With demolition of 666 Pacific, lot cleared for 27-story tower; another company not quite fulfilling CBA goals

According to the latest two-week Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Construction Update, "Demolition of 664 Pacific Street at the B15 site will continue during this reporting period."

Indeed, it has, though 664 Pacific is the new address for the 27-story market-rate rental tower (with school at base) planned, aka B15, while 666 Pacific Street was the address for a three-story industrial building on the site. See photo at right.

It has now been demolished, as shown in photos below sent by a reader. 

The CBA and MWBEs

Note the presence of A. Russo Wrecking, a WBE, women's business enterprise, which allows Greenland Forest City Partners to check off progress toward goals for MWBE (minority- and women-owned businesses).

As I wrote back in 2010, a firm owned by a white female resident of Nassau County fulfills the official aspirations of the Atlantic Yards Community Benefits Agreement (CBA), but hardly represents the groups based in Central Brooklyn--however unrepresentative themselves--that signed the CBA. 

In 2012, the last time statistics were released, the Atlantic Yards developer was well behind both its own stated goals and New York State's goals on MWBE contracting. No update has been provided by Empire State Development nor developer Greenland Forest City Partners, and the promised Independent Compliance Monitor for the CBA was never hired.

The CBA, as I noted five years earlier, is supposed "to encourage systemic changes in the traditional ways of doing business on large urban development projects." But this project has also been supporting long-established firms, like Russo, founded in 1952, and whose officers serve on major industry boards. 

Here's criticism from the Black Institute (led by Atlantic Yards CBA signatory Bertha Lewis) of the city's MWBE programs; Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park goes unmentioned.