Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Report

Photos from The Real Deal In Power behind the throne: The lieutenants pulling the strings for NYC’s top real estate chiefs , Forest City Ratner construction chief Bob Sanna gets to pose (or be Photoshopped?) nobly in front of the Atlantic Yards arena. But the article, which places Sanna first among the nine profiled "wingmen," hardly says anything about the Atlantic Yards arena, not timetable challenges , rodent proliferation , or the difficulties in getting that custom weathered metal exterior done. Nor does it saying anything about Sanna's  crusade  in his New Jersey hometown to fight an allegedly out-of-scale building. Making decisions The article notes that top Forest City officials like Bruce Ratner and MaryAnne Gilmartin make decisions about where buildings should go: But figuring out what the building will cost, how much time it will take to build and what it will look like are the responsibilities of Bob Sanna. While Ratner and Gilmartin are the...

Forest City Ratner's Frank Gehry-designed 8 Spruce Street, aka Beekman Tower, is truly a trophy for the developer--especially when there's no time for pesky questions. n a five-minute presentation October 13 at the second annual Municipal Art Society Summit for New York City , Forest City Ratner Executive VP MaryAnne Gilmartin offered "Observations on the Making of a New York City Skyscraper." The blurb: MaryAnne Gilmartin, executive vice president of commercial and residential development for Forest City Ratner Enterprises, will share with us the story of how the tallest residential tower in the western hemisphere came to be. Designed by Frank Gehry, 8 Spruce Street is a singular addition to the iconic New York City skyline and tells a rich story of design and development. It does present a rich story, and Gilmartin used her brief time effectively, but she also left some things out, as I suggest in my annotations below. Her presentation begins at about 16:40 of ...

Photographer Adrian Kinloch, tracking the Occupy Wall Street protestors Saturday, October 1, as they ventured onto the Brooklyn Bridge, captured this shot of Forest City Ratner's Beekman Tower (aka 8 Spruce Street or New York by Gehry) looming in the background. His set is here .

In his BreakingCopy blog, about copywriting, Daryl Lang today cites Forest City Ratner's 9/11-themed ad running in today's Wall Street Journal. (I'd have thought it would be in the New York Times, too, but maybe they could pick only one.) Writes Lang: Notice the skyline. The rippling, metallic building in the foreground is 8 Spruce Street, a Forest City Ratner building. It was designed by Frank Gehry and is an easily spotted new fixture in the downtown Manhattan skyline. It’s full of pricy apartments Ratner is trying to rent. In the background, of course, is a rendering of the future 1 World Trade Center, which Ratner is not involved in. The copy above says, simply, “WE BELIEVE.” What to make of this? On the one hand, yes, Bruce Ratner did place a vote of confidence in Lower Manhattan at a time when the neighborhood really needed investments. But come on. He’s a New York City real estate developer, not a charity. So the ad basically says: “Let’s piggyback the 9/11 a...

Forest City Enterprises's FY 2011 second-quarter and year-to-date results, as noted a  press release  yesterday, show earnings down, mainly because the company--parent to Forest City Ratner--didn't have shares in a losing Nets team to sell this year. Also, as noted below, the public statement contained an indication that sponsorship sales for the Barclays Center arena could be more robust. Earnings down For this quarter, net earnings declined from $.62/share to $.02/share over last year, a phenomenon that was emphasized by the AP and Cleveland Plain Dealer in their stories. By another measure, according to the release, the drop was not as bad: Second-quarter EBDT (earnings before depreciation, amortization and deferred taxes) was $70.7 million, compared with 2010 second-quarter EBDT of $105.6 million. The primary driver of the quarter-over-quarter variance was the second quarter 2010 pre-tax gain of $31.4 million related to the disposition of a partial interest...

While Forest City Ratner was not the largest beneficiary of post-9/11 federal recovery funds, it was among the savviest, gaining the first triple tax-exempt bonds for commercial projects, the Bank of New York Tower at Atlantic Terminal, which was the only project outside of Manhattan. Beyond that, FCR garnered the single largest share of the relatively small amount of tax-exempt bonds designed for housing, aiding construction of the Beekman Tower (aka 8 Spruce Street aka New York by Gehry) in Lower Manhattan. Thus, in gaining nearly $300 million in tax-exempt (federal, state, city)  bonds, the developer saved tens of millions of dollars by paying a lower interest rate. It's more evidence for scholar/writer Fred Siegel's characterization of Bruce Ratner in the 11/30/05 Cleveland Plain Dealer: "He's the master of subsidy." Yesterday, in a New York Post op-ed headlined Liberty misspent: Political use of rebuild bonds , Nicole Gelinas of the free-market Manhatt...

The percentage of New York Daily News readers who can afford an apartment in Forest City Ratner's Beekman Tower (aka 8 Spruce Street aka New York by Gehry) is rather low--only 13.7% have six-figure incomes, and you need more than $100,000 to afford monthly rents of $3040 for a studio --and a lot more for bigger apartments. But that didn't stop real estate correspondent Jason Sheftell, in yesterday's Inside Gotham's newest skyscraper, New York by Gehry , from planting Herbert Daughtry-like encomia on developer Bruce Ratner: Ratner, the building’s developer, dressed in a simple, short-sleeved, pinstriped button down and black pants, is not like other developers who give cities $800 million projects like this one. He’s charming because he’s smart. He’s admirable because he gets things done. He’s controversial because he thinks big. Best of all, he’s human. “I was riding the elevator the other day, and the person riding up with me kept thanking me,” says Ratner, who...

To lower debt payments, Forest City Enterprises is selling nearly half of two New York rental properties developed by subordinate Forest City Ratner, keeping 51% ownership. Similarly, the company sold nearly half of New York area retail properties in March to raise cash. The press release at bottom, which is distilled in The Real Deal, Forest City restructures financing at 8 Spruce, DKLB BKLN , provides the developer's preferred angle: Forest City Enterprises and National Real Estate Advisors [NREA] announced agreements to restructure the financing at 8 Spruce Street, the Frank Gehry-designed 76-story rental tower in Lower Manhattan and at DKLB BKLN the luxury tower in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, saving the companies hundreds of millions of dollars in debt payments. Crain's Cleveland Business also distilled the press release . But there's a trade-off: while Forest City may save hundreds of millions in debt, it sold stakes in both buildings for what seem to be discounts. (...

Forest City Enterprises, whose Forest City Ratner arm is developing Atlantic Yards, reported positive earnings results yesterday, though the company's Brooklyn portfolio may not be as rosy as some of the rest of the business. As stated in a press release : First-quarter EBDT (earnings before depreciation, amortization and deferred taxes) was $127.4 million, an increase of $56.9 million compared with 2010 first-quarter EBDT of $70.5 million. On a fully diluted, per-share basis, first-quarter 2011 EBDT was $0.63, a 70.3 percent increase compared with 2010 first quarter EBDT of $0.37. …First-quarter net earnings attributable to Forest City Enterprises, Inc. were $47.6 million, or $0.25 per share, compared with a net loss of $15.6 million, or $0.10 per share, in the first quarter of 2010. After preferred dividends, net earnings attributable to Forest City Enterprises, Inc. common shareholders was $43.7 million, or $0.24 per share, for the quarter ended April 30, 2011 The most significa...

There was some useful information in the sycophantic Real Deal profile article headlined Ratner's refute: Developer insists Atlantic Yards is moving forward (and critiqued here ): the effort to control construction costs, whether via experimental modular construction or union concessions, is crucial to the developer's profits, and to the timing of the promised housing. According to the article: Profits from the planned residential buildings are "going to depend on where construction costs wind up," [Bruce] Ratner said. [Maryanne] Gilmartin said the company has finished the schematic design phase of the project's first residential tower, a 400-unit building on Dean Street that will be 50 percent affordable units and 50 percent market rate. The company is in the process of developing two separate possible designs for the building -- one modular, aimed at cutting costs, and one conventional. It expects to send contract documents out to bid on both designs in t...

Noticing New York's Michael D. D. White, in The Real Question to Ask About the Ratner Bait-and-Switch Approach on Atlantic Yards , offers a partial list of bait-and-switches (e.g., Frank Gehry, timetable, railyard, less money down) facilitated by the government. Notably, White points out that Ratner was already considering a modular construction plan that would "shaft the unions" even as he saluted them at the groundbreaking last year. Also, in a second post , White suggests Ratner might be bluffing the unions, as he did with the Beekman Tower, which was halted at the half way point for renegotiation. Below, a couple of excerpts from the first post. First, who's in the driver's seat? Ratner’s Preintention When It Comes to Bait-and-Switch I am not surprised that the first thing a friend asked me upon hearing of this latest bait-and-switch was: “Do you think that Ratner intended this all along?” Whether Ratner intended this particular bait-and-switch all along...

From Paul Goldberger's enthusiastic New Yorker review of the Beekman Tower, headlined Gracious Living: Frank Gehry’s swirling apartment tower : Had Gehry merely licensed his name to Ratner (as many felt he did by his involvement with Ratner's Atlantic Yards project, in Brooklyn), letting him sell a standard-issue tower as a Frank Gehry building in exchange for Gehry's adding a few flourishes? Goldberger says no.

From a New York Observer profile this week headlined Cheek to Cheek With Frank Gehry : CRITICS AND NAYSAYERS suggest Frank Gehry isn't fit to sharpen his claws on the New York skyline given such failures as the Atlantic Yards arena, also undertaken with Mr. Ratner, and the Guggenheim on the East River, a project that Mr. Gehry insists "was never real. It was always more of a dream." Eight Spruce Street--the building's official name, though it was first known as Beekman Tower --almost wasn't real, either. At one point, soon after the September 2008 economic crash, construction stopped at 38 stories, prompting forlorn Curbed commenters to gripe, "so depressing, the resulting building is just going to be a huge, shiny, stumpy thing." But after a two-month hiatus, construction resumed, resulting in a finished product taller than the design originally proposed. "When we started, it was lower," Mr. Gehry said. "It was 66 floors, and when you go ...

They still love Frank Gehry in New York, as the starchitect appeared Wednesday, 10/13/10 at the 92nd Street Y, interviewed by New Yorker architecture critic Paul Goldberger, to much acclaim. The discussion was wide-ranging, though Gehry spent a good deal of time discussing his latest New York building, the striking Beekman Tower (aka 8 Spruce Street ) in Lower Manhattan, the borough's tallest residential building. There was a bare mention of Atlantic Yards. Gehry said he and developer Bruce Ratner "are really good friends" and that his loss of the project--for a smaller, cheaper arena not as coupled with four towers--"had nothing to do with me or him, it had to do with circumstances." Setting the scene Goldberger described Gehry as "the only person in the entire world who has both won a Pritzker Prize," the highest honor for architects, "and also been the subject of an episode of The Simpsons." More than any other figure in our time, Goldber...