Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Report

There's no timetable or signage yet, but the high-end, Minneapolis-based chain Life Time gym will occupy two floors, plus part of the ground floor, at 18 Sixth Ave., aka Brooklyn Crossing, the Commercial Observer reported 1/9/23. The building flanks the Barclays Center at the northeast corner. Life Time--which, upon a 2016 announcement of its first outpost in Manhattan was described by one publication as "crazy luxe"--opened  a club  in 2021 at Front & York in DUMBO, with membership starting at $259/month. Life Time also will operate a gym, plus a co-working space , at the Brooklyn Tower, the borough's first supertall, at 9 DeKalb. This would be the tenth location in Manhattan and Brooklyn. A restaurant on Sixth Avenue? (Photos/Norman Oder) The Commercial Observer said Life Time leased 36,470 square feet for 20 years. That represents--apparently--the full second and third floors, plus one of the three ground-floor retail spaces.  Here's the building plan . ...

This is the second of two articles about the Jan. 25 Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Quality of Life meeting, held by Empire State Development (ESD), which oversees/shepherds the project. The first concerned the unresolved whistling noise from B3. Beyond discussion of the perplexing whistling noise coming from 38 Sixth Avenue, the meeting was brief and uneventful. There were no updates about the big questions regarding the project: plans to build the first phase of the two-block platform over the Vanderbilt Yard; plans to meet the 2025 affordable housing requirement; plans to shift bulk from the unbuilt tower once planned to loom over the arena to Site 5, longtime home to Modell’s and P.C. Richard. Only 16 people attended the meeting, including state Sen. Jabari Brisport, and representatives from the offices of Rep. Yvette Clarke and Council Member Crystal Hudson. It lasted about 36 minutes. The format, in which attendees can't see each other, speak, or read the chat, also tamps down...

There was good reason for the "solicitousness and evasiveness" from developers of Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park, as I described the 11/17/20 online Quality of Life meeting, which is supposed to respond to neighbors' concerns and questions about the project. Though it was barely mentioned at the meeting two weeks ago, those developers and state officials had received a spreadsheet of 17 reports from neighbors about loud, intrusive construction--some after-hours--that disturbs people's sleep and compromises their pandemic-constrained lives, including work and school from home. Most respondents live near the eastern end of the site, bordering where developer TF Cornerstone is building two residential towers, known as B12 (615 Dean) and B13 (595 Dean), on Dean Street between Carlton and Vanderbilt avenues, with deep below-ground space for a Chelsea Piers fitness center and fieldhouse. That especially affects neighbors who live within the project itself, notably the "...

Te latest Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Construction Update (bottom), covering the two weeks beginning today, was circulated Friday, 5/29/20 at 3:07 pm (lead time) by Empire State Development (ESD) after preparation by Greenland Forest City Partners. Judging from the text highlighted in in red in the document below, the only new work expected is fence installation along Pacific Street on the southeast block of the site, a precursor for work launching the B12 (615 Dean) and B13 (595 Dean) towers , once expected to start this month. Those two towers would have 798 rental units and, underground, a fitness center and fieldhouse. Meanwhile, what I two weeks ago called a rather stealth acknowledgment of after-hours work at both the B4 (18 Sixth) and B15 (37 Sixth) sites, given that it was not highlighted in red, weekday work there will last from 7 am until 7 pm and Saturday work goes from 8 am until 5 pm. Here's the permit for B4 . Here's the permit for B15 . In both cases, ...

OK, I've written about the coronavirus-related question marks facing market-rate and affordable housing, the school , the Vanderbilt Yard platform , and a new office tower at Site 5. But what about the fitness center and fieldhouse, operated by Chelsea Piers, planned under the B12 and B13 (615 Dean, 595 Dean) towers on the southwest block of the project site? (Here's my coverage , from last November of plans for those buildings, as well as previous discussion of the dubious approval process .) As of early March 2020, those towers, with a combined 800 units, were supposed to start in June or July--a time period already nudged back at least two months. Now everything's been delayed by the coronavirus crisis, with essential construction stalled. An unwise bet? Given that gyms have closed due to Covid-19 and are likely, under the most optimistic scenario, to face operating restrictions when they reopen, the planned Chelsea Piers fitness center might seem, in the ...

The more I think about it, there was some precedent for Empire State Development's dubious decision to amend--er, "clarify"--the project's Design Guidelines to allow 96,000 square feet of below-ground space to be used for a fitness center and field house. Remember, that space, originally presented as "commercial," was then said to be "recreational," though that category was never approved--and, informally, the developer described "health clubs" in a presentation before project approval as subsumed under "retail." Instead, rather than be subtracted from allotted commercial or retail space, it's a new category, somehow able to be exchanged for parking space (though the latter was never proposed as fungible). What about the roof logo? Well, remember the logo on the Barclays Center, before the green roof? That valuable signage, however common for fly-over cameras, had been neither officially approved no...

The plot thickens; we have some 2005 evidence that casts even more doubt over the 8/15/19 Empire State Development (ESD)  approval of "recreational space," to allow 96,000 below-ground square feet for a Chelsea Piers-operated fitness center and field house, plus 9,000 square feet at street level, at the southeast block of the project. Take a look at the slide below, from a 5/26/05 presentation (in full, at bottom) from original developer Forest City Ratner at a New York City Council hearing. As the annotation indicates, "health and fitness clubs" were considered part of "new retail space," which as to be "neighborhood-oriented." That suggests that the 105,000 square feet for the field house and fitness center--at sites B12 and b13--should be subtracted from the overall retail square footage, which is now 247,000 square feet. Or that allotted amount of retail square footage should've been expanded. (And, of course, the space would be ...

Newly public data from a previously unreleased Technical Memorandum (or Tech Memo, bottom) compounds doubts over the controversial approval of a fitness center and field house, under two towers in the southeast block of Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park, without further environmental review. The document was acquired after a Freedom of Information Law request to Empire State Development, or ESD, the state authority overseeing/shepherding the project. The space would be  under the B12 and B13 towers. planned to start next year, on Dean Street between Carlton and Vanderbilt avenues. Reasons for doubt: the number of expected users of the new facilities seems low--42 people entering the 45,000-square-foot fitness center between 8-9 am, and 60 between 5-6 pm--with no process for challenging the calculation far more below-grade space will be created for the fitness center/field house than will be saved by cutting parking on that block, given the project's recent iteration, despite ...

Update: see video, below. It was both astounding and predictable. Despite some pointed, public criticism from the best-informed member of the advisory board set up by Empire State Development (ESD), the parent board--after getting reassurances from staff--Thursday morning approved proposed changes in the guiding Atlantic Yards  Modified General Project Plan  and the associated Design Guidelines. The issues regarding a proposed below-grade fitness center and field house --raised by Gib Veconi, a member of the Atlantic Yards Community Development Corporation--were ignored. The ESD argument was essentially that, since the new facilities--96,000 square feet below-ground, plus 9,000 square feet at street level--would generate less traffic than anticipated and studied in the 2006 iteration of the project, which had far more parking, no further environmental review was necessary. Indeed, there likely would be fewer vehicles approaching the facility, to be operated by Chelse...