Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Report

The sponsors of the BrooklynSpeaks coalition--neighborhood and housing groups--and some allied elected officials are holding a forum tomorrow night at the Montauk Club (25 8th Avenue) in Park Slope at 7 pm. "Sixteen years of promises, but we still have a hole in the ground. It's time for a new plan," the announcement says: Fix the traffic problems. Improve transit. Design spaces that work in Brooklyn. Create real affordable housing. Assemblymembers Walter Mosley and Jo Anne Simon are expected. Developer pre-empts the meeting? Surely in anticipation of the meeting, developer Greenland Forest City Partners this week floated an article in the New York Post regarding new plans to start the first half of the Vanderbilt Yard platform next year, dutifully regurgitated as Brooklyn’s Pacific Park moves to fast track . Three towers over railyard, but no timetable The developer also released a glossy image (left) of those three towers over the railyard, plus th...

First, the announcement. I'll have more about this before the meeting.

My relatively short article yesterday for the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Brooklyn lawmakers seek Pacific Park affordable housing schedule , focused on the most important element of the letter sent to Empire State Development (ESD) head Howard Zemsky by Assemblymembers Walter Mosley and Jo Anne Simon, along with state Senator Velmanette Montgomery: the need for a timetable to meet the May 2025 deadline for 2,250 affordable apartments, with a gap of some 900 units beyond those already built and expected to start this year and next. After all, as the letter states, the project is clearly behind a 2014 tentative schedule released by developer Greenland Forest City Partners. And, as I've reported , efforts to get more transparency--in questions from the Atlantic Yards Community Development Corporation (AY CDC) to GFCP, or a proposed AY CDC resolution--have come to naught. But I'd like to look more closely at some other elements of the letter. The deadline and the tax abatement Th...

Joining Bruce Ratner's unreliable prediction of 2018 project completion should be the prediction, just two years ago, that the promised middle school--dubbed M.S. OneBrooklyn by advocates--would open this year. Consider the 7/18/16 letter (below) from Howard Zemsky, President and CEO of Empire State Development, the state authority overseeing/shepherding Atlantic Yards, as first published 8/16/18. Responding to concerns raised by Assemblymember Walter Mosley and fellow legislators, Zemsky wrote, "A district wide middle school is also expected to open in the Fall of 2018." As of then, that was doubtful. I'd written a month earlier that the plan for 664 Pacific, a 27-story market-rate rental building with a school at its base, was delayed, and project documents suggested it would be a four-year buildout. As I reported, a court file revealed that a representative of developer Greenland Forest City Partners said excavation and construction at the site would ta...

In a forceful, wide-ranging letter to the head of New York State's economic development agency, four Brooklyn elected officials have expressed "grave concerns" about agreements involving Barclays Center and the Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Brooklyn project, suggesting a "serious breach of public trust." Issues raised include vague plans for promised affordable rental units, silence on plans for affordable condos, and the inadequate monitoring of project impacts and MWBE contracting. Several of those issues have been raised previously, if not answered. One new issue: a complaint by some minority shareholders in the project that they were misled by developer Forest City Ratner. Walter Mosley The letter, sent to Empire State Development (ESD) CEO Howard Zemsky June 14 on the letterhead of Assemblymember Walter Mosley , was signed by Assembly colleagues Jim Brennan and Jo Anne Simon and state Senator Velmanette Montgomery. In mid-July, Zemsky sent a br...

If you scroll down Politico New York's article yesterday, Campaign reports show Cuomo continues to rely on big donors , there's a chart listing the top 87 donors. At #55, though actually tied with others starting at #51, is a listing for "Ratner," the only individual donor listed without a first name. Did Bruce Ratner in fact give $55,000 since January 2015? I couldn't confirm it.  Rather, it looks like he should have barely missed the listing of the top 87 donors, who gave a minimum of $45,000, as he gave $42,500. Bottom line: he gave enough, I'd bet, to get his phone calls returned. Looking at the reports Cuomo's July 2016 disclosure form listed contributions from Ratner of $7,500 and $15,000. Cuomo's January 2016  disclosure form  listed no Ratner contributions. Cuomo's July 2015  disclosure form  listed contributions from Ratner of $5,000 and $15,000. Cuomo's January 2015  disclosure form  listed no Ratner contrib...

Brooklyn Assemblyman Walter Mosley, as I've reported , has already introduced Bill A5334 , which would authorize the Urban Development Corporation (aka Empire State Development) to create a "subsidiary corporation for the purpose of the further planning, design, and oversight of the Atlantic Yards land use improvement and civic project." That bill was inherited from his predecessor, Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries. It has five co-sponsors and remains stalled in committee. Mosley also just introduced a bill to establish a project oversight entity known as the Atlantic Yards Development Trust to supervise the project so as to create increased accountability and oversight. The bill,  A09752 , is the same as the 2008 bill. A11395 , which was introduced by Jeffries. The previous bill had Assemblymembers Joan Millman and Jim Brennan, who represent neighboring districts, as co-sponsors. The new bill doesn't have co-sponsors yet.  The role of Assembly Speaker Sheldon...

Put aside the public theater—some rude satire about Forest City Ratner’s new Chinese partner, a couple of literal dog-and-pony shows, some told-ya-so ’s from both sides—a curious, partial consensus on Atlantic Yards was vocalized by both critics and proponents at a hearing last night. Build Atlantic Yards now , they said, to deliver the benefits, predominantly affordable housing, given the promised 2250 subsidized units among 6430 apartments in 16 towers, only one under construction. But it wasn’t that simple, given vastly different levels of trust in the developer, That's why the atmosphere inside the auditorium at Long Island University sometimes got heated in a hearing that began shortly after 5:30 pm, lasted past 10 pm, and drew perhaps 140 people, a majority of them project critics. Proponents want hands off, critics a new oversight entity. Atlantic Yards supporters, many working off the same talking points , called for an expedited review and approval of the pending doc...