Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Report

The publication YIMBY’s annual year-end countdown of the 31 tallest buildings under construction in New York include six around Downtown Brooklyn. If the plans for Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park come to fruition as currently approved (top image below), perhaps only the B7 tower, approved at 460 feet, would make YIMBY's 2024 list. However, if the project proceeds under plans floated in 2021 and 2023 several would make the list; the 910-foot tower (of two) at Site 5 would surely enter the city's Top Ten, given that in 2024 it would've placed sixth. Also, B9, B6, and B7 likely would make the list, again if they are approved as once proposed. Presumably the expected incoming joint venture involving Related Companies will make its own proposals. From YIMBY At #3 is The Brooklyn Tower , a 1,066-foot residential supertall skyscraper at 9 DeKalb Avenue, at Flatbush Avenue: the 93-story structure stands as the tallest structure in the outer boroughs and yields 550 residential units i...

So, check out  Settling, in Downtown Brooklyn , published three days ago by New York magazine's Curbed, quoting wealthy people who've moved to the new amenity-rich high-rises in Downtown Brooklyn, happy to have gym, laundry, roof deck all within their residence. From the article: Downtown Brooklyn’s rise as a luxury-living destination happened almost despite itself. In the 20 years since its rezoning, 22,000 new apartments have been built with 8,000 more on the way, and each luxury tower seems to function as a self-contained little universe for its contented inhabitants. The benefit is price compared to Manhattan, with a quick commute, as well as a relatively short walk, depending on location, to Brooklyn Heights and Fort Greene, or Barclays and BAM. So, while the Williamsburg and Greenpoint waterfronts offer great views and green space, they're far from the subway. It's interesting to hear Ryan Serhant, the real-estate agent whose firm markets Brooklyn Point, saying, “...

Yesterday Common Edge published my essay Does Brooklyn’s New Brooding Monolith Deserve Kudos? It's surprising to me that two major critics, and an online poll, have treated the Brooklyn Tower, the borough's first supertall (over 1,000 feet) so generously, since the "person-on-the-street" perspective is so negative. Note that the architect behind the tower, SHoP, is also responsible for the Barclays Center's look. As I wrote: To Dezeen, SHoP principal John Cerone linked the Brooklyn Tower to the Barclays Center, the Brooklyn arena that the firm revamped—after a design by Ellerbe Becket—to acclaim when it opened in 2012. “People take selfies at Barclays and then they turn around and then take selfies down the street with the Brooklyn Tower,” said Cerone. “They don’t know they are by the same architects.” Well, if they take selfies from the arena plaza, those photos include the Brooklyn Tower, but it’s not the focus. As shown [below[, a photo from the plaza foregroun...

So I'm late to this, but New York Magazine's big 8/2/23 profile of former Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff,  What the Builder Built  is worth a critical read.  In the magazine's Table of Contents, the subheading is "Dan Doctoroff, the stubborn advocate for a new New York City, reckons with his legacy," while the article is appended with a slightly differnt framing: "Under Mayor Bloomberg, Dan Doctoroff remade the city at top speed. Now, as New York is again mired in crisis, he faces his own." Architecture critic Justin Davidson is a deft writer, and captures much of what Doctoroff (empowered by Mike Bloomberg, of course) shepherded, including: On the day I meet  Dan Doctoroff , I walk across Manhattan from the Shed, which he created, to the East River Esplanade, which he planned; catch a ferry, which he launched; get off at the  Long Island City  waterfront, which he reclaimed from industrial neglect; and enter a café overlooking  Hunters Point South Pa...

Photos/Norman Oder Last December 8, I shot photos from the 27th floor terrace of 272-foot 662 Pacific Street (B15, aka Plank Road), near Sixth Avenue. That location, just east of the arena block,offered some fascinating views (below) of both Downtown Brooklyn to the northwest, and portions of the nearby Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park site. So the photo at right, showing part of the Barclays Center's not-so-green roof, with pieces of 38 Sixth Ave. (B3) and 18 Sixth Ave. (B4, aka Brooklyn Crossing), hardly tells the full story of the massive amount of recent development. Rather, as shown in the photo at left, there's an array of new towers, completed or under construction, with more to come, dwarfing the 512-foot Williamsburgh Savings Bank tower, long Brooklyn's tallest building. Most notable is Brooklyn's first "supertall," 1,066 feet.  Many of these views might be blocked had the Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park developer constructed  "Miss Brooklyn" (aka B1...

Rendering via StreetEasy In a 5/4/20 article, The Real Deal reported  on the sale of a new rental tower (completed 2018) at the wedge-shaped intersection of Flatbush Avenue and Fulton Street, where Downtown Brooklyn meets Fort Greene: Goldman Sachs is buying one of Downtown Brooklyn’s newly-completed apartment towers at a steep discount — the bank’s first big New York City purchase as it revives its once-active real estate platform. The bank is in contract to buy the 19-story 1 Flatbush Avenue building from Slate Property Group and Meadow Partners for about $100 million, sources familiar with the transaction told The Real Deal. That’s quite a haircut from the  $150 million price tag  the sellers were aiming for when the property hit the market last year. Whether that's full haircut or not remains unclear. As one commenter said on Twitter , it may be that the original price included the building's 25,000 square feet of retail, wrapping around both Fulton Street and ...

The news of the Downtown Brooklyn Partnerships emerging streetscapes plan sent me to their web site and this Downtown Brooklyn Development Matrix , slugged as a Q3 2019 update. Note the indication of DUMBO below Nassau Street/Flushing Avenue--c'mon, use an arrow--and then, at left, the inset of Dumbo Heights, which is to the north, and actually below DUMBO. At bottom right, note the Pacific Park inset, since Pacific Park, of course ( sarcasm alert ) is part of Downtown Brooklyn and not Prospect Heights. (I'll grant that the arena's on the edge.) Development summary As shown in the screenshot below, so far, 14,749 residential units have been completed, of which 2,561 are affordable (levels unclear). Under construction are 6,560 units, of which 1,200 are affordable. In the pipeline are 6,513 units, of which 2,359 are affordable. That will make 27,822 total apartments. If Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park gets built to the 6,430 units planned, it would represent 23.1%...

Bisnow yesterday posted  After Years Of Brooklyn Apartment Oversupply, Construction Is Down And Rents Are Up  and, while it should be taken with a grain of salt--it's essentially a promo for a panel next month--it surely indicates trends. Landlords of new buildings are offering fewer concessions, and, according to Nancy Packes Data Services, the number of new market-rate Brooklyn rental units was 3,000 in 2015, rising to 6,000 in 2017, dropped to 4,600 last year, and is on track for less than 2,200 this year. That's generally good news for developers of projects like Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park, but there are different sub-markets. Downtown Brooklyn rents are understandably higher than neighborhoods deeper in Brooklyn, and the cost of construction for buildings in Greenland Forest City Partners' project also has to encompass infrastructure. Moreover, those moving into Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park must be mindful of continuing construction and the delay--until 20...

Yesterday, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle published my essay, headlined  OPINION: When developers call upzoning a public benefit, check their bottom line , with the subheading, "Giant 625 Fulton tower, said to help Brooklyn, deserves scrutiny as private benefit." This is not Atlantic Yards, of course, but not so far away, at Fulton Street at Rockwell Place. The proposed 942-foot tower, with a Floor Area Ratio (FAR) of 21 (compared with the Downtown Brooklyn rezoning, with an FAR of 12), would continue to change the context in and around Downtown Brooklyn. The Eagle produced a nice GIF showing the comparison between the tower the developers (Rabsky and Totem) could build without the upzoning, and the one they propose. Also, not mentioned in my essay, approval of that upzoning would make it easier to argue for a huge transfer of bulk to Site 5 of Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park, which would have an FAR of 23.5 . From the essay The lead of my essay: The real estate c...

One audience member at last night's panel on "What's Next for Atlantic Yards" asked, not unreasonably, what the "news" was. (I'll write more on the panel another day.) There was not, as I had previously written , anything dramatic to announce, just an effort, on behalf of several neighborhood groups, to alert the public that changes are in the offing, notably a percolating plan  to supersize the project at Site 5, now home to P.C. Richard and Modell's across from the Barclays Center, from a 250-tower to a two-tower project with one rising nearly 800 feet. That would require state approval to shift the bulk from the unbuilt "Miss Brooklyn" tower once planned for what's now the Barclays Center plaza. Or, perhaps, an even more dramatic plan. At the Only Brooklyn.® Real Estate Conference on May 7, as shown in the video below, Carlo Scissura, CEO of the New York Building Congress, said "we have to... get a supertall office tower...

From the Real Deal, 5/30/19,  Marisa Lago says antidevelopment sentiment in NYC is at “an all-time high” : New York’s real estate industry has become a victim of its own success, according to Department of City Planning Chair Marisa Lago . “We are seeing what—at least for me since the 70s—is an all-time high in an antidevelopment sentiment,” she said at REBNY’s annual commercial management leadership breakfast on Thursday morning. “I do think a portion of it is the fact that we have had sustained growth for such a long period.” Lago gave the keynote address at REBNY’s breakfast, which is held every year to honor workers in the commercial building management industry. She contrasted the growth the city has been experiencing for years with her time working there in the early 1980s, when crime was rising and the city was losing jobs to New Jersey and families to Long Island, and noted that many newer residents of New York are not familiar with this type of environment. And then th...

Never mind! A long-standing, and long-delayed, plan to bring park space to Downtown Brooklyn as part of the 2004 rezoning has been resolved--it seems--with an announcement (below) that the park will not be built on planned underground parking. After planning an $80 million (as per Curbed ) parking garage project with a 1.15-acre park in Downtown Brooklyn on "Willoughby Square," next to the City Point project, the New York City Economic Development Corporation has instead commissioned a $15 million project, since "the original need for parking has lessened given the many new public transit options in the area." (Also see coverage in Crain's , and see that the original developer is suing , claiming the city unfairly stalled the plan.) That said, it seems the money will come from public coffers rather than from the development, and the city will commemorate the abolitionist history it in other ways erased. Note that the rationale regarding a lesser need fo...

A 2/12/19 press release,  Downtown Brooklyn Partnership announces WXY and BIG Architects to craft public realm action plan : Today, Downtown Brooklyn Partnership announced the selection of a joint proposal from design firms WXY Studio (WXY) and Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG Architects) to conduct a comprehensive study and implementation plan for Downtown Brooklyn’s public realm. The plan will help advance Downtown Brooklyn as a competitive, national urban center. Downtown Brooklyn has faced unprecedented growth over the last fifteen years since the 2004 rezoning. Since then, the neighborhood has transformed into a true 24-hour mixed-use community, and with that have come new demands on streets, sidewalks, transit infrastructure and public spaces. The Public Realm Action Plan is a response to that growth. The solutions set forth will help put Downtown Brooklyn on a new trajectory, reflecting its growing prominence in New York City and the nation’s economy, and taking into account the...

I have an article in The Bridge, Lessons of Rezoning: When It Doesn’t Work Out as Planned , which begins: Downtown Brooklyn and Long Island City (LIC) have been utterly transformed since city policy toward those neighborhoods changed in 2004 and 2001, respectively. Numerous towers have sprouted after rezonings unlocked permission to build big on formerly low-rise industrial or commercial space. By one account, LIC is the nation’s fastest-growing neighborhood. But those new towers almost exclusively contain apartments, rather than the expected result of mainly office space. The failure to plan for new residents means overcrowded public schools and insufficient open space, according to a recent report from the Municipal Art Society (MAS), a longstanding advocate for a more livable city. The neighborhoods are “whiter, wealthier, and more crowded than ever.” In Downtown Brooklyn, a key piece of open space, 1.15-acre Willoughby Square Park—to be built over a parking garage—didn’t materi...

Wait a second, maybe the forecast for Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park--at least the market-rate units--is a little more grim that I suggested in my 2019 preview .  An article in the January 2019 issue of The Real Deal, Brooklyn's inventory balloon , cites a glut of inventory in the borough, which is leading to creative and/or aggressive sales tactics. (One example: a purported one-day 20% sale at 550 Vanderbilt, as I reported for The Bridge .) From the article: And over the next three years another large wave of residential projects is slated to come online, including Two Trees’ Domino Sugar project; Greenland USA’s 810-unit rental 18 Sixth Avenue, which is part of the Pacific Park megadevelopment; RedSky Capital’s 470-unit 18 India Street in Greenpoint; and 9 DeKalb, a supertall tower with 400-plus apartments that JDS is also developing. Those projects join large developments that are already selling, like Extell Development’s 458-unit Brooklyn Point project and Tishman Speyer’...

A resolution on the contentious 80 Flatbush development is expected at or by a City Council subcommittee meeting today, with Council Member Stephen Levin indicating a willingness to accept some more density--a Floor Area Ratio (FAR) of 15, rather than 12 (plus schools), as previously stated. But developer Alloy and its partner, the Educational Construction Fund (ECF), have asked for an FAR of 18, which would nearly triple the allowable density at the site, and be 1.5 times the density allowed in the Downtown Brooklyn rezoning. The justification is the cross-subsidization of affordable housing and schools, though the equation remains murky because the Alloy-ECF deal remains under wraps. As that decision awaits, it's worth looking at the broader framework, and quoting Brooklyn Council Member Brad Lander's comments this past Monday, 9/17/18, before the Council-spurred Charter Revision Commission 2019 . He cited 1989 changes in the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (UL...

Site 5 plan bulk shift floated in 2016 A new Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce Report, The Next 100 Years , not only offers an economic development strategy, it also includes an intriguing overhead photo around the convergence of Atlantic and Flatbush avenues, below. Notably, as indicated by the pink arrow I've added, it shows the low-rise big-box stores at Site 5 within the Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park project, below which is the generally low-rise neighborhood of Park Slope. (On the western corridor, Fourth Avenue, new buildings go 12 stories.) That puts in new perspective the plan, floated but not yet pursued, to transfer the bulk of the unbuilt Miss Brooklyn from the arena plaza to Site 5. Instead of a building rising 250 feet and with some 440,000 square feet of bulk, the potential two-tour project could rise 785 feet , and with 1.14 million square feet. Pink arrow = Site 5 project. Blue arrows = potential Atlantic Center overbuild The Atlantic Center overbuild ...

Neighborhoods that could fit in more bulk The Regional Plan Association, elaborating on a proposal in its Fourth Regional Plan (my overview ), recently released a report,  Creating more affordable housing in New York City’s high-rise area: The case for lifting the FAR cap . The gist is that a 67-year-old state law capping residential “floor area ratio” (FAR)--the multiple of bulk to floor plate--at 12 is outdated and misguided, and could lead to more affordable housing in Downtown Brooklyn and other areas (Manhattan, Long Island City, Jamaica) that the RPA says have the infrastructure and amenities to support it. It should be noted that this responds in part to poor planning in the past, such as the upzoning of Downtown Brooklyn, ostensibly to enable office space, which instead led to much market-rate housing , with no requirement for affordability to balance the gift to landowners. "This cap is blocking the way to better urban design, more needed homes, and more mixed...