Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Report

On Oct. 31, I wrote about how the coalition  BrooklynSpeaks , in its briefing to local elected officials regarding the future of Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park, urged that they ensure deeply affordable housing and have the Barclays Center operator fund quality-of-life monitors. Here's the link . Let's take a second look at the latter recommendation, which I thought worthy but asking too little. It's clear, from the events of Sunday, when quality-of-life violations were blatantly encouraged, that it couldn't be viable without a vastly changed political firmament. Pacific Street and Carlton Avenue, access  managed not by the NYPD but by the Shomrim safety patrol My coverage:  Unannounced Barclays Center event for Hasidic group draws elected officials. NYPD lets volunteers (!) cordon off streets. Scofflaw vehicles block sidewalks, paths.   In other words, the powers that be--city and state leaders--wanted the event to run at the convenience of attendees and arena operators...

I wrote yesterday how, more than six years ago, developer Greenland Forest City Partners' (GFCP) plan to move most of the bulk of the unbuilt "Miss Brooklyn" (aka B1) across Flatbush Avenue to create a giant two-tower project at Site 5 also involved eliminating the Urban Room. That's the long-forgotten promised publicly accessible space that was supposed to serve as an entryway for both B1 and the arena.  Instead, by decoupling B1 and the other three towers (later built) from the arena construction project, they had to build a temporary plaza--one that GFCP and surely the arena operator would like to see as permanent. From 2016 proposal But they forgot to get it done on time. Though long percolating, the process to allow a bigger project at Site 5--longtime home to the big-box stores Modell's (since closed) and P.C. Richard, and already approved for a substantial, 250-foot, 440,000-square-foot building--was delayed for various reasons. A suit from P.C. Richard wa...

Given tonight's open meeting, What's Next for Atlantic Yards (and more coverage here ), it's worth looking back on some official documentation regarding Site 5, currently home to Modell's and P.C. Richard across Flatbush Avenue from the arena block. After all, it's widely expected that developer Greenland Forest City Partners will seek a change in the project's guiding General Project Plan--requiring a public approval process--to move most of the bulk from the unbuilt tower once planned for the arena plaza (aka "Miss Brooklyn") to create a much larger structure than previously approved. 2016 plan floated for Site 5 In other words, instead of a 250-foot tower with 439,040 square feet, how about a two-tower project, with one tower rising 785 feet (as of 2016 plans), with a total of 1,141,000 square feet. That was one possibility floated in 2016 plans  shared with the Department of City Planning but not officially advanced. By now, their plans c...

How times change. A 3/18/90 New York Times Real Estate section article, headlined COMMERCIAL PROPERTY: Downtown Brooklyn; Two Tall Office Towers Planned on a Single Block , described plans for Forest City Ratner's MetroTech: AS originally designed, 330 Jay Street was 505 feet tall, only seven feet shy of the Williamsburgh building. [Developer] Mr. [Bruce] Ratner was asked whether he ever considered proposing the tallest tower in Brooklyn. ''We're not into that,'' he answered. ''We don't have to be the tallest, as long as it gets up and built.'' Bolder plans By 2003, however, Ratner had achieved many more successes, and Brooklyn was booming. Hence the plan , when Atlantic Yards was announced, to build a flagship tower (dubbed "Miss Brooklyn" by architect Frank Gehry), that would rise 620 feet, 108 feet taller than the iconic bank tower. No one pointed out Ratner's 1990 pledge. However, "Miss Brooklyn" was still...

After a hearing yesterday, the New York City Council is expected to vote Wednesday to approve a new, 1216-foot tower, 15 Penn Plaza, across the street from Penn Station and two blocks away from the iconic, 1250-foot Empire State Building (ESB). The ESB's owner, Anthony Malkin [ updated ], protests that the new tower would block a unique asset on the city's skyline--an argument that depends, of course, on perspective, as the renderings below (via the Times ) suggest. And the campaign against that new tower by the ESB's owner, on a web site and in full-page newspaper ads, sounds a little like the criticisms about the impact of Frank Gehry's Miss Brooklyn tower on the iconic Williamsburgh Savings Bank. There are a few key differences, however: in Brooklyn, there was a much stronger case against the new tower, given that Forest City Ratner promised at the start that it wouldn't block the bank's iconic clock in Brooklyn, the new building would be positioned on perha...

You have to read the fine print. Because there, at the end of a Technical Memorandum issued by the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC) in June 2009, came the surprising news that, if the office tower known as Building 1 is constructed later than planned, the main entrance to the Atlantic Yards arena would have to move from the western edge--closest to the transit hub at Atlantic and Flatbush avenues--to the north and east on Atlantic Avenue and Sixth Avenue. Given that there's no market for office space right now, a delayed buildout is highly likely, if the tower is built at all. (Bruce Ratner told Crain' s in November, “Can you tell me when we are going to need a new office tower?” But the full impact of that change was not studied in ESDC documents, notably the impact on Neighborhood Character. Building 1 (once dubbed "Miss Brooklyn" by architect Frank Gehry), would contain the Urban Room; on the map it's on the west side of the arena. From the FEIS It...

In a news analysis headlined Brooklyn’s Tallest Is Back In Atlantic Yards Plan , the Brooklyn Daily Eagle's Dennis Holt takes a look at the 2009 Modified General Project Plan and comes to the wrong conclusion. He writes: It requires study, especially the small print, of which there is much, and in reading the small print one discovers on Exhibit C, with no emphasis whatsoever, that the tallest building in Brooklyn is back on the site. Building 1, which used to be called “Miss Brooklyn,” the visual keystone to the entire project, is to be 620 feet tall. Actually, that's the maximum height of Building 1. Forest City Ratner has already committed to building the tower at 511 feet. So, why does the document state 620 feet as the maximum when Forest City Ratner has already committed to a downsizing? Because changing the height might represent a material change in the project, a change that the Empire State Development Corporation does not want to admit.

I'm still trying to figure out the statement at last Wednesday's informational meeting by Forest City Ratner VP MaryAnne Gilmartin (video below) that the office tower known as Building 1 (B1) would be 620 feet tall. It just doesn't compute. Nor does her statement that one residential building would be 428 feet. [ Updated ] And I wasn't able yesterday to get FCR or the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC) to clarify their expectations of the building heights--though this morning an ESDC spokesman says, "The GPP accurately states the maximum allowed height of each tower." Gilmartin was reading from a document, apparently (as noted below) one issued in July 2006 rather than December 2006. Both, which claim the building would be 620 feet, are in some ways out of date. Notably, Forest City Ratner, in a December 2006 statement (left) accompanying project approval by the Public Authorities Control Board (PACB), agreed to "a reduction to the height of the...

The demise of Frank Gehry's arena block design, and the realignment of the planned arena from a diagonal to a north-south placement casts significant doubt on the future of Building 1 (aka Miss Brooklyn), the office tower (with attached Urban Room, now missing from renderings , below) once destined for the western wedge between Atlantic and Flatbush avenues, as well as the tower at the western point of the footprint, Site 5. They once were "central" and "critical" to the project and thus, presumably, to the Empire State Development Corporation's (ESDC) approval, so we'll have to see what emerges when the ESDC releases a revision of the Modified General Project Plan (GPP) at its meeting June 23. (The graphic above is outdated; click to enlarge.) Forest City Ratner and the ESDC should be asked about the fate of both Building 1 and the tower at Site 5, the site now occupied by P.C. Richard and Modell's, bounded by Pacific Street and Flatbush, Atlantic,...

At least 43 planned hotels in the city, with an aggregate of some 10,150 rooms, are delayed or completely axed, reports the Real Deal. A click through to the chart (click on graphic to enlarge) offers this tidbit about what was once a planned 180-room hotel component of Building 1: With the Atlantic Yards arena and high-rise project mired in lawsuits and unable to get financing, there’s no telling when or if the project’s signature masthead building, renamed Building 1, would get built. At one point, the hotel component was scuttled altogether, but now a spokesman declined to comment on whether it still exists. Announcement in May 2005 As I pointed out a year ago, new renderings of the flagship tower, originally called Miss Brooklyn, provided the clue. The Daily News reported that the building would include 650,000 square feet of office space, which is more than the 528,000 square feet described the previous October at an Investor Day. Given that the building was once supposed to al...