At Tuesday's Quality of Life meeting, update on middle school from SCA, but what about affordable housing lotteries, housing deadline, plans for platform & Site 5?

Update: the housing lottery for 662 Pacific has opened.

Empire State Development (ESD), the state authority that oversees/shepherds Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park, has set the next Atlantic Yards Project Quality of Life Meeting for Tuesday, November 16, 2021, at 6 pm, via Zoom: https://zoom.us/j/94688773423
Dial In: 646-558-8656 || Passcode: 946 8877 3423#
Meeting ID: 946 8877 3423

Project-related questions and suggested agenda items may be sent to atlanticyards@esd.ny.gov.

It's an open question why in-person meetings, which allow for follow-up questions and allow attendees to see others' questions, have not resumed. 

(The online format for ESD-hosted meetings is restrictive, compared to, say, Community Board meetings where questions and chat exchanges are visible.)

The agenda contains the typically non-informative list of presenters, but this meeting does, unusually, include a representative of the School Construction Authority, who presumably can provide an update on the middle-school planned for the B15 tower (aka 662 Pacific St. or 37 Sixth Ave.), not scheduled to open until Fall 2024.

Project updates: big picture

Will we get any big-picture updates on plans to start the platform over the Vanderbilt Yard? Phase 1, covering the block between Sixth and Carlton avenues, was supposed to start in early 2020. It didn't. 

That platform will support three towers, and likely at least two are necessary to include affordable housing--more precisely, income-linked housing--to meet the May 2025 deadline, by which the developer would be fined $2,000 for each missing unit. 

That deadline seems less and less likely to be met, which raises a question: will there be an extension, or exemption, or a legislative "fix"? Or is there a plan to meet that deadline?

Remember, the China-based parent of Greenland USA--which owns nearly all of Greenland Forest City Partners, the master developer--has seen its credit rating downgraded, amid great volatility facing real-estate companies in China.

Site 5 progress?

Is the long-pending plan to transfer the bulk of the unbuilt "Miss Brooklyn" tower at Flatbush and Atlantic avenues, now site of the arena plaza, across Flatbush to Site 5, longtime home to P.C. Richard and Modell's, now in motion, creating a giant two-tower project?

One crucial roadblock was lifted last month after a settlement between P.C. Richard, which won an initial court ruling guaranteeing it space in the future tower project, and original developer Forest City, now owned by Brookfield.

That bulk transfer would require a process to modify the guiding General Project Plan, and that could take a year, with public hearings When will that process start? And what does developer Greenland Forest City have in mind for the site: office space or housing? Plus how much hotel and retail space?

Is there a market for office space? And if the project will contain housing, how much, and what fraction of below-market, "affordable" units, and at what level of affordability?

Construction updates

Expect updates on the progress of 662 Pacific St. (B15), aka Plank Road, where move-ins have begun, and 18 Sixth Ave. (B4), aka Brooklyn Crossing, where move-ins may start in the next month or so.

In neither case, however, has the affordable housing lottery launched, which means that it will take several months to simply process those who seek to live in the building(s), much less have them move in. 

The standard answer we've gotten is that they'll tell us when they have something to share, but they should either announce the lottery schedule, or explain why it's been delayed.

Also expect progress updates on the steadily rising B12/B13 (615 Dean St./595 Dean St.), which are expected to open in mid-2023.

(Also, why have the bi-weekly Construction Updates stated that Saturday work at the latter sites would end at 5 pm, when the after-hours permit says 5:30 pm?)

Harassment episode

We should get an update on the reported harassment of a neighbor by an anti-masker construction worker last month. And whether the developer/construction company, and ESD, took any action.

The artwork, and the plaza

We'll probably hear an update from the Barclays Center about the new neon art installation at the transit entrance, sponsorted by the Social Justice Fund of the Joe and Clara Wu Tsai Foundation, owners of the Brooklyn Nets and the arena operating company.

But will we hear about how much, and how often, the arena company is cordoning off the plaza for Nets games and other events, and over what time period? I will ask.