Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Report

I wrote yesterday how, more than six years ago, developer Greenland Forest City Partners' (GFCP) plan to move most of the bulk of the unbuilt "Miss Brooklyn" (aka B1) across Flatbush Avenue to create a giant two-tower project at Site 5 also involved eliminating the Urban Room. That's the long-forgotten promised publicly accessible space that was supposed to serve as an entryway for both B1 and the arena.  Instead, by decoupling B1 and the other three towers (later built) from the arena construction project, they had to build a temporary plaza--one that GFCP and surely the arena operator would like to see as permanent. From 2016 proposal But they forgot to get it done on time. Though long percolating, the process to allow a bigger project at Site 5--longtime home to the big-box stores Modell's (since closed) and P.C. Richard, and already approved for a substantial, 250-foot, 440,000-square-foot building--was delayed for various reasons. A suit from P.C. Richard wa...

Given tonight's open meeting, What's Next for Atlantic Yards (and more coverage here ), it's worth looking back on some official documentation regarding Site 5, currently home to Modell's and P.C. Richard across Flatbush Avenue from the arena block. After all, it's widely expected that developer Greenland Forest City Partners will seek a change in the project's guiding General Project Plan--requiring a public approval process--to move most of the bulk from the unbuilt tower once planned for the arena plaza (aka "Miss Brooklyn") to create a much larger structure than previously approved. 2016 plan floated for Site 5 In other words, instead of a 250-foot tower with 439,040 square feet, how about a two-tower project, with one tower rising 785 feet (as of 2016 plans), with a total of 1,141,000 square feet. That was one possibility floated in 2016 plans  shared with the Department of City Planning but not officially advanced. By now, their plans c...

Let's look carefully at this excerpt (below) from the Preliminary Official Statement for the successful refinancing of the Barclays Center bonds. Regarding the arena's capacity to raise revenue from sponsorships, consultant from consultant Conventions Sport & Leisure (CSL) stated," The Arena leveraged a new landmark (the plaza outside the main entrance) to generate a 51 percent increase in the casino category." Well, then. Amenity or advertising opportunity? As I wrote 3/31/16, one justification from developer Greenland Forest City Partners for moving the bulk of the unbuilt B1 tower across Flatbush Avenue to Site 5, according to Forest City Ratner's Ashley Cotton was, "a key thing we think we can accomplish with this is keeping the plaza permanent open space." Resorts World Casino NYC Plaza @barclayscenter : Public amenity or branding/marketing opportunity? #AtlanticYards pic.twitter.com/FkpHedVoMa — Norman Oder (@AYReport) Augus...

Site 5 is at far left The 2016 Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park surprise--which I partly predicted --has come early, and it's a doozy, with self-serving motives portrayed as civic ones. The bottom line is: to save money on construction costs, and not have to build a 511-foot office tower with 1.1 million square feet over the arena plaza, Greenland Forest City Partners want to move the entire development package across the street to Site 5. That's currently home to P.C. Richard and Modell's, where already a 250-foot building with 439,050 square feet of development rights is planned. The results: a humongous building, more than 1.5 million square feet (and of an unknown height), across the street from row houses. Forest City has characterized it as the Brooklyn analogue to the Time Warner Center. It's almost a quadrupling of development rights. B1 development rights would be combined with smaller Site 5 ( model approx. 2008 , by Frank Gehry) What next? Thi...

Update February 2016: Guess what: those leaked plans were correct; they do aim to build a giant tower, with more than 1.5 million square feet, on Site 5, combining the bulk from both sites. The Bisnow article was not a mistake, just a premature leak. So Forest City Ratner requested a correction in something that was correctly reported. Update July 2016: They aim to build a tower project , with two towers totaling 1.14 million square feet, on Site 5, with 188,000 square feet of retail, at least according to a plan shared with Department of City Planning in January 2016. ----- Update Nov. 6  from Forest City Ratner spokesman: "FYI, the BisNow piece was corrected since it mistakenly said all 1.6M would be on Site 5. That is what is allowed for the entire [B1 + Site 5] project. Also, as you know the condemnation process for Site 5 is still in the early stages." Site 5 at the farthest west part of the project footprint Last month, state officials dropped a big hi...

Remember, Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park is a "never say never" project, and now it looks like more office space--always allowed, but ignored/downplayed for years--may be on the drawing board. Yesterday, the New York Times's real estate page offered With Workers Living in Brooklyn, Offices May Follow : Those who work in Manhattan and live in another borough will often talk of a job in “the city.” The slip might be understandable. Most office buildings are in Manhattan, which means many New Yorkers spend the bulk of their waking hours there. But Brooklyn seems poised to become a serious rival for the 9-to-5 set. About 16 million square feet of office space is under construction or planned, brokers say, in an arc that stretches south from Williamsburg through downtown to Sunset Park. The properties range from single warehouses to multibuilding complexes. Though the scale of investment, from many of New York’s largest developers, appears unprecedented, it is not risk-fre...

Gehry Partners design: B1 Take a look below at the September 2005 schematic for the Urban Room and ground floor of B1, the (mostly) office tower (one version at right) once slated to rise along and over the arena at the tip of Flatbush and Atlantic avenues. This was produced by Frank Gehry, who has since left the project, and whose 850,000 square-foot arena was replaced by a 670,000 square-foot arena. (I got the document years ago via a Freedom of Information Law request.) So there's probably somewhat more room to work with--after all, the arena box office would not be in the Urban Room, but rather is already in the building. And the arena is significantly smaller. Still, if they build a hotel, offices, and condos, that would require a lot of infrastructure: entrance passageways, elevator banks, and more. Remember, there still would be an entrance to the subway--and maybe a cafe where currently there are seats. That all leaves far less space for arena crowds to gather...

A reader visiting Paris sent me the photo below, a model of Atlantic Yards that's part of the Frank Gehry retrospective at the Centre Pompidou. (It's from the 2008 iteration of the arena block, though, interestingly enough, the blue titanium wrapping the arena is less wavy and thus far less flamboyant than in the renderings .) It's astounding, of course, to recognize the difference between the original (and approved) project plans, with an enormous tower at the tip of the project site, and the version as currently built, with a plaza providing the "high-low" city . According to a listing , from the website of the Paris Convention and Visitors Bureau, ParisInfo: Frank Gehry, the exhibition runs from 10/8/14 to 1/5/15: Architectural genius.This exhibition is an exceptional event, as this is the first time the Pompidou Centre has organised a retrospective of the work of Frank Gehry, one of the great figures of contemporary architecture. His visual and ...

There are a few nuggets in the  Form 10-Q  filed yesterday by Forest City Enterprises, parent of Brooklyn-based Forest City Ratner, with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). First, the missing office tower: We are in the process of developing  Brooklyn Atlantic Yards , which is comprised of two phases. Phase I is comprised of the Arena and eight buildings totaling approximately 3.4 million square feet. Phase II consists of seven buildings totaling approximately 3.3 million square feet. While this isn't new--it appeared in previous SEC filings--it again suggests that Forest City has dropped plans for the flagship office tower, with more than 1 million square feet. If built, the B1 tower would loom over the arena plaza and bring the total Atlantic Yards square footage to about 8 million square feet. That tower would house most of the permanent full-time jobs associated with the project. However, office towers don't get built without an anchor tenant. The rai...