At PacificParkBrooklyn.com website, a view from optimistic 2019, before progress stalled. With project facing an inflection point, what now?

It's remarkable--but also a testament to the uncertain, unresolved state of Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park. Go to the homepage of Pacific Park Brooklyn and it resolves to a... video that's now private.

Go to the Live tab, and it suggests that construction will commence in 2019 for 18 Sixth Ave. (B4, aka Brooklyn Crossing) and 662 Pacific St. (B15, aka Plank Road)--both of which are completed.

Scroll down to the News tab (and page) and the last posted article is from March 11, 2019--four years ago.

What's missing

There's no mention, for example, of the under-construction, and nearly completed two-tower 595 Dean complex, much less the long-teased--since September 2019--plan to deck the first of two railyard blocks, which would support three towers.

Nor is there acknowledgement that, for example, the 535 Carlton Ave. and 38 Sixth Ave. "100% affordable" towers have been sold to Avanath Capital, which has established new web sites for them.

Given the dispersal of developers and operators, as well as the failure to deliver the open space aimed to knit the project site (at least east of Sixth Avene) there's less focus, unsurprisingly, on the project as a whole, with individual web sites for each operator's buildings.

What now?

Clearly, the website needs an update to acknowledge new realities--a change from the more optimistic year of 2019. But that probably won't happen until the path of Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park becomes clear

The push to sell condominums at 550 Vanderbilt--an initial focus of the website--is over, with one penthouse left.

With the recent departure of project point man Scott Solish, and no public statement or announcement of a successor, developer Greenland USA is... regrouping? renegotiating? hoping for an exit?

Much remains unresolved regarding the project, notably the looming May 2025 deadline to complete another 876 (or 877) units of affordable housing, with $2,000/month fines for each missing unit. That deadline won't be met, and it depends on the platform.

The developer surely will seek an extension, or renegotiation, from Empire State Development, the gubernatorially controlled state authority that oversees and shepherds the project.

That could be coupled with the long-floated, but never advanced, plan to transfer bulk from the unbuilt B1 tower (aka "Miss Brooklyn"), once slated to loom over the arena, across Flatbush Avenue to enable a giant, two-tower project at Site 5, long-time home to big-box stores Modell's and P.C. Richard, already approved for a signficant, albeit much smaller project.

Any renegotiation, however much the developer might cite the economic and political headwinds faced by the project--the pandemic, the loss of the 421-a tax break, rising interest rates; the struggles of Greenland's parent company--would have to recognize the public interest rather than be completed in secret, as in 2014.

So it's notable that Empire State Development has not convened a meeting of the (purportedly advisory) Atlantic Yards Community Development Corporation (AY CDC) since last June, though the board is supposed to meet quarterly.

Though most AY CDC directors are uninformed, even their boilerplate questions about the project's status should elicit answers from the developer and ESD. Previous assurances from the latter aren't credible. The public is owed candor.