Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Report

In my essay yesterday in CommonEdge,  In Honoring Philanthropists with the Onassis Medal, the MAS Forgets Its Crusade Against Supertalls , I criticized the Municipal Art Society for honoring Alibaba billionaire (and Brooklyn Nets/arena company owner) Joe Tsai and his wife Clara Wu Tsai, given that they bought apartments in the type of tower the MAS opposes. Another criticism regards the original purposes of the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Medal,  established  to “honor individuals and organizations that have made an extraordinary impact on the quality of New York’s built environment."  Today, it's also “awarded annually to individuals who, through vision, leadership, and philanthropy, have made an extraordinary contribution to New York City.” Tsai hasn't done much regarding the built environment, but, as I pointed out, the arena company, now owned by Tsai, has a  dismal record  of providing working  escalators  and elevators to the transit entrance...

More than 1,000 backpacks given away at Atlantic Terminal Mall ‘Back to School Bash’  the Brooklyn Paper reported yesterday: Several neighborhood service groups celebrated the start of the new school year with help from the Atlantic Terminal Mall at an exciting “Back to School Bash” on Aug. 27. Outside the shopping center, parents and students alike partied with hosts YWCA Brooklyn, EmblemHealth, St. Joseph’s University, Sigma Gamma Rho and Stop & Shop. More than 1,000 free backpacks were given out during the event, and parents were able to take their kids for free wellness check-ins and dental screenings with licensed doctors and dentists. EmblemHealth even offered students free haircuts, making them camera ready for those first day of school pictures. Etc. It's certainly good to give school supplies and services away, but do recognize that this is also a successful example of "earned media," i.e., unpaid news coverage that buffs the reputation of not just the organi...

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 ...

Sephora Signs at Brooklyn’s Atlantic Terminal Mall , the Commercial Observer reported 9/6/09, with the key piece of information "asking rents at the center at $250 per square foot," according to landlord Madison International Realty, which last year took over full ownership from Forest City New York/Forest City Realty Trust. That doesn't mean they got $250/sf, but consider that Madison's Ronald Dickerman, describing plans to refresh the mall and gain new tenants,  told The Street  in January 2018, "We'll raise rents from $30 per square foot to $60."  Presumably that was an average, so we don't exactly know the former rent--at the Children’s Place, a clothing store for kids--but that leaves a significant upside. Madison reps told the Commercial Observer that foot traffic from Barclays Center was part of the expected customer base for Sephora, which should open next month.

Hey, remember one of the reasons for the Vanderbilt Yard upgrade? It's supposed to help fuel Long Island Rail Road shuttle service between the hub in Jamaica and Atlantic Terminal in Brooklyn. And the delays in finishing the upgraded yard--finally due this year--have been less damaging because plans for the upgraded LIRR service have been delayed as well. Newsday, in a 3/25/19 article headlined  New amenities coming to Jamaica station, but it might be bad marriage for Brooklyn , reported: A $380 million effort to unclog and modernize the Long Island Rail Road’s hectic Jamaica station will bring new amenities, track infrastructure, and even an additional platform for riders, but also could complicate the travels of tens of thousands of Brooklyn-bound commuters. Although the long-discussed Jamaica Capacity Improvements project, or “JCI” as its known, promises several upgrades needed to handle the booming demand at the 106-year-old station, one key aspect of the effort — the cons...