Forest City New York continues to divest, as part of a corporate re-focusing and, I suspect, profit-taking. As Crain's New York Business reported 1/29/18, Two Trees buys huge commercial sites in Gowanus : Two Trees is buying one of the properties, a 70,000-square-foot building formerly anchored by a Pathmark grocery store with an attached 100,000-square-foot parking lot, for around $65 million from Hamilton Plaza Associates. It also purchased from Forest City Ratner a long-term ground lease of a neighboring 9-acre property that houses a Lowe’s Home Improvement store and its expansive parking lot. It wasn’t immediately clear what the company agreed to pay for that site, but several sources with knowledge of both deals put the total transaction above $100 million. Given the location in an Industrial Business Zone, other commercial use, including office or warehouse space, is likely. Forest City has had a 99-year ground lease from the U.S. Postal Service since 2003, a time befor...
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.