Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Report

Bi-Weekly Digest: Who's to Blame for Unworkable (?) Plan? Was the Arena a "Linchpin" as Promised? ( link )  No, "politicians and activists" didn't doom Atlantic Yards. Nor did the Barclays Center catalyze project benefits. BSE Global keeps pushing, in Brooklyn & beyond. Atlantic Yards lessons for the Brooklyn Marine Terminal.

While the rebuilding Brooklyn Nets had a record five first-round picks in this week's NBA Draft,  no one thinks they knocked it out of the park. So is this really going to sell tickets, as the promotion at right suggests? (Full and half seasons are said to start at $47/ticket, and quarter season at $43, but few if any at those prices are available.) Brooklyn Nets Select Five Players in First Round of 2025 NBA Draft  stated the press release, which chose not to highlight any: BYU guard Egor Demin (8), a native of Moscow French pro guard Nolan Traoré (19) University of North Carolina guard/forward Drake Powell (22, thanks to a trade) German pro guard Ben Saraf, a native of Israel (26) University of Michigan forward/center Danny Wolf (27) Brooklyn Nets have left us with more questions than answers , wrote Lucas Kaplan of NetsDaily, who quoted sources as calling the overall impact "insanity,” “bewildering,” or conflcting: That’s what it comes down to. None of their picks felt lik...

Gothamist reported yesterday,  Slain Prospect Heights woman leaves behind 2 children, grieving mom says , noting the 10:30 pm shooting was two blocks from the Barclays Center (unrelated) and at the intersection of Carlton Avenue and Pacific Street. That's very near 535 Carlton (B14) and the entrance to "Pacific Park." Gothamist quoted Norma Campbell as saying her daughter, 36-year-old Tamika Powell, was at a barbecue "outside a building on Atlantic Avenue and Carlton Avenue," and, after an argument, was tailed by a man who put on a mask and shot her at Carlton and Pacific. While the address of the barbecue wasn't specified, the largest building at the corner, with significant outdoor open space, is  NYCHA's Atlantic Terminal 4B .  "I'm on this street all the time." one Gothamist commenter wrote . "This is one of the safest streets out there and is the entrance to the new pacific park. Crazy someone got shot there."

The surprising (but, in retrospect, maybe not) Democratic mayoral primary victory of insurgent Queens Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani--a  democratic socialist who inspired legions of volunteers, talked to anyone, formed alliances, expressed love for the city, and had a simple (if somewhat  questionable ) set of affordability priorities--over dreary establishment candidate Andrew Cuomo has set up a very interesting situation. Mamdani was closing in on Cuomo in the polls, and one said he'd beat the former Governor after ranked-choice voting concluded, but he beat him decisively , with 43.5% of first-place votes to Cuomo’s 36.4%, and likely will take more when ranked-choice votes are counted, given, for example, his cross-endorsement with Comptroller Brad Lander, who got 11.3%. So for now, it's an apparent victory, likely to be solidified, though Democrats have only offered "tentative support," in the words of City & State. Chess match What next? Cuomo, who had enormo...

Is the Barclays Center the "Linchpin" of Atlantic Yards? No, and That Matters ( link ) The arena and team helped get the project approved, but didn't leverage the jobs and housing. Decoupling ownership sacrificed cross-subsidization. The state could step in.

OK, a month after teasing a new music festival, Planet Brooklyn (my coverage ), BSE Global--parent of the Brooklyn Nets, New York Liberty, and the arena company--yesterday announced the main lineups for the Aug. 23-24 events. Notably Trinidadian soca star Machel Montano headlines a Aug. 24 lineup at the Barclays Center and a "full lineup of BIPOC queer talent" will be at the Brooklyn Paramount on Aug. 23. While they also announced a series of acts at outdoor block parties, the lineup for free concerts at the Brooklyn Academy of Music awaits, so that surely will be another publicity bump. Media mentions BKMag, also owned by BSE, is the supporting media partner of Planet Brooklyn , and yesterday announced  the line-ups, albeit without disclosure of the shared ownership. Oddly enough, BSE's more ambitious new "digital first global media brand," Type.Set.Brooklyn (my coverage ), has no mention yet of Planet Brooklyn. Where's the synergy? Brooklyn and the world ...

The city's Democratic primary election is today--not that we'll know the mayoral results until ranked-choice voting is calculated July 1 .  Nor will that decide the city's next mayor, since both city-and-press-averse, establishment candidate Andrew Cuomo and buzzy, inexperienced socialist Zohran Mamdani, the two frontrunners, are likely to run on separate ballot lines, along with tarnished incumbent Eric Adams, in November. Very little has been said about the vexed Atlantic Yards project, unlike in some previous campaigns. Maybe because the project is confounding. Mamdani came to the Vanderbilt Yard to promote his housing plan, but didn't say anything about the project.  Cuomo outsourced his housing plan to ChatGPT and (apparently) supporters, so he (along with Adams) likely supports an emerging plan for the remainder of the Atlantic Yards site led by Cirrus Real Estate Partners, which has an agreement with construction unions. But he probably couldn't find the ra...

Shanghai-based Greenland Holdings, parent of Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park developer (for now) Greenland USA, has further continued its slide in the annual  Forbes Global 2000 list , this year ranked at #931, down from #891 in 2024 and well below its peak of #307. Last year, as I wrote , it was at #831 (or #832). It represented the second straight loss for the company--the first ones since Forbes started compiling records in 2017. So the losses drag down the #349 ranking in sales and #267 ranking in assets. Forbes ranks the world's largest companies in the world using four metrics: sales, profits, assets and market value. The better known Fortune Global 500 ranking, which should be released in August, relies solely on revenue in the past fiscal year. Screenshot from Forbes The bottom line: though Greenland  was billed  when it came into the project in 2014 has having deep pockets, that situation is far away.  No wonder its U.S. subsidiary since November ...

Screenshot, May 13 I'm too old and too square to be the target audience for Type.Set.Brooklyn , the new "digital first global media brand" announced last month from BSE Global, parent company of the Brooklyn Nets, New York Liberty and the Barclays Center operating company. So take what I say here with a grain of salt. Still, the idea that a brand can reflect, as the press release claimed, "Brooklyn's intrinsic values -  uninhibited authenticity, relentless hustle, diverse community and audacious creativity and self-expression," is a stretch. Indeed, after reading some of the articles and watching some of the videos, I'm wondering how far they can go with what might, in-house, have been termed "Complex with a Brooklyn Angle," reflecting the influence of that youth culture brand, especially since so much of the talent's connection to Brooklyn seems tenuous. Even if video is more important the the articles, the latter can be pretty niche. Con...

If Affordable Housing Over Railyards Doesn't Work, Are "Politicians & Activists" to Blame? ( link ) Columnist criticizes unrealistic goals, but New York State backed developer Ratner's unwise (and renegotiated) Atlantic Yards plans with dubious reports.

Led by Council Member Crystal Hudson, ten local elected officials yesterday wrote to Gov. Kathy Hochul and Hope Knight, CEO of Empire State Development (ESD), urging them to start collecting $1.752 million in liquidated damages for the 876 Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park affordable housing units that were supposed to be built by May 31 The letter (bottom), was signed by Hudson and her colleague Shahana Hanif; Assemblymembers Jo Anne Simon, Robert Carroll, and Phara Souffrant Forrest; Borough President Antonio Reynoso; State Senator Jabari Brisport; and Congressional Representatives Dan Goldman, Yvette Clarke, and Nydia Velazquez.  The latter three officials have been far quieter about Atlantic Yards, for example not appearing at a press conference called by--or in a press release from--the coalition BrooklynSpeaks . Hudson posted the letter on BlueSky yesterday, prompting a report earlier today from Gothamist, which quoted ESD as reiterating that it would stop suspending the damages...

At a press conference last week organized by BrooklynSpeaks, as I wrote ( link ), Assemblymember Jo Anne Simon pointed to the state's failure to collect damages for unbuilt affordable housing "We want this housing," she said. "We want it built now. It was a public benefit that was promised to everybody and whether you like the project or not, whether you wanted it here, there or whatever, this is a public benefit that was promised to the people of New York and it has not been delivered on." She's right that, the longer the wait, the longer it takes to serve people vulnerable to displacement. Not so fast As I wrote, that statement deserves a "Yes, but." If the only way to get that housing is to build at Site 5 , catercorner to the arena, at unprecedented density, then, no, not everyone wants the housing. (Quick, who said of Atlantic Yards, exaggerating the numbers, "If it’s built the way it was approved, we’re going to end up with 16 60-story b...