed bag, especially since the report assesses asking rents, not actual rents achieved.

Let's take a closer look.  From the full report:
PROSPECT HEIGHTS On Flatbush Avenue, between Fifth Avenue and Grand Army Plaza, the average asking rent rose six percent year-over-year to $139 psf. This increase is attributed to an increased amount of new retail activity occurring along the corridor throughout 2018. Demand for retail space on Flatbush Avenue remains high despite mos…

Now that the New York Islanders have made it to the second round of the playoffs, the home games will be, as planned, at the Barclays Center rather than the Nassau Coliseum, which. as the team--approved by the NHL--announced in February reflected "that the Nassau Coliseum does not qualify as an NHL major league facility."

So why was it at Nassau in the first place? Because the fans wanted it, the operators of both arenas (BSE Global) wanted it, the players probably wanted, and Gov. Andrew Cuomo wanted it. But the league wants Barclays, which has many more suites, when the games are full.

Yesterday, Newsday reported Hempstead asks NHL to schedule Islanders at Coliseum:
Hempstead Town Supervisor Laura Gillen requested the NHL relocate the remaining Islanders playoff games to Long Island, but NHL officials said the games will be played in Brooklyn as scheduled.An understandable effort, but not a successful one. After all, the lease between the team and BSE Global requires playof…

After watching Battle for Brooklyn Monday night, the panelists (including me) got to the inevitable discussion--especially regarding proposed rezonings--regarding the commonly accepted notion that only by building bigger will we get affordability trickling down.

As I wrote in July 2017, then Deputy Mayor Alicia Glen, as the Wall Street Journal reported:
said public housing had been “starved” of federal support for years now, leaving the city with fewer ways of creating affordable housing. “Are we relying too heavily on the private sector?” she said. “There is no alternative.” Glen's phrase recalled the slogan of a politician with whom I doubt her boss Bill de Blasio identifies: former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, a Conservative who believed in free markets.

In a rich city, the public can pay

At the panel, Ron Shiffman, the legendary advocacy planner and academic, criticized the market-based philosophy. "One problem we're now facing is that planners and city of…