Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Report

Hey, I missed this. A reader pointed me to Curbed's Dec. 21 article, Travis Scott Made Dean Street Quake . Or, more specifically, the 461 Dean tower flanking the arena: At home on Dean Street around 11 on Monday night, Alison Hildebrand noticed the ornaments on her Christmas tree had started to swing. The building started to rumble; her dog started to bark. From her apartment more than 30 floors up, it felt like an earthquake. Except oddly rhythmic. The seismic event turned out to be Travis Scott. Living behind the Barclays Center comes with certain domestic hazards — “There are concerts, games, events almost nightly,” Hildebrand says — but her building had never really quaked before. “Drake and Lil Uzi Vert had some noise and shaking,” she said, “but not like Travis Scott.” Bridget Read also found that the vibration was felt at the 10-story Atlantic Terrace building, on Atlantic Avenue but with the address of 212 South Oxford Street. Residents of the latter brought in an engineer...

In September 2015, I  wrote about  a 6/29/15 speech MaryAnne Gilmartin, then CEO of Forest City Ratner, gave to a friendly audience at Terra CRG's Fifth Annual Brooklyn Real Estate Summit. At times, she was candid; at other times, she obscured the truth. After watching it again, I noticed some more things, as detailed below. The bottom line, as I said during my remarks at the "What's Next for Atlantic Yards" forum on Monday, is "the devil's in the details," so developer claims deserve close attention, and follow-up. First, a quick recap: Gilmartin was a "deep believer” in Forest City's modular experiment (which didn't work) problems at the B2 modular tower were "really about the hiccup we had with our partner” Skanska (which was more than that) "So we're bullish on Brooklyn, and super bullish on Pacific Park Brooklyn" (though they'd already sold 70% of the project going forward to Greenland USA, and later so...

The first view of the Barclays Center green roof, published last August, is new to me. The lifting of the trays (second photo) was May 2015. No mention, of course, of the Barclays logo now on the roof. Or of the sound-deadening properties. Rare view of the underbelly of the @barclayscenter #greenroof. The steel trusses support the green roof, protecting both the sedum and the roof of the arena #engineering A photo posted by Pacific Park Brooklyn (@pacificparkbk) on Aug 6, 2015 at 9:02am PDT We will be lifting 34,000 trays, each containing 2' by 2' Green Grid trays to build bk’s newest #greenroof @barclayscenter A photo posted by Pacific Park Brooklyn (@pacificparkbk) on May 5, 2015 at 6:00am PDT

From video via PacificParkBk Oh, they weren't going to give up that valuable marketing real estate, were they? A new Barclays Center logo for the arena roof (see screenshot at right) was not in any preparatory  public renderings  (see below left) of the recently installed green roof, but it's apparently too valuable an advertising space. Indeed, as construction of the green roof began, Forest City Ratner's Bob Sanna  told  the 4/26/15 Wall Street Journal, “We are thinking up creative ways to keep the logo…We just haven’t decided where.” Since then, around the end of the year, Forest City transferred its 55% interest in the arena operating company to minority owner Onexim, controlled by Mikhail Prokhorov.\ From April 2014 rendering by SHoP The green roof was paid for by the new joint venture Greenland Forest City Partners, aiming to make the arena view more palatable to residents in nearby towers and to tamp down noise escaping from the venue. Surely ...

What's up with the Barclays Center green roof? In January and February , I pointed out that it sure didn't look finished, given the glaring gap at the east end of the arena (see bottom), showing an absence of steel and, of course, the green sedum. When I asked at the Community Update meeting 2/24/15 if the "roof was done," Forest City Ratner spokeswoman Ashley Cotton said yes. "I think I said it wrong once," she said, indicating past reference to a full roof cover. The "visual is done," she said, while internal work continues. "You are going to see that the roof looks as it’s going to look." Well, maybe, maybe not. Why wouldn't they want to cover the entire roof, especially since towers--one residential, one commercial (though formerly said to be residential)--will be built? Well, one person suggested to me that covering the roof completely would hamper ventilation. I don't know enough to weigh in, but one answer is...

Update 2/24/16: Forest City Ratner spokeswoman Ashley Cotton says, indeed, the green roof has been finished for a while and she misspoke if leaving the indication that it would be completely covered. The gaps will remain. On 6/25/15, I wrote  Barclays Center green roof, originally due by July, should (still) be finished in September . That was way overoptimistic. At a public meeting back then, Forest City Ratner executive Ashley Cotton said the installation of sedum--the vegetative roof materials--would be done in September.   "Only have 50,000 trays of a total of 135,000 trays of sedum left to deliver!" Pacific Park Brooklyn  tweeted  a few days earlier, and Cotton also cited that statistic. That was two months behind the original timeline, when the installation was supposed to be done by the end of July, as the graphic above right shows. But it had already been nudged back to September. However, it doesn't look like the last round of work go...

The lead-in paragraph to New York Magazine's  Reasons to Love New York 2015  states: Because New York is the heart of political ambition. Because we’re gourmands (and our rats are, too). Because our galleries travel on wheels. Because Zingsanity is upon us. Because the Mets had better hair than the Royals. Because a Citi Bike is going across the country, and a boat full of Williamsburgers is going around the world. Because you don’t need a ticket to see the cast of Hamilton live. Because, from a miniature underground Eden to a lawn on the roof of Barclays Center to a farm at JFK, we make imaginative use of our space, and our jostling, dizzying, possibility-filled crowds of new and old New Yorkers remake the city all over again every day. (Emphasis added) The print magazine, as shown in the excerpt at right, categorizes the Barclays Center's green roof as part of the 34th reason. Well, the stonecrop sedum ain't a lawn . More importantly, this glib characte...

Ok, the Atlantic Avenue crane for the Barclays Center green roof was supposed to be disassembled this past Friday overnight, ending at 10 am Saturday. That didn't happen. Rather, the work--I'm not sure when it actually began--was finished yesterday afternoon and early evening, according to photos taken by resident Wayne Bailey, and flatbed trailers were waiting along Atlantic Avenue, including a bus stop. Bottom line: we need a real-time update of construction activities from Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park developer Greenland Forest City Partners, as well as Empire State Development, the state authority overseeing/shepherding Atlantic Yards. We also need responses to Bailey's monitoring, including reports yesterday of a mysterious smell outside the 666 Pacific Street site, which is being prepared for demolition. The crane last night; note removal of blue construction fence outside Atlantic Avenue entrance to Barclays Center Trailer outside Barclays Center wait...

How, three years after the Barclays Center and the new subway entrance opened, does there seem to be advertising for the New York Islanders--"The Puck Drops in October"--on the much-promoted "green roof" of the entrance? How long will it be there, and will advertising be a regular feature? "I'll get back to you on that," arena Community Affairs Manager Terence Kelly said in response to my question last Wednesday at the barely attended Community Update meeting . (Had the meeting followed the format a few years ago, when it was called Quality of Life Committee and solicited questions from residents, that question could have been on the agenda.) One very practical reason for the advertising, I suspect, is the withered condition of the greenery on the roof--as the photo above shows, dirt, not sedum, is visible under the canvas signage. Accessory signage? I queried Empire State Development, which oversees/shepherds Atlantic Yards, and got thi...

As its three-year anniversary approaches at the end of September, the Barclays Center remains on a Temporary Certificate of Occupancy (TCO), apparently its 16th, according to Department of Buildings (DOB)  records . See document at bottom, which is dated 7/25/15 and lasts 90 days before it must be renewed. As I  wrote  in October 2013, an extended TCO is nothing new for sports facilities. Yankee Stadium got its  Final Certificate of Occupancy  in March 2012, after nearly three years, which is faster than Barclays, but Citi Field, which also opened in the  spring of 2009 , got  its document  in July 2013, more than four years later. What is arena waiting for? The Barclays Center TCO states, "There are 26 outstanding requirements. Please refer to BISWeb for further detail." No, it's not easy to figure them out , though in the past unfinished retail space was clearly part of the total. I asked DOB and was sent a link to the page highlight...

Wall on Carlton Avenue We already heard a highlight from Forest City Ratner CEO MaryAnne Gilmartin's 6/16/15 presentation to the Fifth Annual Brooklyn Real Estate Summit , that Forest City's joint venture partner/overseer, Greenland USA, “needs to see [successful modular construction] to believe it," that "I am a deep believer,” and the problems at the B2 modular tower were "really about the hiccup we had with our partner” Skanska. The problems, as my recent reporting shows , were more than a hiccup, including significant water damage requiring major interior remodeling. A full viewing of Gilmartin's presentation, below, shows the charismatic, confident executive disarmingly candid about the "ginormous" green wall surrounding current construction, a previously undisclosed challenge with construction, the true history of the arena roof logo, and the developer's ability to sell bonds for arena construction. At the same time, she obscu...

Remember, the green roof at the Barclays Center was not built to attract bees , and its environmentally friendly aspects are secondary to its "aesthetic and noise and vibration dampening benefits." According to a couple of complaints noted on Atlantic Yards Watch after a Mötley Crüe concert at the arena on Wednesday, August, 12, however, those "noise and vibration dampening benefits" may not be working so well. There are few details about the duration, extent, and location of the problem, other than the comment that "resident thought that new roof would help but it didn't." (A resident tells me the concert was audible from the Newswalk building a half-block away: "unbelievably loud.") (Update: Note that there haven't been too many noise complaints recently; whether that's due to the green roof is unclear, because there haven't been many of the type of bass-heavy concerts that provoke such complaints. I'm also told th...

Update: would you believe that the New York Times published an article about how the roof attracted bees? The roof was described as an "environmentally-friendly cap," with no mention of the sound-deadening properties. In the July/August Brooklyn issue of the business-friendly Industry magazine , we can see how the story of the Barclays Center's new green roof has been massaged into a somewhat delayed triumph, rather than a recovery from a setback. The article at right and bottom, attributed to "Industry Staff"--likely a rewrite of a press release--is headlined "Cap and Blade: A new turf roof helps the Barclays Center take a turn for the sustainable." The article calls the green roof one of the Barclays Center's "most talked about original design elements," without noting how this version departs significantly from the original plan, which was to enable public access. "We always hoped to create a green roof, further improvi...

Well, New York Magazine calls its Approval Matrix "Our deliberately oversimplified guide to who falls where on our taste hierarchies." It's usually quite savvy. But not always. Consider the Lowbrow/Brilliant designation for the Barclays Center's green roof. The print version is brief. The  online version  links to a 5/27/15 WABC report,  BARCLAYS CENTER INSTALLING SOUND-MUFFLING GREEN ROOF , which states: The lush greenery will absorb rainwater, and therefore put less stress on the sewer system. Then, there's the acoustic component, as the roof will absorb sound that is outside the building and muffle sounds inside the center. ...And another thing that will be fascinating to watch is how all of this will actually change to reflect the seasons. Somehow missing is the fact Barclays Center has regularly leaked bass into the surrounding neighborhoods like a giant neighborhood sub-woofer, leading to a fine . Or that the green roof promised in the early days wa...

I'll have more coverage from the Community Update meeting in subsequent posts. The Barclays Center green roof is still delayed--but still on the delayed timetable acknowledged in February.  As I  reported  in February, developer Forest City Ratner (the public-facing part of Greenland Forest City Partners) admitted indirectly that the green roof--an exoskeleton aimed to beautify the view and also tamp down escaping noise--was several months behind schedule. The Atlantic Avenue cranes "will be gone this summer, that's our expectation," Forest City's Ashley Cotton said in February, and she repeated the prediction last night at the periodic Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Community Update (formerly Quality of Life) meeting. The Atlantic Avenue crane, according to the original timetable (below), was supposed to installed in August 2014 and removed by October 2014. Instead, it was installed in October, and will have lasted more than nine months, not three mont...

As the saying goes , "News is what people want to keep hidden and everything else is publicity." So two sunny mentions of the Brooklyn Nets and Forest City Ratner, press releases dutifully reproduced in the low-barrier-to-entry Brooklyn Daily Eagle, qualify as publicity. “Forest City Ratner Companies is not only in the business of creating new dynamic neighborhood destinations, we are deeply committed to supporting and amplifying the existing city fabric by making important investments in local communities," developer Bruce Ratner said in a press release regarding the company's day of service. And, rather, news comes from Atlantic Yards Watch, where before-hours work on the Barclays Center green roof, banging at 5:30 a.m., is described in a video: (City work hours M-F are supposed to start at 7 a.m. , unless there's a special permit, and there's been no announcement of the latter.) Forest City publicity, v. 1 From the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 6/10...

"Barclays Center roof going green," reports WPIX 11, and the chummy visit to the arena roof is all developer Forest City Ratner and joint venture Greenland Forest City Partners could hope for. Consider the way they handle a main reason the roof was built . "An added benefit for a building like this is that it has a wonderful acoustical impact," says Forest City Ratner's Linda Chiarelli. WPIX's Joe Mauceri responds affirmatively: "Here at Barclays Center, we don't have to worry about the sound from those loud concerts getting out and disturbing the neighbors." That's a rather backhanded reference to periodic complaints . And, of course, there's no mention of delays . That partnership with WPIX continues to pay off.

Bottom, a photo sent to me yesterday shows that the Flatbush Avenue crane needed for the green roof is gone, meeting the most optimistic schedule. Note the previous Construction Alert : The Flatbush Avenue crane was assembled the weekend of May 16-17. It will be needed for approximately 2 to 4 weeks (depending on weather conditions), after which it will be disassembled. So it's certainly good for traffic--at least when full passage along Flatbush is restored. (Updated below, with photo today: it has been restored.) Was the effort to get the crane out why they were working on the weekend ? Photo today Photo yesterday