Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Report

Also see coverage regarding 535 Carlton and 461 Dean . Remember how the condo tower 550 Vanderbilt was described  by developer Greenland Forest City Partners as "[n]estled at the intersection of five of the borough’s most desirable neighborhoods"? I focused on that bizarre geographic description, but project neighbor/opponent Patti Hagan pointed to the bizarreness of using the verb "nestle," which means , among other things, "to settle snugly or comfortably" and "lie in an inconspicuous or sheltered manner." Well, it's not inconspicuous at all, especially that extra height shown at right, still covered in scaffolding. Note Prospect Heights resident Gib Veconi's recent tweet: Mechanical shed not counted in #AtlanticYards design guidelines height limits, but dwarfs #550Vanderbilt . #designfail pic.twitter.com/pkxc6oS3fE — Gib Veconi (@GibVeconi) November 19, 2016 Indeed, while the building is officially 202 feet tall ,  th...

According to a Community Notice circulated Wednesday, the construction fence outside the 535 Carlton site between Dean and streets will be reduced. The fence, now 16 feet high, will be lowered to 8 feet. Contractors will lower the fence in 20-foot segments. The work should be completed by August 5. This follows the lowering of the 16-foot fence outside the 550 Vanderbilt site, which began earlier in July .

As predicted in the latest Construction Update , the huge green fence outside 550 Vanderbilt (aka B11) will be replaced by a smaller, closer-in fence. It should have a material effect on not only pedestrians but also vehicles  swerving and causing collisions at Vanderbilt and Dean. According to a Community Notice circulated yesterday: A temporary fence will be assembled along Vanderbilt Avenue allowing the process of dismantling the 16' high fence to take place. We anticipate removing the 16' high fence and structure during the week of July 11th. A new protected pedestrian path will be established on the west side of Vanderbilt Avenue between Pacific and Dean Streets. The bicycle lane will be restriped. Installation of a new sidewalk bridge, reinstatement of traffic signals, pedestrian walkway, crosswalks and bicycle lane are scheduled during the following week of July 18th. Final road striping will occur after fence modification is complete and is expected to be comp...

According to the latest two-week Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Construction Update (bottom), covering the two weeks beginning Monday July 4 (a holiday) and released yesterday by Empire State Development at 3:22 pm (late) after preparation by Greenland Forest City Partners, some major work promised in the previous Construction Update is again expected in this period, and some new work is planned. Part of the giant fence may shrink. Provided appropriate permits are obtained, the MPT (maintenance and protection of traffic) along Vanderbilt Avenue outside the 550 Vanderbilt site may be modified during this period to deconstruct the 16 foot fence, put up an 8 foot fence and establish a protected pedestrian path on the west side of Vanderbilt Avenue. A community notice will be distributed. As predicted in the two previous Construction Updates, demolition at Block 1120--the buildings that bump down into the railyard from Atlantic Avenue--could commence upon receipt of Department of Building...

Last weekend, I walked around the Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park site and took some photos, which show 535 Carlton (B14) and 550 Vanderbilt (B11)--actually, the smallest buildings on the project site--in some context. The buildings in between, and the later ones on the railyard, will be larger . Looking at B14 and B11 Looking south and east from Atlantic Avenue, with 535 Carlton in the foreground, 550 Vanderbilt in the background A closer look at 535 Carlton. Note row houses on west side of street, as Carlton Avenue meets Pacific Street. A more direct look at Carlton Avenue and Pacific Street, from the Carlton Avenue Bridge. A view of 550 Vanderbilt, with the smaller segment closer to lower-rise Dean Street. That's 17 stories plus (see scaffolding) two more floors . Looking south on Vanderbilt Avenue toward 550 Vanderbilt Southbound cards on Vanderbilt must swerve when they hit giant green wall. That's contributed to some crashes . The B2 facade The f...

According to the Real Deal , based on the offering plan for the 278-unit, 550 Vanderbilt condo building in Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park, the total sellout should be $393,713,950, or nearly $1.42 million per unit. Maybe not. At  330,778 square feet , that works out to $1190.26 per square foot for the 17-story --er, 19-story --tower. However, according to StreetEasy , active sales average $1,456 per square foot, while in contract sales average $1,364 per square foot. Taking the midpoint of those two figures yields $1,410 per square foot. If we multiple that by the 330,778 square feet, that would yield $466,396,980, or nearly $1.68 million per unit. We won't know until real numbers are documented. But it sure looks like even Greenland Forest City Partners, the developer, underestimated the market. (Remember how the project was supposed to stem the tide of gentrification ?) Note that the per square foot numbers are inexact, because some small fractio...

The 550 Vanderbilt condo tower, aka B11, is definitely emerging, as anyone passing by the corner of Dean Street can see: the structure of the third floor is visible. That emerging structure, as shown in the GIF at right and the photos below, differs considerably from the self-serving, deceptively modest rendering produced by the firm CookFox and distributed by the developer, Greenland Forest City Partners. Last October, I contrasted the rendering with a photo of a similar slice of Vanderbilt Avenue at Dean Street, contending that the rendering was skewed to diminish the size of the tower. The evidence today seems even more clear. Indeed, note how the third floor of 550 Vanderbilt extends to nearly the top of the second floor of the brick building across the street, but the rendering packs in nearly four floors. The rendering, larger version The photo, larger version

The Real Deal's July issue, recently online, salutes the 278-unit 550 Vanderbilt Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park condo building (aka B11) as an example of meeting some of the demand that far exceeds supply. The headline is  Brooklyn: ‘Like a desert with no cactus’ , subtitled "Despite strong demand for condos, pipeline in borough is pumping out more rentals": This month, The Real Deal looked at all of the condominiums slated for Brooklyn, and found that the trickle of projects in the works will not be enough to meet the demand. TRD combed through Department of Buildings records and found 23,700 Brooklyn residential units in the pipeline across 137 projects. Of those, only 1,900 (or about 8 percent) are expected to be condos. Plans are unclear for 4,200 of the units, while rentals account for the bulk: 17,600. “I think that there’s not enough on the market right now and there’s not going to be even in a year,” said Ofer Cohen, founder and president of Brooklyn commerc...

From Pacific Park Brooklyn web site Let's acknowledge that Thomas Balsley , the landscape architect behind the latest iteration of planned Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park open space, has an impressive record. (Here's an article on his work .) In Brooklyn, the promised open space will have trees, a sloping lawn, a "main lawn," water features and a dog run, as well as active and passive recreation areas. We'll see "heritage material" like bluestone paving and cobblestone paving, as well as benches, chairs, and kiosks. And those renderings of "Pacific Park Brooklyn," in finished state, look pleasant, albeit without any hint of how the 14,000 or so residents of the new towers might monopolize this rather small amount of space--eight acres--before the public gets a shot. But the presentation of the open space, starting with an "Exclusive" fed to the New York Daily News in which Balsley claimed "we wanted this to look just ...