Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Report

From New York Post columnist Nicole Gelinas, 4/5/20, New York will need another federal bailout — and major belt-tightening : With demand for office and market-rate residential space likely down, a surge in private-sector construction is unlikely to save the city this time, as it did after 9/11. Nor will global tourists save us soon. If there's less demand for market-rate residential space, that raises a question about the next buildings for Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park. Under construction but paused are B4 (18 Sixth Avenue) and B15 (37 Sixth Avenue, 662-664 Pacific Street), slated to deliver 30% affordable units (at unspecified affordability levels), for a total of 352 apartments. Slated to start this summer, at least according to pre-coronavirus predictions, are B12 and B13 (595 and 615 Dean Street), with at least 25% affordable units, or a total of 200 apartments. Surely that start time has been pushed back. Changing the equation But what if the latest crisis has change...

New York Post  REALTY CHECK  columnist Steve Cuozzo, on 3/16/20 published New Chelsea Piers field house, fitness club coming to Pacific Park , which isn't really news, other than the incremental information that developer TF Cornerstone signed a lease with Chelsea Piers. Cuozzo, typically not-so-informed, wrote: It’s a done deal for a giant new field house and fitness club run by Chelsea Piers at TF Cornerstone’s 595 Dean St. at Brooklyn’s Pacific Park. The developer and the Piers signed a lease this week for a combined 103,000- square-foot fitness and health club at the base of the new residential tower to stand 26 floors. That may be the official address of the facilities but, as anyone following the project should know, they will stretch below both 595 Dean and its sibling 615 Dean, as shown in the pink sections of the screenshot below, published 11/22/19. Snark regarding the switch Writes Cuozzo: The plan required approval by the Empire State Development...

Brooklyn Pacific Park apartment tower starts to rise, thanks to $460M loan , the New York Post's Steve Cuozzo reported last night regarding 18 Sixth Avenue (aka B4), but the real (non-) news is this paragraph: Work is also set to start in 2020 on a deck over the exposed LIRR yard on the site’s Atlantic Avenue side, pending MTA approvals. Demolition of old buildings adjoining the yard is underway. The platform will support several more structures. Let me try to decode those three, not-so-helpful statements: We don't have a start date yet for the deck, or platform Demolition actually has been completed The platform will support six towers, plus the bulk of the project's much-hyped open space The lack of a start date is important because Cuozzo--the developer's go-to scribe for mini-scoops sans skepticism--in October  conveyed the developer's statement  that the platform would start in 2020, but without a date or an estimate of elapsed time.  I repo...

Here we go! Developer Greenland Forest City Partners (GFCP) --likely anticipating a public meeting Thursday sponsored by critics of the project-- told the New York Post of new plans to start the first half of the Vanderbilt Yard platform next year, which the Post dutifully regurgitated as  Brooklyn’s Pacific Park moves to fast track . That does represent progress, setting the stage for three towers over the railyard between Sixth and Carlton Avenues: B5/B6/B7. But it doesn't necessarily mean "the fast track," since stenographic Steve Cuozzo helpfully (in the developer's eyes) didn't ask about the timetable to finish the platform, to start the towers, and the number of affordable units--essentially how GFCP would meet the May 2025 deadline for 2,250 affordable units. Nor did he ask about the expected level of affordability . This news--which is in general conformity to previous documents I've reported on--does make it more likely the developer ...

Check out two troubling and well-reported articles for the Daily Beast by Brooklyn College professor (and former New York Newsday staffer) Paul Moses:  In New York City, Local Coverage Declines—and Takes Accountability With It  and  The New York Times Turns Its Sights Away From New York City . This confirms what I've seen covering Atlantic Yards since 2005--though I often criticized spotty coverage of the project a decade ago, at least the project merited coverage. Today, as news outlets shrink staff and coverage diminishes, what we do see is too often driven by press releases, thanks to a growing number of public relations staffers and a shrinking number of reporters. That has to do with the changing metrics of the journalism business, as managers chase national audiences and national ads. Queens as a weathervane In Moses's first  installment , he suggests that Queens--which could be the nation’s fourth largest city, at 2.3 million people--is critically unde...

Remember how original Atlantic Yards architect Frank Gehry got flak for saying--according to the New York Times's erroneous transcription--that the project was "building a neighborhood from scratch"? (He'd said "practically from scratch," which was already a stretch.) Well, Forest City Ratner CEO MaryAnne Gilmartin likes to say "neighborhood from scratch" today, and she's getting lapdog treatment in some media outlets. Consider the New York Post Real Estate page article today, How New York City is building new neighborhoods from nothing . (Actually, it appears in the luxury supplement, Alexa --see bottom.) From the lead: Density ought to be embraced, and vertical living ought to be celebrated,” pronounces MaryAnne Gilmartin, president of NYC real estate giant Forest City Ratner Companies. It’s a bold statement, but she’s talking about a bold project: Pacific Park, the 22-acre, 15-building complex rising over Brooklyn’s Atlantic Rail Ya...

The New York Post's Josh Kosman has a scoop, based on anonymous sources,  Prokhorov nears deal to buy all of Barclays Center, Nets , which upends some of the public discussion about the value of the arena and the team and suggests Forest City Enterprises will take home little cash: Prokhorov has been in talks to buy the 55 percent of the arena and 20 percent of the NBA team he does not already own. Under the deal being discussed, he would kick in little cash beyond forgiving the roughly $40 million Forest City owes him to cover team losses, according to two sources familiar with the situation. Onexim Group, Prokhorov’s investment vehicle, earlier extended until Sept. 8 a deadline for when Forest City needs to pony up roughly $15 million to cover its share of the Nets’ losses for the 2015-16 season. That’s on top of the $25 million it owes for last season. There's a larger business reason for Forest City to sell--the plan for the company to convert to a real estate investment...

Nearly all the workers at the Barclays Center don't get benefits--"I can't live on $14 an hour... and I can't get unemployment," says one--and the construction workers expecting typical union wages face a 25% haircut in the modular factory. He claimed Metro Tech "created 22,000 jobs in Brooklyn" (not so, they were mostly relocated ) and that the arena has 2,000 or 1,800 jobs (actually, 1,240 full-time equivalent, from his firm's own calculation). But that's business, and the media will tell us developer Bruce Ratner is a mighty generous guy. You could imagine the discussion with his p.r. consultants about how he might help as worthy and victimized an individual as possible: a blinded, impoverished ex-slave from Sudan. Rescue mission On 9/19/11, the New York Post reported, in  Rescue mission: Ratner’s fight to help tragic Sudan teen : The uber-developer -- best known for his under-construction Brooklyn arena for the Nets -- is vigoro...

From the New York Post, Meet the new Nets fans: With 10,000 season tickets already sold, Brooklyn’s new basketball team has won over the borough — and convinced Knicks supporters to abandon the Garden : More than 10,000 season tickets have been sold to date, says Brett Yormark, CEO of the Nets and Barclays Center — and of those 10,000 season ticket holders, only 10 percent owned seats when the Nets were based in New Jersey. Yes, 90 percent of the Nets’ new season ticket holders are recent converts. So who are these newbies betting on black-and-white? “When you look at our season ticket base, you’re talking about roughly 45 percent from Brooklyn, 25 percent from Manhattan, 12 percent from New Jersey, and the rest is from the outer boroughs and Long Island,” explains Yormark. “We’re a fresh new alternative in the marketplace.” OK, so the Nets are drawing new fans in a new market. But 4500 season tickets from a borough with more than 2.5 million people does not mean that the Nets hav...

Giddy, fact-challenged New York Post columnist Andrea Peyser, having completely forgotten the 10,000 Atlantic Yards jobs she once promoted , but maintaining her dada take from 12/1/09, writes a valentine today to Bruce Ratner, headlined B’klyn revival’s ringmaster . So, Ratner gets credit for Brooklyn's revival? Puh-leeze. The tie-less developer Peyser writes: He thought he’d never pull it off. Bruce Ratner doesn’t walk. He bounces. In a hard hat, rumpled suit and never a tie, Ratner vibrates giddily amid buzzing saws and deafening drills, before leaping amid never-sat-in seats covered in dusty plastic. Ratner at April 30 press conference Funny, but here are two examples where Ratner's wearing a hardhat at the arena and, yes, a tie. The justification: entertainment Peyser writes: We’re in the brand-new crux of the known universe, Barclays Center, now under construction, talking about the rise of Brooklyn. “It’s incredible!’’ enthused Ratner, 67, the hype...

In We didn't know we hired a crook: Ratner firm , the New York Post has a mini-scoop regarding one of the two defendants in the ongoing Yonkers corruption trial, the go-between who helped get Council Member Sandy Annabi to change her vote to green-light Forest City Ratner's Ridge Hill project: Forest City Ratner officials told The Post that they never conducted a background check in 2006 on then-Yonkers Republican Party Chairman Zehy Jereis before awarding him what amounted to a $5,000-a-month no-show job. This was after they learned of the political crony’s criminal record from a reporter. ...Shortly after testifying in Manhattan federal court Monday, Scott Cantone, FCR’s senior VP for government affairs, told the Post the company was unaware of Jereis’ shady past and never did a background check on him. FCR spokesman Joe DePlasco said the firm had “no way of knowing” Jereis had a criminal record because “he was the leader of the Yonkers Republican Party.” Um, being the C...

In the New York Post's Brooklyn blog, New Nets arena shaping up , Rich Calder reports today: Workers earlier this month buttoned up the top of the under-construction Barclays Center in Prospect Heights by completing its steel-roof deck, and they also recently began insulating the rooftop and waterproofing it with a light-gray covering. ...[Forest City executive Bob] Sanna during an interview with the Post yesterday said about 35 percent of the 188,425-square-foot roof is complete and that Barclays Center is still on schedule to open in September. “We got lucky with the warm weather we've been having. You usually aren't able to get roofers on a roof in February,” said Sanna. Yes, the warm weather does eliminate certain potential construction challenges. But "on schedule to open in September" is a bit incomplete, given that only this month was the substantial completion date pushed back from late August to early September.

The New York Post today publishes a real estate article headlined Court vision: With opening of Nets’ new arena actually on horizon, Brooklyn residents brace themselves for whatever happens next . So, while the article does take in some diverse voices, it's focused on the real estate market, not the "whatever happens next" of daily construction noise and dust faced by some project neighbors, as documented on Atlantic Yards Watch , or the burdens expected from pedestrians and drivers congesting narrow streets on their way to and from interim surface parking. Markowitz optimistic The article states: As the stadium, which will seat 18,000 during basketball games and 19,000 for concerts and contain eight clubs and restaurants, makes its bold way into Brooklyn, the neighborhoods that surround it -- Park Slope, Fort Greene, Clinton Hill, Prospect Heights, Boerum Hill -- are busy figuring out how to react. “When the arena opens, you’ll see a new city center in New York,...

A New York Post "exclusive" today headlined Shady Bronx community groups get Yankee charity cash , begins: That’s foul. The nonprofit in charge of doling out nearly $1 million a year in New York Yankee cash to Bronx charities is throwing it away on shady organizations, for-profit businesses and barely effective but politically connected community groups, a Post investigation found. As it turns out, the Yankees have nothing to do with the distribution, which means far less control over the CBA partners than Forest City Ratner in its own CBA. Which also means that the fund’s former administrator, who says he was wrongfully fired, could say that, as the Post reports, "board members rubber-stamp community groups picked by a three-person subcommittee operating behind closed doors." And it means that, while the fund’s treasurer refused to turn over mandated annual reports, the Post could get them from other sources--while Forest City Ratner refuses to fund a mandate...

There's a referendum Monday in tax-strapped Nassau County on a $400 million plan to replace the Nassau Coliseum (and build a minor league ballpark), and you can bet that Barclays Center backers are hoping the whole thing blows up, thus sending events--no, not the main tenant, the hockey Islanders, but concerts and shows--to that new arena rising near the Long Island Rail Road terminal in Brooklyn. There's reason for question the plan, as I'll describe below, but it's notable how the New York Daily News and New York Post editorial pages, steady backers of Atlantic Yards, have discovered their inner Daniel Goldstein , fervently denouncing the "scheme." (It's also notable that the public gets a voice decide--though it should be pointed out that a Monday in August is not exactly designed for mass turnout. Neither the public nor local elected officials voted on support for Atlantic Yards. Note that the Nassau County Legislature and then the Nassau Interi...

What if... in some kind of alternate universe, media mogul Rupert Murdoch made Atlantic Yards a special priority? After all, as Azi Paybarah reports in this week's New York Observer, Rupert’s Post Game: His Royal Pie-ness Story on Page SShhh , the New York Post responds to its owners whims and directives. And the Post, not surprisingly, played down a great tabloid moment: the pie in the face Murdoch received when testifying before the U.K. Parliament. When Rupert cares And, on the flip side, Murdoch could focus attention, sometimes even more than merited. From the article: One reporter was told by his editor that “Rupert ordered” a look into the connections between then-governor David Paterson and the lobbying activities of his father, Basil Paterson, according to a Post insider. It was, in fairness, a sound story to investigate, but there was an implied understanding that the reporter should turn up something, since his editor felt the need to mention where the idea came f...

Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, who uses his office more as as policy shop than cheerleading Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, this week issued a report calling for the abolition of the favoritism-riddled system of member items in City Council. The report is of course somewhat self-serving--it was seen as a slam on City Council President Christine Quinn, a rival to Stringer in the 2013 mayoral race, and Stringer never refused member items when serving in the state Assembly. But it was embraced by at least two editorial pages, with one pointing out how the current system offends fairness--an observation that, as I describe below, could have been applied to a key episode in the Atlantic Yards process. From the report: As the new fiscal year begins, Manhattan Borough President Scott M. Stringer today released “Reforming Local Member Items in New York City,” a report recommending the abolition of the current system for allocating City Council member items. Th...