Why B4 tower, now planned for office space, is key to the 35% affordable housing requirement

Unofficial mock-up of proposed new configuration

I wrote 3/17/16 about how developer Greenland Forest City Partners' plan to program office space in the B4 tower at the northeast corner of the arena block--formerly planned to include both market-rate and affordable rentals--challenges a previously assumed timetable for affordable housing.

The developers have committed that 35% of the total residential units be affordable until 1,050 affordable units had launched.

"My analysis of that plan is it will need to be changed to enable the project to meet the ratio of 35% affordable to total units if there are no units going into B4," said Gib Veconi at the Atlantic Yards Community Development Corporation meeting two days earlier.

He noted that the B4 affordable units were key to reaching that 35% threshold, and that affordable units would have to be shifted to maintain the pledge.

Indeed, given current unofficial plans for affordable and market-rate housing, Greenland Forest City would have to add affordable units to a tower previously not assumed to contain such, or to reconfigure the schedule for the buildout. (Or, perhaps, they might violate the pledge, I wonder.)

I didn't last month publish the 2014 document below that described the potential buildout indicates the key role of B4. Note that Building 1 (aka B1) is no longer part of the plan, but Greenland Forest City aims to shift the bulk across the street to Site 5.

Another potential illustration of the potential buildout is below, and it's obviously not fully accurate, since it posits construction of the B1 tower over the arena plaza rather than, as now proposed, shifting the bulk to Site 5.