Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Report

See collected coverage of M-CROWN rezonings:  click here . There are some gaps in the real-estate publication Bisnow's article yesterday, Decrying ‘Developer’s Playground,’ New NYC Council Members Pump Brakes On Projects . While the article cites fights in Harlem and in Astoria, it gives center stage to 35th District Council Member Crystal Hudson, complete with photo. One gap: it presents Hudson's posture on the pending 870-888 Atlantic Ave. and 1034-1042 Atlantic Ave. proposals incompletely, reporting that she told the City Planning Commission in January that the projects should go back to the drawing board. Since then, as I wrote in my overview article , she told the City Council she had "deep concern" and, pressed by Streetsblog in a developer-friendly article, said, “I don’t know how I’m going to vote yet.” So that indicates some wiggle room. About affordability A second issue regards her posture toward affordability. From the article: “New York City has been a de...

See collected coverage of M-CROWN rezonings:  click here . Two spot rezonings, which would bring residential buildings rising 17 stories (or maybe 15) along broad Atlantic Avenue, are pending before the City Council, presaging a further transformation of Prospect Heights and Crown Heights.  Council Member Crystal Hudson, after first expressing clear opposition to the proposed 870-888 Atlantic Ave. (from Y & T Development, Yoel Teitelbaum) and 1034-1042 Atlantic Ave. (from EMP Capital, Elie Pariente), has more recently  said  she's undecided about the one-off upzonings, which would unlock development at sites currently shackled by low-rise manufacturing zoning. Meanwhile, there are conflicting interpretations of what Community Board 8's disapproval-with-conditions vote means. A lawyer for the applicants claims it means "conditional approval." And two leaders of CB 8 have said, unequivocally, that the board supports the applications because the developers have agre...

See collected coverage of M-CROWN rezonings:  click here . Something odd is going on regarding 840 Atlantic Avenue, the tower approved last year by the City Council at the southeast corner of Vanderbilt Avenue, at a parcel largely occupied by a still-operating McDonald's. (It's right across the street from the Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park parcel known as B10.) Even as McDonald's and landlord/developer Vanderbilt Atlantic Holdings (VAH) battle in court over the latter's effort to end the lease, VAH has filed permits to construct not one but two buildings, one 17 stories and one 11 stories, in an effort to get foundations placed by June 15 to take advantage of the expiring 421-a tax break. Why two buildings? From PincusCo Unclear, but--I speculate--it might be easier to get the Department of Buildings to approve a foundation for the smaller building, designated 851 Pacific Street, than for a larger 840 Atlantic, which relies more significantly on the McDonald's parc...

First in a series.  See collected coverage of M-CROWN rezonings:  click here . According to the New York City Department of City Planning, Atlantic Avenue and Fourth Avenue are Brooklyn's two "Opportunity Corridors," boulevards that, given access to transit and wide streets, can accommodate far more density in a growing borough. Another way to look at it: the Atlantic Avenue corridor, plus adjacent blocks to the south, is the locus of a gold rush, as land owners and speculators envision large new residential buildings--17 stories on Atlantic Avenue, 9 to 11 stories on Pacific Street--on under-built and empty parcels shackled by out-of-date manufacturing zoning, presaging a transformation of a zone marked by low-rise buildings, storage warehouses, and parking lots. For some eight years, the Department of City Planning (DCP) has been encouraging development around this major corridor in Prospect Heights, Crown Heights, Clinton Hill, and Bedford-Stuyvesant. To steer such dev...