Why is the middle-school not due until 2025? The responsible parties should answer questions, but likely won't, unless elected officials push.

Photos by Norman Oder, Oct. 12

As shown in the photos, shot two days ago, some work is ongoing at Sixth Avenue between Dean and Pacific streets, site of the middle-school (I.S. 653, with  806 students) scheduled to open in fall 2025 in the base of the B15 tower (662 Pacific St., aka Plank Road).

Part of Sixth Avenue is cut off to accommodate a construction trailer and, perhaps, deliveries, truncating an already narrow street, though, as shown in the photo below left taken through the paper-covered windows, not much has started.

That 2025 date is at least seven years behind the once-anticipated schedule and the question--as one neighbor asked me--is why it's taken so long. 

My response, as elaborated below, is that the only solution may be for local elected officials--notably Council Member Crystal Hudson, state Senator Jabari Brisport, and Assemblymembers Jo Anne Simon and Phara Souffrant Forrest--to get the responsible parties to show up in public, and answer questions.

No answers yet

The answers should come from those responsible parties: master developer Greenland Forest City Partners; Empire State Development (ESD, formerly ESDC), the state authority that oversees/shepherds Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park; and the School Construction Authority, the public benefit corporation set up in 1988 to cut red-tape (!) and avoid corruption in city school capital projects.

But none are particularly transparent and, as I wrote in December 2020, some estimates were irrationally optimistic.

An August 2016 letter from then-ESD head Howard Zemsky to Assemblymember Walter Mosley, stated "A district wide middle school is also expected to open in the Fall of 2018."

That was dubious, given that 664 Pacific, then a 27-story market-rate rental building with a school at its base, had not been launched after its unveiling in 2015. 

And though that tower, ultimately built by a new developer, The Brodsky Organization, started opening to residents in November 2021, construction of the school--after Brodsky delivered the core and shell--didn't start until this past August.

So the parties should be asked why the estimates--which continued to change--were never accurate. The SCA, even when the new building was under construction, let the schedule slip, perhaps (I speculate) because of COVID delays.

Ventilating the questions

Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park questions get ventilated, if not answered, at the bi-monthly ESD-hosted Quality of Life meetings, which since the pandemic have been held on Zoom, with the organizers limiting transparency: spoken questions are not permitted.

As I reported last November, despite an agenda stating that a representative of the School Construction Authority would appear, no one did so. 

The ESD's Tobi Jaiyesimi, read several questions about the school, including questions about construction timing, deliveries, and bus drop-offs--it's a tight fit and the entrance doors seem rather limited--and said they'd be answered by the Department of Education (DOE), which will operate the school, from 9-18 months before school opening. 

As I wrote, that's not implausible, but why invite an SCA rep in the first place? The answers about construction are still pending.

What's the timing?

We haven't even gotten accurate information from the developer and ESD. At last December's meeting of the (purportedly) advisory Atlantic Yards Community Development Corporation (AY CDC), Greenland USA's Scott Solish claimed ignorance of the timeline.

I wrote at the time that while the opening had most recently been projected as 2024, it had advanced to 2025.

However, as I reported this past March, ESD's Jaiyesimi said the school was expected to open for academic year 2024.

The SCA's latest five-year Capital Plan, updated in February 2022, indicates that the school should open in March 2025. That is the 2024-25 academic year, but it's well past the halfway mark, and they don't open schools mid-year.


It would seem like there's enough time to finish by 2025, though clearly construction hasn't ramped up.

The next milestone should be in November or December, when the SCA updates its capital plan. By then, however, shouldn't the responsible parties answer questions publicly?