Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Report

The Barclays Center yesterday released its April 2026 event calendar, with eleven ticketed events: four Brooklyn Nets games, one New York Liberty pre-season game, five concerts, and one comedy event. That's similar to April 2025, with eleven ticketed events. Note that the arena must leave dates open for many months to allow for a potential NBA play-off series, but the Nets, who are "tanking" to get a high draft pick, were eliminated from contention in the first half of March. So some more April events might be scheduled. The Nets' final home game, on Thursday April 9 against the Indiana Pacers, will feature amplified sound--and likely other "celebratory" effects--on the arena plaza from 6 pm to 7:25 pm. Also, while there's nothing announced regarding the New York Liberty game on Saturday, April 25 against the Indiana Fever, the return of Fever star Caitlin Clark should generate crowds. The arena also lists an unspecified private event at the arena on Wed...

Appraisal Suggests Railyard Parcels Could Be Worth $1B to Developers. Site 5 Compounds Value. ( link ) Were public subsidies, and more bulk, assumed before project relaunched? Are they merited? Document for investors projected Atlantic Yards completion by 2036. Nah.

More from Public Meetings: Site 5 Tower to Focus on Flatbush; Hotel Still Under Consideration ( link ) Lingering questions about streetscape and retail. Harsh criticism of community engagement. Could Atlantic Yards CDC fund its own financial consultant?

A New, Though Murky, Focus on the $350 Million that Developers Seek for the Railyard Platform ( link ) Is this the only subsidy request? No. Was a privately-funded platform ever possible? That's murky, too.

GQ on March 24 published Exclusive: The Jay-Z Interview  and two of the exchanges with interviewer Frazier Tharpe are relevant to Atlantic Yards and the Nets. Q. You also have a discipline of almost shrugging off any kind of perception of a loss. “The Nets could go 0 for 82 and I’d look at you like, This shit gravy.” A. Yeah, because it’s all wins. If I had point-zero-zero-zero-one of the Nets, I won. It’s like: I had ownership in a basketball team. In Brooklyn. That actually relied on me heavily to get to Brooklyn, right? So yeah, I didn’t win the championship with the Nets. I still won. That is true, as we've known for a while, thanks especially to an unskeptical New York Times article Aug. 16, 2012, With Arena, Rapper Rewrites Celebrity Investors’ Playbook . My critique . And yes, Jay-Z still won. As I once wrote, in Jay-Z’s hip-hop of distraction , "you can't hustle a hustler." Yes, I wrote that before I knew the Jay-Z line , "Can’t out-hustle a hustler, you ...

State Promises 500 (25%) Initial Low-Income Units, But Critics Say It Wouldn't Make Up for Shortfall ( link ) Shift from developers' earlier plan, but still no catch-up. A $3,071 low-income one-bedroom? Developer says buildings might open in early 2030s. Project completion by 2040?

Former City Planning Chair Garodnick: Public Money in a Project Should Trigger "Absolute Transparency" ( link )  With Atlantic Yards, it's a black box. Subsidies? Tax breaks? Extra valuable bulk?