Forbes.com, in a feature aimed for its ForbesWoman channel, offers Meet The Women Behind The Brooklyn Nets , focusing on Forest City Ratner's MaryAnne Gilmartin and Onexim's Irina Pavlova. Writes Jenna Goudreau, transcribing without skepticism Gilmartin's self-serving account: Gilmartin, 47, has been a commercial real estate developer with Forest City for 17 years—seemingly as long as this project’s been in the works. The firm purchased the Nets in 2004, she explains, with the intention of bringing them to Brooklyn and building a state-of-the-art sports complex and 15 residential buildings over an old rail line running through the borough’s center. Rigorous public reviews, resident protests and holdouts, 35 lawsuits and a volatile economy resulted in years of delays. Here's what Gilmartin said, on the video below: "So this project has been in the planning since 1994, when we purchased the New Jersey Nets, with the intention of bringing them to Brooklyn, to buil...
This watchdog blog, by journalist Norman Oder, concerns the $6B project to build the Barclays Center arena & 15-16 towers at a crucial site in Brooklyn. Dubbed Atlantic Yards by developer Forest City Ratner in 2003, it was rebranded Pacific Park Brooklyn in 2014 after the Chinese government-owned Greenland USA bought a 70% stake going forward. In 2018, once the arena & four towers were built, Greenland bought out most of Forest City's stake, then sold three leases to other companies.