From City Limits, my article today, Documents Reveal Woes at Pioneering Atlantic Yards Building : The Atlantic Yards apartment tower known as B2 officially launched in December 2012 with great fanfare and high hopes, and not just because of what developer Forest City Ratner proposed to build: 32 stories housing 363 apartments, half of them affordable. It was that B2, nearly flush to the Barclays Center, would be the world's tallest modular tower, with its flooring, fixtures, appliances, and facades delivered within a metal-framed chassis some 10' high, 15' wide, and 30' long. Forest City said it had "cracked a code" and claimed an "iPhone moment" . Two additional Atlantic Yards towers would start within the next 12 to 18 months, among the 6,430 apartments—2,250 of them below-market—planned for the project, all to be built modular. B2's 930 mods—which Forest City CEO MaryAnne Gilmartin likened to "shrink-wrapped apartments—would be mad...
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.