Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Report

Atlantic Yards has had its history of strange bedfellows, such as when opponents of the project allied themselves with libertarians challenging eminent domain. (Well, liberal jurisprudence, especially in New York, has stood for unfettered power for condemnors, including dubious "blight.")   Another example recently surfaced in this harsh tweet from the new, Bay Ridge-based Donald J. Trump Kings County Republican Club : The criticism is valid: Atlantic Yards was supposed to bring 2,250 affordable units to Brooklyn. Fast-forward nearly two decades... and 876 units are still missing. What’s the solution? Extend the deadline. Postpone the fines. Bend the rules. The people of Brooklyn were promised real homes. Instead, they’re getting real estate bait-and-switch. Let’s be clear: Penalties were meant to protect the public. Now they’re being “paused” to protect the developer. And you wonder why trust in government is gone? This is what systemic failure looks like, dressed in bu...

More than six weeks state officials suspended a deadline to enforce $2,000/month penalties for each of the remaining 876 (of 2,250) required Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park affordable housing units, saying they wanted to see a new proposal from a new development team, a moment of (perhaps limited) transparency may emerge. Empire State Development (ESD), the state authority that oversees/shepherds the project, has set a July 15 meeting of the (purportedly) advisory Atlantic Yards Community Development Corporation (AY CDC) at a Brooklyn location, thus more accessible for Brooklynites, though it is during the workday.  No agenda has been released; such agendas are typically opaque and released closer to the meeting date. The meeting will be: Shirley A. Chisholm State Office Building, 55 Hanson Place – 3rd Floor Conference Room, Brooklyn,  Tuesday, July 15, 3:30 pm Due to purported building procedures, members of the public and press attending in-person should RSVP by 4:30 pm July 14...

A June 29 New York Times article,  The Sheikh Who Conquered Soccer and Coddles Warlords , offers a skeptical portrait of the enigmatic Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan, whose older brother rules the United Arab Emirates. About the younger one: The Emirati vice president is best known as the owner of Manchester City, a top English soccer team. Behind the scenes, he has been described as the “handler” guiding his country’s secret foreign wars. More on that: Yet in interviews with more than a dozen American, African and Arab officials, he is described as being at the sharp end of his country’s aggressive push to expand its influence across Africa and the Middle East. In places like Libya and Sudan, they say, Sheikh Mansour has coddled warlords and autocrats as part of a sweeping Emirati drive to acquire ports and strategic minerals, counter Islamist movements and establish the Gulf nation as a heavyweight regional power. The Fortress connection From the Times: As deputy prime m...

City & State NY on June 30 announced the  2025 Brooklyn Power 100 , and missed something important about the owners of BSE Global, as I explain below. 43. Joseph Tsai & Clara Wu Tsai Co-Owners, Brooklyn Nets and New York Liberty: A Brooklyn basketball power couple, the Tsais got game. Joseph Tsai, the billionaire co-founder of Alibaba Group, chairs BSE Global and owns the Brooklyn Nets and New York Liberty. He recently sold a minority stake at a $6 billion valuation while backing a franchise rebuild he calls a “labor of love.” He’s also a founding board member of The Asian American Foundation. Clara Wu Tsai, governor of the New York Liberty and BSE Global vice chair, brought the Liberty back to Brooklyn, recruited Breanna Stewart and helped lead the team to its first WNBA title. As founder of the Social Justice Fund, she’s also directing a $50 million, decadelong investment in racial equity and economic mobility across Brooklyn, including capital access for Black-owned busi...

Art, Promotion, or Both? The "Liberty Portraits" Are a BSE Global Power Move ( link ) Stirring and bewildering, the Ticketmaster Plaza exhibit claims to be public-spirited but most serves the brand. 

More content from the Brooklyn Nets, getting together some old heads from the New Jersey Nets: "Kenyon Martin Reflects on the 2000s Nets with Kenny Anderson, Derrick Coleman & Buck Williams." The summary: "In Episode 2 of One Night in Brooklyn, presented by Beam Suntory, Kenyon Martin, Derrick Coleman, Kenny Anderson, and Buck Williams reflect on the Nets’ early 2000s era. Kenyon dives into what made those teams special, while Derrick shares a classic story about dunking on Shaq." Right, we wouldn't be watching it without that sponsor, "The House of Suntory: The Nature and Spirit of Japan." (The YouTube version below is shorter than the version on the Nets' website .)   The former ballers, perhaps loosened a bit by their host's spirits, are companionable raconteurs, and surely they have enough to say about basketball. Different candor But some might remember a May 2016 interview (my coverage ) with Martin by then-Yahoo columnist Adrian Wo...

It seems like a step back, like from Brooklyn to Piscataway. But maybe it reflects the limited upside, at least in the next few years, of the Brooklyn Nets, at least on the court. Brooklyn Nets Name All In Won as Official Jersey Patch Partner , the team announced, citing a "multiyear partnership" with  "a New York-based premier medical billing company"--um, the kind of business that wouldn't be needed with a more streamlined health care system. No dollar figure was announced, and no one's leaking numbers like the reported record $30 million a year paid by the trading platform WeBull in 2021, when the Nets had a superstar trio and were slated to be on national television a lot. It's the first marketing partnership for All in Won, founded in 2017 by Krystal McKenna. NetsDaily noted that the company's goal is to connect not with consumers, but health care executives. If, as NetsDaily noted, the "league average is $10.9 million. with deals ranging...

A new joint venture led by Cirrus Real Estate is being evaluated by both Empire State Development (ESD), the state authority that oversees/shepherds the project, and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), which owns the railyard over which a platform must be built, ultimately supporting six towers, and is selling, on a schedule, development rights to those towers. Where does it stand?  Speaking to the Prospect Heights Neighborhood Development Council (PHNDC) in early June, local advocate Gib Veconi, who's also a member of the advisory Atlantic Yards Community Development Corporation, said that ESD had asked Cirrus to receive approval by the MTA by June 30, as I reported . From presentation to PHNDC By the end of August, Cirrus was supposed to present a plan for community engagement to provide input on the contours of a revised Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park plan that, I suspect, will have already been negotiated behind closed doors, likely with a new timetable, lucrative new...

Revisiting BrooklynSpeaks' 2022 Crossroads Session: A Huge Irony ( link ) Participants said the developer shouldn't get more slack without delivering on commitments. But New York State had *already* agreed on an expanded Site 5 plan.

Updated July 2. There was something a bit cryptic in the July 2025 event calendar circulated yesterday, June 30, to neighbors. (My coverage .) The notice also alerted readers to "an art installation on the Plaza"--which for these purposes they choose not to describe as Ticketmaster Plaza--starting Sunday June 29 at 5 am through Thursday July 3 at 12 noon.  That suggests they were ready to send out the notice before June 29, but chose not to do so, perhaps because it was delayed. Indeed, as of the evening of July 1, it still wasn't finished, but it was clearly an homage of some sort to the New York Liberty roster: at the center-right is forward Leonie Fiebich. Photo: July 1 evening As of Sunday, June 29, the installation was barely in process, truncating a good part of pedestrian access to this "public" space. Photo: June 29 So it's supposed to last through an unspecified "private event" Wednesday 12 noon to 2 pm, and would be removed in time for en...

The Barclays Center yesterday released its July 2025 event calendar, which includes 14 ticketed events: eight New York Liberty games and six concerts. That's an increase over July 2024, when arena renovations likely truncated access. It also includes four unspecified private events (which the arena should disclose); a July 19 WNBA All-Star watch party (no tickets available yet, likely free); and, on July 27, a "Belong Brooklyn" event, likely a concert sponsored by the Social Justice Fund of arena company operators Joe and Clara Wu Tsai. Note that "amplified sound" is promised. Note that, for three of the Liberty games, including the likely sold-out one July 16 vs. Caitlin Clark and the Indiana Fever, there will be amplified sound for several hours on the plaza. July 2024 As I reported , the July 2024 event calendar included only five ticketed events: three Liberty games and two concerts. It also included three free events, including student artwork in the arena...