Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Report

From The Real Deal's The Closing: Ron Dickerman , a 10/5/21 interview: As the founder of Madison International Realty, which over the past two decades has pumped north of $17 billion into real estate assets, Dickerman is one of the industry’s biggest secondary investors, focused on owning minority positions in big-ticket properties... Madison owns or has owned pieces of the Seagram Building on Park Avenue, the Lloyd’s building in London and the Trianon tower in Frankfurt, Germany. Dickerman developed a niche of serving as a port of call for real estate syndicators who needed to cash out on their stakes in buildings before their partners were ready to sell. One set of questions concerns Madison International's two-stage transaction, first in 2011 purchasing a 49% stake in Forest City Ratner's/Forest City New York's local retail portfolio, then, in 2017 buying the rest, as the parent company, Forest City Retail Trust, was trying to raise cash and streamline its operatons....

From Chain Store Age, 1/6/21,  5Qs for Ronald Dickerman on urban retail, post-pandemic , and interview with the head of Madison International Realty, which in late 2017 bought the remaining share the Atlantic Terminal and Atlantic Center malls in Brooklyn: Your company purchased Forest City’s New York retail portfolio in New York City just a few years ago. Have your strategic plans for it been altered by the pandemic? Yes and no. Stores were closed by government mandate. We couldn’t insist on tenants paying rent. There were a lot of discussions of forbearance and forgiveness. But the pandemic has also has provided us with a platform to increase our curb appeal. We’re letting some tenants leave and are creating a tenant mix that’s more exciting for our customers. Take Barclays Center. On a typical day before COVID, two million people a year passed through that site, yet across the street they barely found any food and beverage opportunities. So the pandemic has created an envi...

Madison International via Street Art NYC Opposite the Barclays Center at Fort Greene Place and Atlantic Avenue, there's a new mural, "Hope," at  Atlantic Center mall , 20 feet wide and 24 feet tall, from artist  Jason Naylor . "To the Heroes of This World," it says, responding to the coronavirus crisis. "Thank You." The oft-derided Atlantic Center was taken over in late 2017 (along with adjacent Atlantic Terminal and more) by Madison International Realty, which bought out Forest City Ratner/Forest City New York in stages. Atlantic Center, or Atlantic Terminal? Note that Madison and others subsume Atlantic Center under Atlantic Terminal--a continuation of a strategy intermittently begun by Forest City --and the coverage, including in Street Art NYC  and BK Reader , identified the location as Atlantic Terminal, rather than its older, uglier sibling to the east. (I suspect that came from a press release.) To quote the Brooklyn ...

Site 5 plan bulk shift floated in 2016 A new Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce Report, The Next 100 Years , not only offers an economic development strategy, it also includes an intriguing overhead photo around the convergence of Atlantic and Flatbush avenues, below. Notably, as indicated by the pink arrow I've added, it shows the low-rise big-box stores at Site 5 within the Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park project, below which is the generally low-rise neighborhood of Park Slope. (On the western corridor, Fourth Avenue, new buildings go 12 stories.) That puts in new perspective the plan, floated but not yet pursued, to transfer the bulk of the unbuilt Miss Brooklyn from the arena plaza to Site 5. Instead of a building rising 250 feet and with some 440,000 square feet of bulk, the potential two-tour project could rise 785 feet , and with 1.14 million square feet. Pink arrow = Site 5 project. Blue arrows = potential Atlantic Center overbuild The Atlantic Center overbuild ...

I erred, and apologize:  Forest City informs me the plan is to build over East River Plaza, not Atlantic Center. See background here . So please consider the below as background for the plan, if/when it emerges, to build over Atlantic Center. It is approximately the same amount of space. Forest City Ratner has begun dropping hints that it's preparing to build 1 million square feet--perhaps in three towers--over the Atlantic Center mall, a long-hinted plan that was never formally part of Atlantic Yards but directly adjacent to it. The Atlantic Center Mall is just north of the arena That could add some 1,000 apartments--maybe all market-rate--to the coming density of the Atlantic Yards project, which would include 6,430 apartments in 14 to 15 towers, plus another tower (if ever built) devoted to office space BisNow reported yesterday , almost in passing: Forest City Ratner keeps interior design and construction in house, which makes taking on entitlement risk a little ...

Yesterday's DNAInfo reported in  'Fight Club' Outside Atlantic Center Mall Eyed by NYPD : A corner behind Atlantic Center Mall  is home to an organized "fight club" in which dozens of kids gather for daytime brawls organized on social media — including one recently where someone fired a gun, according to police and residents. Hanson Place and South Elliott Place — at the northeast corner of the complex that includes a Burlington Coat Factory and OfficeMax — has been the site of fights between as many as 30 teens for almost a year, resident Stephanie Seto said. Police are closely monitoring the fights organized on Facebook and other social media, and the mall is working with police to stem the violence. ...88th Precinct commanding officer Capt. Peter Fiorillo said officers are trying to thwart the fights. The  88th Precinct  and nearby 77th and 78th precincts are collaborating to stop the fights, the commanding officer said. ..A spokesman for  Forest City Ra...

In Brooklyn Nets a Mega Mall: Forest City Mulls What’s Next for Atlantic Terminal and Atlantic Center, the Observer's Matt Chaban writes: While everyone (but the neighbors and former neighbors) is looking forward to the opening of the new arena, Forest City Ratner now has its eyes trained across the street, to the two malls it owns there. Atlantic Center Everyone? Really? But it surely is worth pointing out, to use Michael D.D. White's "mega-monopoly" term , that Forest City Ratner's Atlantic Yards project was sure to rain benefits on the developer's adjacent malls, and that should have reflected in the public negotiations. New opportunities One opportunity is replacing existing tenants with more upscale retail, as well as more food and beverage. Chaban adds: Ms. [MaryAnne] Gilmartin even raised the possibility of reskinning the building, replacing its imposing brick façade with something more modern and inviting. The appearance of the mall has...

In a "Square Feet" interview in the upcoming Sunday New York Times Real Estate section, Ronald Dickerman, founder and president of the private equity firm Madison International Realty, explains his business and talks about the deal announced at the end of March to acquire a 49 percent interest in 15 retail and entertainment properties owned by Forest City Ratner. So what do companies like Forest City do with the cash? "To redeploy into other investment opportunities, to fund other liabilities within their portfolio," responded Dickerman. In other words, to help pay for Atlantic Yards. Dickerman said: They came to us, I think, in September 2010 to fund their go-forward investments. You may know that the Atlantic Yards development is something like $4 billion. These properties are as core as core can be. They’re 99 percent occupied; the average lease term is over eight years. (Actually, Atlantic Yards is supposed to be a $4.9 billion project.) "Fatigue" o...

In an effort to "create liquidity" (aka raise cash), Forest City Ratner has sold a a 49% stake in "15 mature retail and entertainment properties" in the New York City area, including the Atlantic Terminal and Atlantic Center malls in Brooklyn. The buyer, Madison International Realty , self-described as "The Leading Liquidity Provider to Real Estate Investors Worldwide," will invest $172.3 million in cash. The properties are valued by this transaction at $851.5 million, including $499.9 million of debt. Forest City will continue to own a majority 51% stake, and manage the properties. Is that a good deal for Forest City? Did Madison get a bargain? The only context I see is from the Wall Street Journal, in a short article today headlined Ratner Sells Shopping-Center Stake : The sale to Madison International Realty comes as Forest City has been hobbled by major development projects that were started at the market's peak, when prices and expectations were f...

Update 12:32 pm: A Forest City spokesman says the developer always clears its own streets. But I'm still waiting to hear from the Department of Sanitation as to why they were there. And, as described, Forest City staff seemed to be working cooperatively with Sanitation. *** Fort Greene Place, the street between Forest City Ratner's Atlantic Center and Atlantic Terminal malls from Atlantic Avenue to Hanson Place, has since 1986 been demapped for a private street. (Last May, Tracy Collins was barred by FCR security from taking photos there.) So a Brooklynite visiting the Department of Motor Vehicles office at the Atlantic Center mall yesterday afternoon was surprised to see Department of Sanitation vehicles on the street and savvy enough to snap a few pictures. Street closed "When I got to Fort Greene Place, FCR security had closed off the street and cleared all vehicles from the street," my correspondent reported. "I saw a Department of Sanitation orange front...

As predicted by Forest City Ratner officials, they've ordered steel for the Barclays Center arena, and erection of the steel began yesterday, according to a Nets press release . From developer Bruce Ratner: “The installation of steel is always a major milestone for a construction project,” said Mr. Ratner. “With the foundation work largely done, we are now poised to go vertical. Over the next several months, the Barclays Center will begin to take on the iconic shape that we believe will make the arena a worldwide destination and Brooklyn an international city.” And Marty Markowitz takes the opportunity to leap, without foundation, from arena progress to project fruition: “Progress on the Barclays Center spells great things for Brooklyn and its future,” said Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz. “This project will bring jobs, affordable housing and economic opportunity, as well as a triumphant return to major league sports for the greatest fans in the world—Brooklynites.” Nets...

The Fifth Avenue Committee's new LEED Gold , mixed-income Atlantic Terrace development is nearing completion, far faster than Atlantic Yards (which began earlier), but there's a curious omission on the official web site: no (planned) arena. The neighborhood page of the web site states: Atlantic Terrace is located in Fort Greene, adjacent to Prospect Heights, Downtown Brooklyn, Clinton Hill and Boerum Hill. The location has so much to offer, including two public parks, multiple schools, a major hospital, and a local university—all within walking distance. The building is also adjacent to a major shopping center, the Atlantic Terminal Mall, as well as Brooklyn’s premier transit hub at the Atlantic/Pacific Station through which virtually all city subway lines pass. Yes, and it looks like they're going to build an arena across the street, surrounded by a tower or two or four. There's a similar omission on the web site for Forest City Ratner's 80 DeKalb Avenue projec...

NoLandGrab (with some help from Gari N. Corp) beats me to the punch regarding Atlantic Yards developer Forest City Enterprises' current financial difficulties. First, Yahoo Finance, Tim Melvin of RealMoney.com declares that Third Avenue , the largest institutional holder of Forest City Enterprises stock, is also buying senior debt that would yield better than 30%. It's a huge return should the company survive the recession or, according to Gari N. Corp, a potentially large return even if FCE hits bankruptcy, given that bondholders would be repaid first. He comments: "The fact that Third Ave is now buying bonds as well as stock suggests that it has a very real concern that the stock would be wiped out in bankruptcy." FCE selling properties The Cleveland Plain Dealer, citing newsletter Real Estate Alert, says that FCE is seeking buyers for 15 properties: 10 apartment properties, four shopping centers and the office portion of University Park at MIT, a mixed-use develo...

So, should we give some slack to Forest City Ratner's Atlantic Center mall, which opened in 1996, a different era in an ever-changing Brooklyn? Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, during a recent TV discussion, suggested we should: "Certainly the Atlantic [Center] mall, the first mall, you can’t say it’s an attractive mall. We all know it’s not. But when it was built, I and almost all the other elected officials were celebrating, my god, somebody is investing something in the area." However, the mall still shows up on lists of the city's most reviled buildings, and yesterday appeared in an amNewYork article headlined 10 to lose: Ugly buildings NYC would be better without . The expert quoted on the Atlantic Center was Rob Lane, Regional Design Programs, Regional Plan Association, who said, according to the article: "Seems like the focus should be on buildings and structures that are not just ugly in someone's opinion, but things that detract from, if...