Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Report

A June 29 New York Times article,  The Sheikh Who Conquered Soccer and Coddles Warlords , offers a skeptical portrait of the enigmatic Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan, whose older brother rules the United Arab Emirates. About the younger one: The Emirati vice president is best known as the owner of Manchester City, a top English soccer team. Behind the scenes, he has been described as the “handler” guiding his country’s secret foreign wars. More on that: Yet in interviews with more than a dozen American, African and Arab officials, he is described as being at the sharp end of his country’s aggressive push to expand its influence across Africa and the Middle East. In places like Libya and Sudan, they say, Sheikh Mansour has coddled warlords and autocrats as part of a sweeping Emirati drive to acquire ports and strategic minerals, counter Islamist movements and establish the Gulf nation as a heavyweight regional power. The Fortress connection From the Times: As deputy prime m...

On March 18, I published (on my Substack newsletter, you can subscribe!) an informed speculation aimed to prompt belated some public candor. Who Really Controls the Six Railyard Sites? Maybe Fortress is in the Driver's Seat. The subheading: "The private investment firm (owned mainly by Abu Dhabi!) may now control the EB-5 collateral. Can Empire State Development clarify this at meeting tomorrow?" Well, the meeting of the Atlantic Yards Community Development Corporation (AY CDC) referenced was postponed to Tuesday , but, in the meantime, I got more information that both confirmed the speculation but left more to clarify.  Beyond the Chinese-language document I cited earlier, I've seen an English-language document that similarly claims that Fortress was expected to control the two investment funds that control the collateral for two loans: six development parcels over the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's Vanderbilt Yard. The recap As I wrote, Atlantic Yards...

Yesterday had not one but two twists in the 14-month foreclosure saga around Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park. First, we learned that Related Companies, developer of Hudson Yards, was no longer pursuing a joint venture to develop most of the remaining share of the project: six tower sites (B5-B10) over the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's (MTA) Vanderbilt Yard, which require an expensive platform before vertical construction. Unofficial rendering A partial replacement, Cirrus Real Estate Partners , was later announced yesterday by Nicholas Mastroianni II’s U.S. Immigration Fund, the investment packager that controls the $286 million loan from EB-5 investors that's in foreclosure.  Those tower sites were provided as collateral by Greenland USA, which since 2014 has been the project's lead developer, but at this point retains the rights to build only at Site 5, across from the arena, and the B1 tower once slated to be built over the arena. (Greenland seeks to build a two-to...

This is the first of two articles on the Nov. 14 meeting of the advisory Atlantic Yards Community Development Corporation (AY CDC). The second concerned "community engagement" regarding the future of the six tower sites over the Vanderbilt Yard platform. OK, my prediction was a little off. Empire State Development (ESD), the state authority that oversees/shepherds the project, was not quite ready to announce that a new joint venture involving Hudson Yards developer Related Companies has qualified as a “permitted developer,” thus stepping in, thanks to a foreclosure auction, to develop six development sites (B5-B10) over the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s Vanderbilt Yard. But they’re pretty close. ESD’s Anna Pycior, Senior VP, Community Relations, said the state authority was “completing our review of their documents, and once the review is satisfactory… we would proceed with the new joint venture. We don't anticipate issues moving forward.” That could happen “...

Apparently, the entities--more on that below--controlling the collateral backing the Atlantic Yards EB-5 debt, the U.S. Immigration Fund (USIF) and Fortress Investment Group, are expected to partner ( link ) with the Related Companies on a joint venture to develop six development sites over the Vanderbilt Yard. But how did this happen, and who exactly is involved?  We know that master developer Greenland USA borrowed $349 million under the  EB-5 Program , in which immigrants investing in a purportedly job-creating enterprise offer low-interest loans in exchange for green cards for themselves and their families The loans were organized by the USIF, a business known as a regional center, which recruited the investors, in two tranches, $249 million and $100 million, marketed as "Atlantic Yards II" and "Atlantic Yards III." (The nomenclature is because there was a previous round of EB-5 funding, organized by the separate New York City Regional Center, for $228 million, ...