Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Report

Hey, remember former New York Knick star (and New Jersey Nets rookie, and final career-year player)  Bernard King ? He had an important early role in the Atlantic Yards rollout, participating in the December 10, 2003 project announcement, and representing Forest City Ratner at community events and even a City Council hearing in May 4, 2004, before being dropped, quickly, after an arrest for domestic violence. But how exactly did he get there? In his 2017 memoir  Game Face , King devotes two pages to the episode: In 2003, I was contacted by Bruce Ratner, chief operating officer of the real estate development company, the Ratner Group. He wanted to acquire the New Jersey Nets and move the team to Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, an area bordering on the neighborhood where I grew up. Ratner had some ideas about getting me involved in his plans and asked to discuss them over steaks in New York. [His second wife] Shana and I lived in Georgia, just north of Atlanta. We'd moved there whe...

There's an interesting passage in  Reinvention acts , a 5/1/19 article in the Real Deal about the #metoo issue in the real estate industry: James Stuckey, who in the early 2000s led Forest City Ratner’s development of Atlantic Yards (now Pacific Park), faced sexual harassment allegations at the company and later at New York University, where he was a professor. Stuckey resigned from the firm in 2007, citing “personal reasons.” But when a colleague at NYU filed a lawsuit against him five years later, alleging that he “forcibly placed her hand on his crotch and his erect penis” during a dinner that was arranged to discuss a possible promotion, the complaint noted that he’d been accused of misconduct at Forest City. Note: that NYU allegation was never upheld or adjudicated, as the case was ultimately settled. The accusations at Forest City were never formally filed, but prompted Stuckey's departure. Omitted here is Forest City's corporate role in Stuckey's departure....

In  When the glass ceiling won’t break , a 1/1/18 Real Deal article on the gender gap in real estate, there are a couple of new nuggets regarding Forest City Ratner/Forest City New York and former executive Jim Stuckey, who left in 2007--after what was later revealed as sexual harassment allegations--and then left his next job, at NYU, after similar allegations. Neither were formally adjudicated. From Kathryn Brenzel: James Stuckey, who in the early aughts led Forest City’s massive Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn (now called Pacific Park), was known for surrounding himself with hardworking, intelligent women. People would jokingly refer to the rotating group of female subordinates as “Jim’s harem.” I hadn't heard that latter phrase, but certainly that description. In-house resistance The Real Deal got its hands on a document not made public: In a draft complaint that was intended to be filed with the EEOC in 2007, one of the Forest City employees said Stuckey rubbed h...

OK, there's not much new in the third and final part of the BisnowTV interview with Forest City Ratner CEO MaryAnne Gilmartin (here are the first and second ), but it does fill in a few blanks. I've interpolated a few comments ( in italics ). Interviewer Kenneth Weissenberg, partner at EisnerAmper, remains fawning, if not super-prepared. KW: You started in the city, the City Planning Commission, about 30 years ago? ( C'mon, you don't know where she started? ) MAG: I started in economic development, it was close to 30 years ago, I won a fellowship called the Urban Fellows Program,.. I was on my way to law school... I ended up doing public development in the Public Development Corporation, which is now the Economic Development Corporation... and I realized then I had real estate in my veins. Then I realize 'Wow, I could do all this large-scale public private partnership work on the private side,' ( for a lot more compensation, and with more power ) and tha...

Unofficial mockup of planned building at Site 5 I've previously written skeptically about two of the three justifications for shifting the bulk of the tower planned over the arena plaza and creating what I've dubbed the " Brooklyn Behemoth," a giant tower of 1.55 million square feet at Site 5, now occupied by Modell's and P.C. Richard. The notion of "activating" the Atlantic Avenue corridor is pretty thin , and the idea of keeping the arena plaza as permanent open space positions it as a public amenity, rather than a branded business deal . But what about the the third notion, "delivering jobs," to quote Forest City Ratner spokeswoman Ashley Cotton, representing the developer, Greenland Forest City Partners? Building an office tower delivers space for jobs, and the jobs come if there's a market for it. And the market depends on, among other things, the cost of construction. And building the tower at the site originally approved, n...

Capital New York ( paywall only ) points to a brief but potentially important decision yesterday by an appellate court in the lawsuit by Stephanie Bonadio against New York University and its former Dean Jim Stuckey regarding the potential sharing of information regarding Stuckey's conduct while at developer Forest City Ratner. Bonadio sued NYU and Stuckey in 2012 for sexual harassment, with other counts against NYU for retaliation (she claims her job was eliminated after accusations against Stuckey) and against Stuckey for assault and battery. As stated in the decision issued yesterday, the Appellate Division, First Department, reversed a lower court order that denied Bonadio's "motion to compel discovery of information related to claims of sexual misconduct made against defendant Stuckey when he was employed by Forest City Ratner (FCR), except insofar as such information was provided to or otherwise known by defendant New York University." In other words, info...

Remember how, on 10/15/11, the New York Post reported on former Forest City Ratner executive Jim Stuckey's abrupt departure from New York University came in the wake of sexual harassment allegation from a subordinate--and that similar accusations led to his departure from Forest City in 2007. The Post reported: According to company sources, Stuckey took all of his subordinates to a club and then called a number of women employees into a private room, where he had them sit on his lap as though he were Santa Claus. Fearing that mass resignations — of senior executives as well as people who reported to Stuckey — would cause the company a p.r. nightmare at a sensitive time in the Atlantic Yards project, Bruce Ratner pushed Stuckey out and then helped him land the job at NYU. Ratner is a member of the Schack Institute’s advisory board. There's clearly more to the story, and some hints have surfaced in legal papers in the still-percolating case  Bonadio v. NYU , et al., invol...

Two Forest City executives join two Greenland execs; (not sure about man at left) source: Fang.com Updated and clarified. Note Forest City says there's no sales effort. "Projects change, markets change," Forest City Ratner executive Jim Stuckey, then the developer's point man on Atlantic Yards, told the New York Times in November 2005, after the newspaper belatedly examined the developer's plan to trade office space for more lucrative condominiums. That was a notable evasion, especially since Stuckey claimed that the switch to condos was driven by community partners desirous of more housing. And it was a notable understatement, given the gyrations before and since regarding Atlantic Yards (including the name change to Pacific Park ), not to mention Stuckey's own sudden departure in 2007. Forest City this year sold 70% of the remaining project to the Chinese government-owned Greenland Group. Now the new joint venture, Greenland Forest City...

The demand for affordable housing in today's market is unending. Bisnow reported  that Broadway Housing Communities' 124-unit development in Harlem's Sugar Hill drew 48,000 applications for the 98 affordable units. That's a .2% chance. So the Atlantic Yards affordable housing--when it arrives, December 2015 at the earliest--will surely be in demand. So, yes, the 73 low-income units and the 36 moderate-income units in the first tower will help the most desperate.  The moderate- and middle-income units surely will be subscribed too. But it's crucial to remember that the latter units-- 2012 estimated rents at right--would be way too expensive for most who rallied for the project. (ACORN members were polled about support for affordable housing, but were not asked about affordable housing accessible to those in their income bracket.) There's a huge mismatch at work between affordability by Brooklyn standards and affordability as calculated regional...

In Saturday's New York Times, we got official confirmation that Forest City Ratner's ambitious modular construction plan isn't working too well, given that the B2 tower, long said to be finished by December 2014, is a year late. But we also learned that Forest City's new partner, the Chinese government-owned Greenland Group, is planning to start not one but three towers this year, using conventional construction techniques, building one condo tower and two towers with subsidized housing. That's a reflection of the market in Brooklyn, the cheap financing they've raised through EB-5, presumably commitments from the city for tax-exempt housing bonds, and--who knows--maybe a desire to make a splash. It also changes the equation for the hearing April 30 on the court-ordered Draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement , which aims to analyze the potential impacts of a 25-year project buildout. From Draft SEIS, showing two towers on Block 1129, well a...

FCR's Jim Stuckey talks timeline. See below. We should know never take Atlantic Yards timetable estimates too seriously. That means the reported prediction  by the Greenland Group, the expected new Chinese investors, that it would take eight years to finish a project that has a 25-year outside date should be taken with a major grain of salt. (Crain's went the opposite direction and, summarizing a thinly-sourced Wall Street Journal article, declared Schedule set for Atlantic Yards . ) Could somehow Mayor-in-waiting Bill de Blasio have privately pledged he will "get the housing done" by tossing bushels of additional subsidies toward developer Forest City Ratner and its Chinese government partners? And could the modular factory, which is supposed to take 18 months to turn out a building, go full-stop, 24/7? You never know, but, remember, as then-CEO of Forest City Enterprises (parent of Forest City Ratner) Chuck Ratner famously said in March 2007, "We a...