An overhead view of Site 5, looking south (plus potential Atlantic Center overbuild)

Site 5 plan bulk shift floated in 2016

A new Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce Report, The Next 100 Years, not only offers an economic development strategy, it also includes an intriguing overhead photo around the convergence of Atlantic and Flatbush avenues, below.

Notably, as indicated by the pink arrow I've added, it shows the low-rise big-box stores at Site 5 within the Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park project, below which is the generally low-rise neighborhood of Park Slope. (On the western corridor, Fourth Avenue, new buildings go 12 stories.)

That puts in new perspective the plan, floated but not yet pursued, to transfer the bulk of the unbuilt Miss Brooklyn from the arena plaza to Site 5. Instead of a building rising 250 feet and with some 440,000 square feet of bulk, the potential two-tour project could rise 785 feet, and with 1.14 million square feet.

Pink arrow = Site 5 project. Blue arrows = potential Atlantic Center overbuild

The Atlantic Center overbuild

The overhead photo, annotated with blue arrows, also shows a good portion of the Atlantic Center mall, shaped like an elongated L. More than a decade ago, the owner and developer of that mall, Forest City Ratner, considered a plan to build three Frank Gehry-designed towers over the mall, but never moved forward.

NoLandGrab annotation of Courier-Life photo

Those development rights remain available, as far as I know, to the new mall owner, Madison International. While Madison's initial plans involve sprucing up retail spaces and raising rents, stay tuned to see if a tower plan is revived.

Downtown Brooklyn?

Oddly enough, the photo in the Chamber report is captioned in bottom left as Downtown Brooklyn, though that's hardly the heart of that district.

It might better be described as the Atlantic Terminal area, since the building at center is the Bank of New York tower over the Atlantic Terminal mall, and the building at right is the Williamsburgh Savings Bank tower, now One Hanson, generally considered to be at the far edge of Downtown Brooklyn.

Or maybe they're suggesting that, as the Site 5 project plan suggests, it's a new gateway to Downtown Brooklyn. (That's also been posited for another big project just a short way up Flatbush Avenue, 80 Flatbush, as I wrote for The Bridge.)