Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Report

This is the first of two articles on recent work by two scholars regarding Atlantic Yards. The second concerned their article on eminent domain. A book published last year, What the Signs Say: Language, Gentrification, and Place-Making in Brooklyn , focuses on a close analysis of retail signs. It also contains some interesting insights on Atlantic Yards, plus--I'd contend--some misreadings. This isn't the last word on Atlantic Yards from sociolinguist Shonna Trinch and cultural anthropologist Edward Snajdr, a married couple who both teach in the Department of Anthropology at John Jay College, CUNY, who are pursuing a larger study. They gained a 2010 National Science Foundation award to research “the dynamic and mutually transforming relations between local communities and urban development projects.” So this book reflects part of that research, focusing on retail markers of gentrification. The gist: The unique and consistent features of many words, large lettering, a...

What a difference a few years makes: in 2016, when Forest City Ratner was the developer and owner of 461 Dean, the modular tower known as B2, the building was promoted as being part of Pacific Park, said to have "beautiful residences designed by leading architects, a brand new 8-acre park, Barclays Center," and more. See screenshot below. That was a stretch since the "park" didn't exist and, when complete, wouldn't be that close to the building, which flanks the arena at Dean Street and Flatbush Avenue. But Forest City was partnering with Greenland USA on the larger project, so it was all tied together. 461 Dean web site; screenshot, 2016 New owner, new promotion Forest City sold the tower in March 2018 to Principal Global Investors, which has no stake in the larger project. The current version of the 461 Dean web site contains no mention of Pacific Park, which, after all, is neither a neighborhood nor a park but rather a very unfinished--and ir...

Rendering from web site A former garment factory and warehouse in Sunset Park, at 3rd Avenue and 39th Street, has been dubbed "Sunset Yards" by its new owners, who are thus pursuing "floor-to-ceiling renovations... modern industrial-style finishes and state-of-the-art infrastructure," according to the web site . States the owner: Uniquely positioned between the subway and the expressway, and standing adjacent to open rail yards, the building enjoys 360 degrees of unobstructed views and sits around the corner from Industry City’s six million square feet of retail, workspace, and amenities. In other words, what was once a sort of isolated building is in the thick of things. It certainly looks different from the visual in the building's digital brochure, pictured at left. The "Yards" Any project with the name "Yards" appended inevitably recalls Atlantic Yards, now Pacific Park, which came after the successful sports facility develo...

Two proposed mixed-use projects on Pacific Street in western Crown Heights, about three blocks east of of the eastern border of Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park, suggest how development is percolating on industrial blocks used for vehicle storage or light commercial functions. And they're not the only projects. The locations are 1010 Pacific Street and 1050 Pacific Street , both of which are zoned for low-rise manufacturing and will require rezonings to allow for greater density and residential use. Screenshot from Google Maps. Pacific Park stretches west from Vanderbilt Avenue, at far left of map At 1010 Pacific 11-Story Mixed Use Building Revealed At 1010 Pacific Street In Crown Heights, Brooklyn , NY YIMBY reported 10/29/18. The 11-story, 115-foot building would contain 128 apartments, 39 of them (25%) permanently affordable for low-income households, with incomes up to 60 percent of Area Median Income, or AMI. The developer is AVO Construction ; in October 2015, LLCs l...

Looming behind the 2003 Atlantic Yards proposal--and ever more present as the project has moved fitfully forward--is the question of gentrification: would the project further it, or help fight it? The answer, so far, is more of the former , though if built as proposed--with faster and more affordable below-market housing--that might be less pronounced. (To clarify, I'm referring to residential gentrification in the overall study area within a 3/4-mile radius, not the blocks immediately near the project, some of which have stagnant retail.) But it can't be teased out from everything else going on, notably the huge influx of market-rate units in Downtown Brooklyn, thanks to a rezoning, ostensibly to enable office space, that instead ushered in luxury towers. (The affordable units are significantly in a segment near the Brooklyn Academy of Music where city-owned sites lowered land costs and allowed the city to mandate some below-market units.) So that leads to another qu...

Given that real estate executive Ofer Cohen now chairs the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership, as I wrote yesterday , I thought I'd again check out his Hey BK podcast , in which he interviews various people in the real estate world. (Here's coverage of the previous MaryAnne Gilmartin episode.) Cohen in April  interviewed his future partner, Regina Myer, President of the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership, and formerly head of the Brooklyn Bridge Park Development Corporation, and previously heading the Department of City Planning's Brooklyn office. At about 8:18, after talking about development in Williamsburg, Cohen observed, "You guys probably had no idea residential development was going to take off. Nobody had the idea that rents are going to go up and support the residential development that eventually happened in such massive scale." "No one in the early 2000s," Myer replied, "understood how strong the residential market would be in any place in ...

My free Jane's Walk on Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park/Barclays Center is Friday, May 4, at 5:30 pm. See information here . The annual Jane's Walk weekend sent me back to a 3/16/17 panel at the Brooklyn Historical Society on the Legacy of Jane Jacobs, on YouTube below. The summary: In 1960, Jane Jacobs' book "The Death and Life of Great American Cities" sent shockwaves through the architecture and planning worlds. New York Times columnist Ginia Bellafante talks to Matt Tyrnauer, director and producer of the acclaimed documentary "Citizen Jane: Battle for the City," Rober Hammond, Co-Founder and Executive Director of Friends of the High Line, and Dr. Samuel Zipp, Associate Professor of American and Urban Studies at Brown University and Co-Editor of "Vital Little Plans: The Short Works of Jane Jacobs," about Jacobs' extraordinary impact on the urban landscape. Starting off talking about Brownstone Brooklyn--today expensive, beautiful, low-ri...

9 DeKalb, from JDS So, on 8/25/17, The Bridge brought us  Brooklyn’s First Supertall Skyscraper Begins to Rise , subtitled, "The tower underway at 9 DeKalb will dominate the downtown skyline. Is the borough ready for its 'badass' aesthetic?" That's a rather limited scope for a question, but not unsurprising given the generally boosterish tone of the article. The thin tower  by JDS adjacent to Junior's and the Dime Savings Bank at Flatbush Avenue will rise 1,066 feet, more than double the height of the 512-foot Williamsburgh Savings Bank, which is no longer even the borough's tallest. It would be far slimmer than the existing 600+ feet residential buildings, or the giant two-tower project proposed at 80 Flatbush  , near BAM, rising up to 920 feet, or the floated--though not officially proposed--two-tower complex plan for Site 5 of Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park. From Emily Nonko: So far, the tall, skinny towers designed by well-known New York archite...

In an interview headlined  Toward Being a Better Gentrifier , CityLab's Brentin Mock interviewed the (out of NYC) academics (two white, one black) who wrote the new book Gentrifier  about their experiences. And the interview complicates some easy bromides. "The problem isn't gentrification: It's that my neighbors are getting locked up, or they are being over-policed, or there aren't any schools, or there’s lead poisoning in the neighborhood, or there aren’t any long-term rentals anymore," says Jason Patch. Those are things to organize about. (Or, I'd suggest, any social action that leads to solidarity and more civic and communal resources.) "Evictions can happen due to disinvestment in a neighborhood, and [they can also] happen because of over-investment," says John Joe Schlichtman. " Eviction happens because of disconnection from the rest of the city and a neighborhood’s reconnection to the rest of the city. Militarized policing can hap...

A September 2016 report ECONOMIC ASSESSMENT OF THE BROOKLYN ECONOMY – 2016 UPDATE , prepared for the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce, offers some perspective on both gentrification and the market for new housing. The statistics it offers are through 2015, and I have not been able to find 2016 statistics. Notably, a 1.1% population growth from 2010-2014 turned into a .6% growth in 2015, largely attributable to a net loss in domestic migration (more people moving out). The report is optimistic about growth and, indeed, there is evidence. Consider that a 2013 report from the Department of City Planning (DCP) predicted (p. 3) that Brooklyn's population would reach 2.68 million by 2020. However, DCP estimated the population at 2.63 million by 2016. But if the rate of growth continues to be slow, that would raise questions about the market for luxury housing, including in projects like Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park. Demographic trends Note growth in white and Asian residents, an...

Though Prospect Heights is absent in the Regional Plan Association's recent report on potential displacement, a new report from the Intersection | Prospect Heights  project,  We’re All Part of the Neighborhood , starkly details dramatic changes that indeed, point to past and potential ongoing displacement. Consider the dramatic change in income in Prospect Heights, as detailed in the graphic below: as of 2014 (and surely rising), 40% of households earn six figures, up from 15% in 2000. That's well above projections, as noted lower down. The report draws on federal statistics and also surveys sponsored by the Prospect Heights Neighborhood Development Council in 2004 (366 respondents) and 2015-2016 (508 respondents). The surveys are not scientific polls, but the general trends they track have resonance. Changing racial mix Prospect Heights, once 53% black and 31% white, has in 14 years flipped to 28% black and 56% white. Changing concerns For example, between 20...

I guess it's shouldn't be shocking that new map of census tracts vulnerable to displacement pretty much excludes Prospect Heights and the area in the orbit of Atlantic Yards. From Regional Plan Association Pushed Out   report ; the lighter yellow indicates risk of displacement; the orange indicates more risk, given market shifts That doesn't mean it's not vulnerable--I'll write separately about that--but it does mean it's already gone through significant economic shifts. And the gentrification train is going deeper into Brooklyn. ("Train" is right. Gentrification often correlates with transit accessibility.) Take a look at the map at right, from a 3/1/17 report by the Regional Plan Association, which, however technocratic and corporate-supported, puts it pretty starkly:  Pushed Out: Housing Displacement in an Unaffordable Region . The press release announced,  Nearly One Million at Risk of Housing Displacement . The triangular, orange c...