Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Report

FullStack Modular, the Brooklyn Navy Yard-based successor to FCS Modular and FC Modular, the companies that built modules for the ill-fated 461 Dean tower, has a new contract, for a city-owned site in East New York, at 581 Grant Avenue. “FullStack Modular is honored to be chosen by the City of New York to help prove the efficiency and cost predictability that modular housing can bring. We are also proud to be part of an all-star NYC-based development team with deep roots in Brooklyn, and are excited to have a factory humming with good-paying jobs for New Yorkers,” said FullStack Modular Founder and CEO Roger Krulak, in the press release below. Note that the building looks to be seven stories tall, a far less ambitious project than the 32-story 461 Dean. As I wrote in my round-up for TreeHugger , the height of 461 Dean complicated construction, which included delays and leaks. (Developer Forest City Ratner and contractor Skanska USA are embroiled in lawsuits blaming each other for, ...

On the front page of tomorrow''s Sunday Times Real Estate section, an article headlined Real Estate Technology: Try, Try Again (and in print "The Future Is Now, Maybe"), with a section on modular construction: Roger Krulak, the chief executive of Full Stack Modular, likes to point out that with conventional building methods “almost every construction project is past deadline and over budget.” And he asks: “What other industry could survive that?” Krulak, of course, worked on the Atlantic Yards modular housing plan as an executive for Forest City Ratner before buying the new modular firm--originally FCS Modular, involving partner Skanska, then FC Modular--for an unannounced sum, perhaps a fire sale. So that rhetoric, much like that before the very flawed effort to build B2 (461 Dean), should be taken with a grain of salt. And this rather tame account should be checked against my more critical February 2017 roundup article for TreeHugger. Saving money? The Ti...

From the Real Deal yesterday, Affordable is going mod: City wants developers to take on prefab construction , an indication that Forest City Ratner's modular experiment, which led to the delay- and litigation-plagued 32-story 461 Dean, was too ambitious: The city’s Department of Housing Development and Preservation on Thursday will issue a request for information and interest in building modular housing for low-income tenants and seniors. Deputy Mayor Alicia Glen said on Wednesday that the city aims to “crack the code” on mid-rise multifamily development, in the hopes this will be “a new chapter for modular.” “One thing we’ve learned is don’t try to do high rise,” she said. “That’s a nut we’ll crack later.” How big? One reason is that a taller building adds to the potential for "tolerance" issues--i.e., the possibility of ill-fitting connections compounding over a period of time.  What's  a mid-rise ? The answers vary, with some saying five to ten floors, or ...

From Curbed, 10/25/17, Preparing for our prefab future , subtitled "A burgeoning U.S. prefab market has much to learn from Japan:": Immediately after construction on [modular 461 Dean] was finished, Forest City Ratner sold the factory and all its associated technology. They didn’t have to look far for a buyer. Roger Krulak was an executive at the company who led the Brooklyn project, and he thought the factory-based building approach could still work. Well, sure. But that doesn't mean there were any other bidders, and the lack of any sale price announced suggests it could have been a fire sale. As I wrote on Twitter: "Alternatively: no one else but Krulak willing 2buy it."

A press release from Full Stack Modular, the successor firm to the ill-fated Forest City Ratner and Skanska modular construction partnership, which Forest City later assumed to complete B2 (aka 461 Dean), and then sold.  It's not easy to judge as an outsider, but $6 million strikes me as substantial but also not huge in terms of being used to "scale production" at the modular factory at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. That said, the fact that they could raise money--for a piece of the business?--is a vote of confidence. The press release, headlined  FullStack Modular Raises $6 Million in Series A Funding , stated: NEW YORK, June 5, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- FullStack Modular , LLC, the turnkey modular prefabricated solution for developers of multifamily buildings, hotels, and dormitories, announces the closing of a $6 million Series A round of funding. The investment is led by McCourt Global and includes real estate industry leaders Lawrence Benenson, Lloyd Goldman, Jonathan Grun...

OK, remember how FastCo.Exist--the innovation-focused brand of the magazine Fast Company on 10/28/13 published this gushing preview of Forest City Ratner's experimental modular tower 461 Dean, aka B2? This week, from the sibling design-focused FastCo.Design we get Prefab's Moment of Reckoning , which, while considerably less gushing, still relies on the developer and architect SHoP to put the best possible spin on what was clearly a failure. (Remember, this tower was omitted from the Greenland Forest City Partners joint venture.) The article conveys a couple of lessons that had previously surfaced: the irregular site made for a more complicated, less standardized set of modules, and the 32-story building was too ambitious , with buildings perhaps one-third to one-half the height I already critiqued the article on Twitter, but will go through it once more. Leading off Writer Diana Budds may seem to pull no punches: Though it made headlines for aspiring to be t...

From the FC Modular web site When I checked this morning, the FC Modular web site was still live, but, given that Forest City Ratner has exited the modular business and the Brooklyn Navy Yard factory is being taken over by Full Stack Modular, presumably it won't last forever. So I saved the FC Modular web site as PDF pages (below) and here offer the summary text: Born from a vision of high-rise buildings, delivered on short timelines with deep cost-savings, FC Modular is the total solution to large-scale urban building. Questions of “How Much?” and “When?” are answered definitively. In building the tallest high-rise modular building in the world, we’re changing the way the future is built. Delivering your high-rise with methods that engineer speed, cost control and quality in every aspect of design. Faster: With high rise modular construction, your project can hit the market better than “on-time.” A 27-month project can be ready in just 14. Efficient, repeatable process...