Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Report

Here's my latest roundup  in my Substack newsletter. Weekly Digest #3: An Uncertain Year (link) .

There's something curious in  How to Make Room for One Million New Yorkers , a New York Times guest essay yesterday (so far, online only) by Vishaan Chakrabarti, founder of NYC-based Practice for Architecture and Urbanism, and the NYC Department of City Planning's former director of planning for Manhattan. To accommodate those needing housing, Chakrabarti dismisses arguments for rent regulation and banning pieds-à-terre and converting vacant office towers as inadequate solutions He contends the city could in fact build 500,000 housing units—Mayor Eric Adams' “moonshot goal”--and at the scale of their neighbors. His team focused on areas within a half-mile of train stations and ferry terminals and excluded zones at risk of flooding--so, nope, Red Hook--and identified more than 1,700 acres of underutilized land, including "vacant lots, single-story retail buildings, parking lots and office buildings that could be converted to apartments." Screenshot from New York Ti...

I recently  wrote  that below-ground garage on the project's southeast block added 469 parking spaces, not the announced 455, to the existing 303 spaces, and wondered how well those 772 spaces could work. (The entrance is within the 535 Carlton building, but on Dean Street, with the address of 585 Dean.) After all, as I wrote there  were bottlenecks when the garage only held 303 spaces. It's not just the garage, it's the limited capacity of the street, given double-parking and periodic fire trucks. That said, only certain arena events--big concerts attracting seniors, playoff games--attract a greater number of vehicles. Ongoing questions One question, yet unanswered, is whether there's a limit on capacity for garages, in this case, with one entrance lane and two exit lanes. (I queried the Department of Buildings, but didn't heard back.) Another question is the impact, starting next spring, of the combined sewer installation on Dean Street, which could last 18 mont...

So what exactly is going on with the "Pacific Park Project Phase II – Combined Sewer Installation and Water Main Replacement on Dean Street between 6th Avenue and Vanderbilt Avenue"? The short answer is: work will ramp up next spring and take until November 2025, with impacts unclear. Then again, go to a city  web site  and it indicates, wrongly, that the project, was projected to be completed last July 17, as shown in the screenshot at right. However, the work was supposed to start on October 24, 2022, according to an  announcement  posted by Brooklyn Community Board 8.  According to a May 2022  presentation  (also at bottom) by the Department of Design and Construction (DDC), the project should take 36 months. The budget is $15 million (not $5 million). Some answers I got some answers, not all complete, from Denisse Moreno of the Department of Design and Construction, to my queries about the remaining work. That's why a public meeting, such as anothe...

Screenshot from The Real Deal There's always a surprise with Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park, and in my 2023 preview ( link ), I speculated that it could mean "a new timetable, a new plan, and a new agreement with the state... Greenland going into default?" The latter occurred, in a way, putting the project deeply in jeopardy, just in time for the 20-year anniversary of the Atlantic Yards announcement. Master developer Greenland USA, failing to pay back more than $300 million in debt loaned under the EB-5 investor visa program, faces a foreclosure auction on Jan. 11, raising huge doubts about the future of the project. Frank Gehry's rendering of arena + flagship tower It's unclear, though, whether and how much any bidder would pay for the share of a Greenland affiliate's rights to six development sites over the Vanderbilt Yard. After there's an obligation, for now, to pay fines for 876 (or 877) units of affordable housing due by May 2025, fund the construction...

Is this the bailout that Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park was waiting for? Not necessarily, but it could be part of the way there. It was heralded yesterday in a scoop fed to the New York Times under the headline New York City Aims to Build Affordable Housing in Wealthier Neighborhoods . Instead of using city money to subsidize "100% affordable" projects, now the city will provide a rough substitute for the state 421-a tax break, which has lapsed and previously incentivized 25% or 30% below-market units, albeit some at rather high income levels.  This instead would require 70% affordability, at various income levels, and could get support from advocates arguing for more affordability in the project. The devil, of course, is in the details. "Limited Affordability Areas" The city is offering a preference to proposals with the deepest affordability levels and in "Limited Affordability Areas," as shown in the map below. That Park Slope segment highlighted includes ...