Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Report

Photos by Norman Oder Aug. 5 (except lobby) "Open Streets, Good Vibes" is the message from Vanderbilt Avenue Open Streets  in Prospect Heights, "the only volunteer-run Open Street of its kind in Brooklyn, and one of the most visible in New York City." It's open this year April 21 through October 29, Fridays 5-10 pm, and Saturdays, Sundays, and holidays 12-10 pm.  And when I've stopped by, yes, the vibes seem good. Chelsea Piers steps up I couldn't help but notice, however, that one of the sponsors, as shown in the photo below, is Chelsea Piers, operator of a fitness center and fieldhouse at the two-tower 595 Dean complex, mostly below ground, not far to the west along Dean Street. So, by allowing money-losing parking to be swapped for valuable Chelsea Piers space, ESD gave a bonus to developer TF Cornerstone, which had bought development rights from Greenland Forest City Partners, owned nearly in full by Greenland USA.  And ESD ignored the call by the B...

Photos June 15/Norman Oder Chelsea Piers to open sports and fitness facility in Prospect Heights , TimeOut NY told us 6/9/23. "And they’re celebrating with free gym classes, games, giveaways and more."  That's at 595 Dean Street, the new, two-tower development. The club opened June 5  and, as shown in the photo at right, so is the associated Canteen. The club hours are 5:30 am to 10 pm weekdays, 8:30 am to 8 pm on weekends, with fewer hours for the Kids Clubhouse. Tomorrow, there will be free exercise classes from 3-7 pm (sign up on  Eventbrite ), as well as, to quote TimeOut, freebies from "R&D Foods and Van Leeuwen, a silent auction to support the Chelsea Piers Scholarship Foundation (CPSF), exclusive tours with the facility's Membership and Training Team, as well as patio games and giveaways." As the screenshot at right from a Facebook sponsored post shows, they're going full bore into Prospect Heights, without, um, mentioning Pacific Park (as far...

There's a prominent and impressive lobby-plus-canopy at the East Tower of the two-tower 595 Dean complex. It just happens to support the Chelsea Piers fitness center, not the building's residents. As I wrote in April, while in an alternative plan for the complex it might've been plausible to demarcate the building's entry with a canopy, in this case the interests of the commercial tenant take precedence. And that was a giveaway from the public authority, Empire State Development, that has the contradictory role of overseeing and shepherding the project. Photos by Norman Oder, June 1  

595 Dean residential entry far left, Chelsea Piers near left The two-tower 595 Dean complex (B12/B13), filling out the southeast block of Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park, was said to open last week, thanks to the placement of a  seeming press release from developer TF Cornerstone in the cheerleading publication YIMBY. It was accompanied by renderings (example below left) showing the buildings surrounded by green, including street trees that have yet to arrive. After walking around the towers last week three times, I was struck by how the buildings, at the sidewalk, cede so much space to Chelsea Piers, which is operating a fitness center in the East Tower and a field house in the West Tower. And that means diminished Dean Street space for residents, with the two towers sharing a single lobby. That wasn't the plan before TF Cornerstone and Chelsea Piers entered the picture, as I'll explain below. How many canopies? 595 Dean rendering, MOSO Studio The complex--confusingly, to me--fea...

Some Prospect Heights neighbors have gotten invitations to join the Chelsea Piers Fitness Center  scheduled to open June 1 at the base of--and mostly below-- the two-tower 595 Dean Street (B12/B13) complex. A founding membership includes a rate of $180/month, locked in for a year, with no initiation fee, a free personal training session, an unsepecified gift package and six annual guest passes. There's a pre-sales office nearby at 594 Dean Street. That $180/month, which I suspect won't last more than a year, is less than that of other Chelsea Piers locations, according to the web site Choosing Nutrition . (Chelsea Piers doesn't list fees on its website .)  Choosing Nutrition states that the monthly fee at the flagship club in Chelsea is $250, while that on 265 Schermerhorn Street, at the base of the building known as 33 Bond in  Downtown Brooklyn , is $220. (Or $225, according to this Reddit thread .)  An All-Access Membership is $285. That also includes ...

There's no timetable or signage yet, but the high-end, Minneapolis-based chain Life Time gym will occupy two floors, plus part of the ground floor, at 18 Sixth Ave., aka Brooklyn Crossing, the Commercial Observer reported 1/9/23. The building flanks the Barclays Center at the northeast corner. Life Time--which, upon a 2016 announcement of its first outpost in Manhattan was described by one publication as "crazy luxe"--opened  a club  in 2021 at Front & York in DUMBO, with membership starting at $259/month. Life Time also will operate a gym, plus a co-working space , at the Brooklyn Tower, the borough's first supertall, at 9 DeKalb. This would be the tenth location in Manhattan and Brooklyn. A restaurant on Sixth Avenue? (Photos/Norman Oder) The Commercial Observer said Life Time leased 36,470 square feet for 20 years. That represents--apparently--the full second and third floors, plus one of the three ground-floor retail spaces.  Here's the building plan . ...

As part of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's proposed  Brooklyn Bus Network Redesign , the route bordering the Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park project, the eastbound B65, would be re-routed to Atlantic Avenue to avoid Dean Street west of Washington Avenue. That would thus separate it from a bike route, potential traffic jams caused by double-parking, fire department trucks, and vehicles--especially during a heavy event night--lined up for the 535 Carlton parking garage, which in 2023 will expand from 303 spaces to 758 spaces, all via the same narrow entrance. So too would the westbound B65 be re-routed from Bergen Street west of Washington Avenue. In both cases, as shown in the image below, that would add additional traffic to Washington Avenue between Atlantic Avenue and Bergen Street. The MTA explains that the change would mean "using a wider street as compared to Dean St/Bergen St and providing a direct connection to the Atlantic Av-Barclays Center subway and LIRR st...

Updated and corrected: the initial version of this post suggested that Chelsea Piers might open in February. Well, developer TF Cornerstone is steadily completing the 798-unit, two-tower complex (B12 & B13) known collectively as 595 Dean Street, hence new renderings and recent articles in two real estate-friendly publications, plus the launch of two websites, 595 Dean St Luxury Brooklyn Apartments , for the market-rate units. and TFC 595 Dean St--Rent Stabilized Luxury in Prospect Heights , for the "affordable" ones. Images from 595 Dean web sites (I'm using titles, not the URLs) So what have we learned? Not "affordable housing" Well, they're not promoting "affordable housing" but rather "rent stabilized luxury," because the 240 "affordable" units, however below market, surely won't be cheap. Tellingly, they haven't yet listed rents--or even what percentage of Area Median Income (AMI) they're targeting. (The lott...

TF Cornerstone scores $385M loan for Prospect Heights apartment towers , The Real Deal reported 7/15/21, citing a press release from the law firm Rosenberg & Estis , which represented TF Cornerstone in the transaction. From the article: TF Cornerstone scored a $385 million construction loan from Wells Fargo for its massive Pacfic Park development project in Prospect Heights. The financing allows the developer to move forward with its plans to build two apartment towers totaling 558 market-rate units and 240 affordable units at 595 Dean Street, two blocks from the Barclays Center. To be precise, it's not TF Cornerstone's "massive Pacific Park development project" but rather TF Cornerstone's two-tower project within the larger Pacific Park project, which has master developer Greenland Forest City Partners. And the address 595 Dean Street (aka B13) refers to one of the two towers; the other is 615 Dean (aka B12), though they will share a lobby and other functions...

There was good reason for the "solicitousness and evasiveness" from developers of Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park, as I described the 11/17/20 online Quality of Life meeting, which is supposed to respond to neighbors' concerns and questions about the project. Though it was barely mentioned at the meeting two weeks ago, those developers and state officials had received a spreadsheet of 17 reports from neighbors about loud, intrusive construction--some after-hours--that disturbs people's sleep and compromises their pandemic-constrained lives, including work and school from home. Most respondents live near the eastern end of the site, bordering where developer TF Cornerstone is building two residential towers, known as B12 (615 Dean) and B13 (595 Dean), on Dean Street between Carlton and Vanderbilt avenues, with deep below-ground space for a Chelsea Piers fitness center and fieldhouse. That especially affects neighbors who live within the project itself, notably the "...