Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Report

The latest Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Construction Update (bottom), covering the two weeks beginning Monday, May 28, was circulated at 12:16 pm Friday (lead time) by Empire State Development (ESD) after preparation by Greenland Forest City Partners. B15 site (There was no explanation about why the previous update skipped a week.) No new vertical construction is planned for now, which is why the B15 site pictured at right, between Dean and Pacific streets east of the arena block, looks so barren at the north end. (There is some equipment at the south end.) Railyard work MPT (Maintenance and Protection of Traffic) installations for the East Portal Median Reconstruction is supposed to begin during this reporting period, according to the notice, though a  separate notice last week  said the first phase, the closing of the west crosswalk, was supposed to begin May 23. This MPT will close the south sidewalk, southern most travel lane, and south parking lane on Atlant...

Newsday and two TV stations seem (so far) to be the only news outlets covering the unveiling of the operational West Portal to Atlantic Terminal, an upgrade to the Vanderbilt Yard that allows trains being stored and serviced to go directly to the commuter tracks rather than perform a more time-consuming and awkward maneuver. (I wasn't invited to the press event.) Newsday reported yesterday, in LIRR: New path to Atlantic Terminal may ease commuter delays For more than a century, routing a train from Atlantic Terminal into the yard, where it would be cleaned and serviced, required a complicated and time-consuming set of movements. Trains would have to travel east from the station about three-quarters of a mile, and then back west again through the only portal leading to the adjacent outdoor rail yard. The movement, which takes about three minutes to complete, would block all train traffic into and out of the station until the tracks were clear. That should ease potential and ...

There’s not much going on with Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park, so the discussion of project action represented a relatively small part of yesterday’s meeting of the Atlantic Yards Community Development Corporation, set up to provide advice and oversight. (See my separate report on the meeting’s belated timing and limited community input.) Tobi Jaiyesimi, executive directcor of the AY CDC (and Empire State Development’s Project Manager), summarized some recent issues regarding the project, including the removal of the “green wall” construction fence on Block 1129 (the project’s southeast block) and the pending restructuring of the Greenland Forest City Partners joint venture, in which Greenland USA will own all but 5% of the project (instead of 70%) going forward. Jaiyesimi noted that a meeting last week spearheaded by the Mayor’s office should help ensure inter-agency cooperation regarding construction issues as the project moves forward. The meeting, coming out of a request for a Ne...

The  next meeting  of the Atlantic Yards Community Development Corporation (AY CDC), an advisory body, will be Tuesday, Oct. 17, at 3 pm. Attendees  must RSVP by Monday. The announcement Friday, 10/13/17, of overnight construction all weekend for the West Portal of the Vanderbilt Yard--a new entrance from the railyard to the Long Island Rail Road's Atlantic Terminal--prompts a question. When will that West Portal be done? December 1? December 31? Next year? What about the permanent railyard to store and service LIRR trains? Perhaps that question will be asked at the AY CDC meeting, since the timetable has shifted more than once. In a June 2014 presentation , the West Portal was to be finished by February 2016, as shown in the screenshot below. June 2014 projection That, of course, didn't happen. As I wrote 10/20/15, Forest City's Ashley Cotton, of Greenland Forest City Partners, disclosed that they'd shifted the date for completing the West Portal from ea...

A message from Pacific Park Brooklyn indicates late night and weekend work beginning during the overnight hours tonight, near the intersection of Sixth Avenue and Atlantic Avenue. "As part [of] Long Island Railroad West Portal construction for Pacific Park Brooklyn contractors will be working during the overnight hours" through 5 pm Sunday, "demolishing portions of a suspended electrical duct bank." The West Portal is a new entrance from the Vanderbilt Yard to the Atlantic Terminal railway hub. The notice states that "Localized directional lighting will be used and all construction equipment meets environmental project requirements regarding noise." That doesn't mean it will be quiet. The notice says that "Coordination with LIRR schedules require that his work take place during this time," which is plausible. Less plausible is that it was not announced in the two-week Construction Update circulated last Friday . For information/concer...

Again, Atlantic Yards down the memory hole, with the sunny side of a revised deal gaining notice, while the developer's savings are ignored. Yesterday amNY published  As part of 'West Portal' LIRR project at Vanderbilt Yard in Brooklyn, crews cut through 100-year-old rail tunnel : Construction crews have punched through a 100-year-old rail tunnel in the LIRR’s Vanderbilt Yard as part of ongoing work to modernize the Brooklyn storage facility. Underneath congested Downtown Brooklyn streets, the 4-foot-thick concrete wall of the tunnel was blasted open this summer to build a direct train path between the yard and Atlantic Terminal for the first time. The connection will be known as the “West Portal,” one of several operational enhancements that Greenland Forest City Partners, a joint venture between developers Greenland and Forest City Ratner, are delivering to the yard as part of a real estate deal to build part of its $5 billion Pacific Park project a...