No, image from moveable model does not mean new AY/PP building on south side of Dean Street, but it makes you think. (Plus: where's the Site 5 project in model?)

Is this the next Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park surprise? (After all, there's always something.)

 

My annotations

Apparently no--and I should've been more careful with the evidence--but it does raise some intriguing questions.

A photo of a model of the Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park project, tweeted 2/25/21 by the 78th Precinct from a community meeting, seemingly suggests, as the excerpt at right shows, an additional tower associated with the project, on the south side of Dean Street, indicated by the pink arrow I added.

That "vaportecture" tower--seemingly roughly comparable in height to the 27-story B15 (662 Pacific St.) looked to be just east of Sixth Avenue--at least according to my not-quite-accurate reading.

However, a representative of developer Greenland Forest City Partners, in response to my query, said that building is not part of the project, and that pieces of the model are moveable, as I soon tweeted. (I've deleted my old tweets but screen-capped them here.) 

Indeed, there are other irregularities visible, notably-as indicated by the yellow arrow I more recently added--that the B2 tower (461 Dean) has been pushed down Dean Street but should wrap around Flatbush Avenue.

Where exactly? (I was wrong)

Also, while I tweeted that the building appeared to be on the current parcel occupied by the FDNY's Engine 219/Ladder 105, Prospect Heights community activist Gib Veconi, who was at the meeting and appears in the center of the photo below, said that the model building was, rather, "in the middle of Dean Playground," which is no candidate for construction. 

The FDNY parcel isn't visible, given the perspective of the photo, but the "vaportecture" building--I should have pointed out--is too large for that site.

"I was walking Vanderbilt Avenue with Captain [Frantz] Souffrant and Detective [Brian] Laffey to discuss the Open Streets: Restaurants program," Veconi explained. "When we passed 550 Vanderbilt, the building manager (pictured to my right) recognized Detective Laffey, we got into a discussion with Captain Souffrant about Atlantic Yards, and the manager invited us to the sales office to look at the model of the project."

"No one in the room had any idea of what it was doing there, but I doubt it means some new development is planned there," Veconi said. "Neither it nor any of the buildings were attached to the board."

So it's more likely it was randomly placed there--though I wouldn't rule out the possibility that it was an artifact of someone's discussion, however speculative, about new construction on Dean Street.

FDNY and Dean Street

FDNY Nov. 2019, via Google Street View

After all, it's not illogical to contemplate a new building of some sort--albeit smaller than the Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park buildings--at the FDNY site.

The department's operations have already been constricted by the operation and construction of towers nearby, and fire trucks must briefly turn west, the wrong way down a one-way street, to reach Sixth Avenue and then the Flatbush Avenue and Atlantic Avenue arteries.

Moreover, the opening of a middle-school across the street at B15 in September 2024 adds another layer of complication--which is why some people warned against building a school there.

Meanwhile, there's an emerging precedent of building new affordable housing nine stories high--some 80 units in one case--at two sites on Dean and Bergen streets, at a parking lot and low-rise building owned by the city Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD).

Dean Playground segment, Google Street View

So the FDNY site is, arguably, underbuilt, as seen in the images.

In fact, Dean Playground, which has a large astroturf section, has a smaller mats-on-concrete section to the east adjacent to the firehouse that--who knows?--might beckon to a real-estate entity, allowing an even larger site. (Of course, they'd have to restore/relocate that part of the playground.) 

This parcel is immediately behind the nine-story warehouse that, according to HPD, sets a template for the two new city-sponsored affordable housing projects.

Affordable housing?

Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park faces a looming deadline to deliver 876 more units of affordable housing by May 2025.

I had speculated that a new building on the south side of Dean could help the developer meet that deadline--albeit with huge pushback--but Greenland USA executive Scott Solish reiterated at a meeting last night, "nothing nefarious--there are no new plans for an additional Pacific Park building on the FDNY site." 

Still, we don't know about their plans to build at least two large buildings within four years, almost surely over the railyard, which requires an expensive deck.

So if they don't build that housing on time--a pandemic extension, anyone?--that might fuel arguments for even more affordable housing on publicly owned sites nearby.

Looking at the model

The model, indeed, was irregular.

From 78th Precinct; click to enlarge

After all, the B2 tower (461 Dean) should wrap around Dean Street to Flatbush Avenue in the foreground, rather than be mashed east along Dean Street to Sixth Avenue, nudging the B3 tower (38 Sixth) a bit north, flush to the B4 tower.  

And the tallest building should be B4, at Atlantic and Sixth Avenues, though it might have been moved to the background, near Vanderbilt Avenue. The photo is inconclusive.

Where exactly might that that vaportecture building on the south side of Dean Street have been moved from? 

It looks--and perspectives can be tricky--to be comparable in height to the 272-foot B15 across the street.

The only building comparable in height is the 283-foot B8, which is not quite visible in the photo, on the eastern block of the railyard, between Carlton and Vanderbilt avenues. 

But Veconi said there was no parcel that was obviously missing a building envelope. Maybe it was just lying around.

B1, Site 5, and some extra square footage

The model was apparently updated as of 2016, since it shows the completed B2, B3, B11, and B14. 

Curiously, it does not suggest the longstanding plan, not yet enacted and surely hindered by the pandemic, to move the bulk of the unbuilt B1 (aka "Miss Brooklyn") tower, once slated to loom over the arena between Flatbush and Atlantic avenues, across Flatbush to Site 5, creating a giant, two-tower project.

(Update: Veconi reminds me that the model shows the approved design, which is true, though my point is that the model is not a good guide to the project's future.) 

It would, at least according to previous plans I wrote about in July 2016, rise as high as 785 feet, compared to the approved 250 feet, and increase significantly in bulk. That giant, two-tower project does not appear in the model.

But let's look at the numbers. B1 was approved at 1,106,009 square feet, though as of 2016 had been contemplated at 760,190 square feet. Site 5 was approved at 439,050 square feet, though as of 2016 was contemplated at 381,862 square feet. 

The developer proposed a two-tower project at Site 5 of 1,142,052 square feet, a combination of those two totals.

From 2016 proposal

But that seemingly leaves a significant amount of square footage on the table: 57,188 square feet from Site 5, and 345,819 square feet from B1, at least compared to the gross square footage approved. (Though the document states that the aggregate is greater than the amount of square footage to be developed, that still could leave the equivalent of a substantial building.)

No real estate developer simply discards valuable buildable square footage. So it's long been likely that some of that square footage would be proposed to be redistributed to other parts of the site, the six towers planned over the two railyard blocks.

But, then again, it's a "never-say-never" project. And surely the model of the project will require one or more update.