In (NY Post-conveyed) announcement of B4 loan, fuzzy prognosis for platform: 2020 start requires MTA approvals

Brooklyn Pacific Park apartment tower starts to rise, thanks to $460M loan, the New York Post's Steve Cuozzo reported last night regarding 18 Sixth Avenue (aka B4), but the real (non-) news is this paragraph:

Work is also set to start in 2020 on a deck over the exposed LIRR yard on the site’s Atlantic Avenue side, pending MTA approvals. Demolition of old buildings adjoining the yard is underway. The platform will support several more structures.

Let me try to decode those three, not-so-helpful statements:

• We don't have a start date yet for the deck, or platform
• Demolition actually has been completed
• The platform will support six towers, plus the bulk of the project's much-hyped open space

The lack of a start date is important because Cuozzo--the developer's go-to scribe for mini-scoops sans skepticism--in October conveyed the developer's statement that the platform would start in 2020, but without a date or an estimate of elapsed time. 

I reported in November that documents estimated the first phase of the platform would take three years. That detail seems to have eluded Cuozzo.

The opening

Writes Cuozzo:

The largest apartment building at Brooklyn’s Pacific Park is finally going vertical. The long-awaited tower at 18 Sixth Ave. has started to rise atop a foundation — thanks to a just-closed $460 million construction loan from a consortium led by M&T Bank and Bank of New York.
Joint venture developers Greenland Forest City Partners and the Brodsky Organization plan to open the building in 2022. It’s a key component of the 22-acre complex that was launched 14 years ago as Atlantic Yards, but stalled under previous developer Forest City Ratner.
The $649 million, 500-foot-tall tower will have 858 rental apartments, including 258 affordable ones. Brodsky has also started work on 664 Pacific St., which will consist of mixed-income rental apartments and a new public school.
Greenland EVP of development Scott Solish termed the loan closing a “major milestone in developing Pacific Park’s most ambitious building to date.”

Well, it's a milestone, but they obviously were fairly confident of financing, because construction started early this year.

2005 start?

Note that Cuozzo somehow thinks that Atlantic Yards was "launched 14 years ago," in 2005 (rather than 2003) and writes elsewhere in the article that "Bruce Ratner was originally tapped in 2005 to create what was then called Atlantic Yards."

He adds:

But after putting up Barclays Center and one other building, Ratner sold them off. Fearing a residential construction glut in the downtown Brooklyn area, he later sold all but 5 percent of his stake in the entire project to Greenland USA.

Actually, the sale of 70% of the project to Greenland USA in 2014 occurred while the B2 tower, aka 461 Dean Street, was still under construction. Neither it nor the arena operating company were part of that transaction. Three towers then began under the 70/30 split.

Then, after minority partner Forest City unilaterally declared a pause in construction in November 2016, given the glut and other factors, it in early 2018 announced the sale of all but 5% of the remaining project to Greenland.

More fuzzy details

Cuozzo writes:

Early this year, Greenland Forest City sold two other Pacific Park sites to another major New York developer, TF Cornerstone. The involvement of Brodsky and TF Cornerstone brought long-overdue progress to the complex, which inched along during a 13-year-long go-slow.
TF Cornerstone is to break ground in 2020 on 595 and 615 Dean Streets, which will contain 800 apartments, a 72,000-square-foot park and retail space.

It's hard to call the project a "13-year long go-slow" since initial approval in 2006 (he got that milestone right), given that three towers started in 2014-15 after Greenland and Forest City made their initial deal.

By the way, the "72,000 square-foot park" is publicly accessible, privately operated open space. And he left out the most controversial aspect: the below-ground fitness center and field house.

Writes Cuozzo:

Forest City, which was sold to Brookfield Asset Management in 2018, still owns one Pacific Park property, 461 Dean St., the world’s tallest modular building.

Actually, it doesn't. It was sold to Principal Global Investors in 2018, before the Brookfield deal.

His close:

Pacific Park is to have 15 buildings with 6,430 apartments — of which 2,250 will be affordable — as well as offices, stores and eight acres of public park space. Greenland USA must complete all the affordable units by 2025 to meet a state-city deadline.

It's just a state deadline.

The press release and the article

From Real Estate Weekly, here's what seems to be the press release. Below is a screenshot of Cuozzo's article.