Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Report

It was their first playoff game ever in Brooklyn last night, and there was a full house watching the New York Islanders win  in overtime, their first victory in three games against the Florida Panthers. One witness describing the atmosphere--in a building often criticized for being unfriendly to hockey--as "every bit as lively, raucous and boisterous as what you’ll find in any other building in the National Hockey League." And that meant it spilled out into the street as midnight approached, and even afterward--on a school night. The video below--shot halfway down Pacific Street from the arena--shows yelling and honking.. Apparently the new "Islanders Code of Conduct" can only go so far. The arena operators need to do more, but they face a challenge. Fans understandably want to celebrate, and they'd be even louder if they were tailgating outside the Nassau Coliseum. But the arena backs into a residential neighborhood. The next home playoff game is Wed...

Yesterday was a rough one for pedestrians at Sixth Avenue and Dean Street, where construction continued on the northwest corner for the B3 tower, aka 38 Sixth Avenue. As detailed in the first Instagram post, a flagger waved vehicles through even when pedestrians had the green, thus putting them in peril. As shown in the second post from Wayne Bailey , a truck blocked southbound traffic on Sixth Avenue, though there should have been a place inside the construction fence for such trucks. An email sent to me by Dean St Resident reports "nearly got ran over" this morning because of #pacificparkbk Safeway Atlantic 18 wheeler blocked entire traffic lane at 6th Ave & Dean St and "flag man kept waving cars through" when pedestrians had the walk light, "glad I'm alive to tell story" #535carlton #550vanderbilt #38sixthave #pacificparkbk #78thprecinct #communityboard8 #615Dean #664pacific #pedistriansafety #moreenvironmentalmonitors @empireststedev...

I wrote in July 2012 about the  Yormark-ization of the NBA , with ads on  NBA uniforms coming in a year, and how Nets CEO Brett Yormark, citing his NASCAR experience, had said, “You can monetize this in ways you can’t monetize any other kind of marketing inventory." It didn't happen on that schedule, but Bloomberg reported 4/15/16,  NBA Owners Approve Ad Patches on Jerseys for First Time : A three-year pilot program for the ads, in the form of 2.5-by-2.5-inch patches, will begin in the 2017-18 season, which coincides with Nike replacing Adidas as the league’s official uniform supplier. “Jersey sponsorships provide deeper engagement with partners looking to build a unique association with our teams,” NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said in a statement. “The additional investment will help grow the game in exciting new ways,” The ads should produce about $150 million, which will be split among teams and a revenue-sharing pool.  It's part of a sl...

Let's call this partial progress, an announcement by the Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Brooklyn developers of overnight electrical work by Con Edison next Monday and Tuesday (April 18-19) on Atlantic Avenue between Sixth /South Portland Avenue & South Oxford Street. Updated and clarified... It's partial progress because, in the past, utility work--not conducted by the developer's contractors, but related to the project--has not ( consistently ) been announced, and there have been numerous untoward impacts, including noise and street closings. I'm reminded that, yes, such utility work that does not close streets has in fact been announced in the past . It's incomplete progress because neighbors are not warned how disruptive it might be. The announcement comes after residents' forceful criticism--and much Instagram posting--of street and sidewalk closures that were not publicly announced. Pacific Park Brooklyn spokeswoman Ashley Cotton on Wed...

Ok, tell us what you really think, Ashley Cotton. The Forest City Ratner Chief of Staff, who serves as spokeswoman for the joint venture Greenland Forest City Partners (which is developing Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park, with the exception of the arena and one tower) as well as Mikhail Prokhorov's Onexim (which owns the Barclays Center operating company) offers some notably derisive quotes in the Daily News today about residents forced to become community activists because project-related activity regularly disrupts their lives. The article is headlined  Fight Night: Atlantic Yards neighbors lash out at developers as harassment persists , and takes off from the Community Update meeting Wednesday night, where, among other things, sexual harassment victim Elicia Howard expressed frustration (as I reported ) that too little had changed to prevent aggressive behavior from construction workers. Forest City fights back Here's the key section: “We’ve been complaining about th...

So much for bringing Brooklyn a team, "something as intangible as a soul," as Nets owner/Atlantic Yards developer Bruce Ratner told a New York Times Magazine interviewer in June 2005. Did anyone notice Filip Bondy's brutal recap of the Nets' season in the 4/14/16 New York Times,  The Nets See Their Season, Long Over, Come to an End : On Wednesday night, as the Nets lost to a group of impostor Raptors , 103-96, they finished their season ranked among the bottom five teams in average attendance. Their television ratings stood 30th, dead last. Yet those final 2015-16 standings will forever record that the Nets played and lost the vast majority of their games, by an average margin of more than 7 points, while laboring in relative obscurity. ...The Nets’ average television rating was just 0.47 for the first half of the season, according to Sports Business Journal, down 15 percent from last season’s already unimpressive numbers. That translates to about 35,000 house...

My appearance this morning on WBAI's Morning Show , talking about Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park.

From the Daily News Last night's bi-monthly Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Community Update meeting , held at 55 Hanson Place, was supposed to focus on updates on building sites and plans to block, reorder, and restore vehicular and pedestrian traffic as construction moves ahead. Instead, the meeting focused on the developer's perceived inadequate response to some serious sexual harassment issues. As the meeting began, just as host Nicole Jordan, Community Relations Manager for Empire State Development (ESD), the state authority overseeing/shepherding the project, tried to turn over the program to a colleague, Elicia Howard, the 23-year-old Prospect Heights resident who this week went public in the Daily News regarding sexual harassment incidents, spoke up. And through methodical questions, Howard expressed frustration at the slow pace of response, given that she's still facing harassment. Officials from ESD and developer Greenland Forest City Partners were apolo...

There's some significant news in today's New York Daily News article, Promises of full-time jobs at Atlantic Yards has turned into part-time reality for Barclays employees . Not only Nathaniel Vinton report on problems facing ushers and security guards seeking a new contract after being unable to secure more hours and thus benefits, as I reported last December,  he reveals a change coming: So too is the union representing the conversion crew, which transforms the facility between Nets basketball games, Islanders hockey games, and other concerts and events. Disgruntled workers from that group voted 54-23 in December to ditch their union for a new one, which is also seeking new terms with [arena operator Mikhail] Prokhorov. The conversion crew, it goes unmentioned, in 2013 tried and failed (but came close ) to decertifying their union, aiming for more compensation. Today's article offers some statistics: About 300 of the arena’s approximately 2,500 employees work fu...

From a New York Times article today, headlined Segregation Issue Complicates de Blasio’s Housing Push : In 2014, community groups in Downtown Brooklyn, citing gentrification concerns, won an accelerated schedule for the Atlantic Yards megaproject, whose developers had initially pledged to create 2,250 affordable apartments by 2035 . By then, the groups argued, the black population would have dropped to 15 percent from 40 percent, according to demographic projections, which showed the number of white people almost doubling over the same period. The groups said soaring rents would force most low-income tenants out of the area, denying them a shot at the new units. The community groups, which support preferences for local residents in housing lotteries, succeeded in securing promises that the units would be finished 10 years earlier . (Emphases added) That needs a thorough correction. Actually, the initial pledge was to finish by 2013! After the project was delayed, the deadline wa...

Just in time for tonight's Community Update meeting, let's consult some Instagram posts from the most active monitors of the Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park project and construction site, showing much questionable activity, including: street lights out, unannounced street closure, blocking a bus stop, a sidewalk closure, and a bike lane blocked. All street lights are out from @barclayscenter VIP entrance to 6th Ave, total darkness on south side of Atlantic Ave; #nypd78thprecinct notified @nyc_dot @atlanticyards_pacificpk_report @nycmayorsoffice #bciza #lovesquad A photo posted by NWBklyn (@nwbklyn) on Apr 11, 2016 at 6:33pm PDT Dean Street closed without notice for project related work. The work underway is not minor - there are markings up and down the street for cuts into the asphalt. Plus the work in the street is wildly loud; note the pedestrian running. I've looked at the previous construction alert and the current one which arrived after this video...

Here's the craziest part of the in-depth Daily News article,  No Place Like Home: Atlantic Yards project has Jerry Campbell fighting for his place in Brooklyn , about a longtime property owner who has been trying to get fair compensation for the four-story house long in his family: An ESD [Empire State Development] spokesman says the $1.5 million the agency offered Campbell “represents fair market value” based on a 2014 appraisal. The tower that will be built on the site of Campbell’s home will include a middle school, and the spokesman says the project will also bring badly needed housing and jobs to Brooklyn. The fact that developer Greenland Forest City Partners is building a 27-story market-rate rental tower--with a school--on a plot that includes Campbell's former property suggests that the property is worth far more than $1.5 million. The article states: Campbell says the offer is the same he received a decade earlier when the Brooklyn real estate market was just beg...

B12 tower, 615 Dean Street Now, perhaps, we know why the design for the B12 condo tower , at 615 Dean Street, was unveiled last September but hasn't really broken ground. (The most recent Construction Update refers only to site preparation activities.) The developer wants to sell, according to a Real Deal article today headlined  Forest City, Greenland want to sell big stake in Pacific Park complex . It's unclear whether they're selling from strength (taking profits) or weakness (diminished equity, tougher financing). Both lower risk. There are arguments for both interpretations, but some recent hints of weakness. Ultimately, the sale price would provide more of a clue. They're selling an unspecified but “very significant” equity stake in the designed but unbuilt B12 (tentatively 265 units) and its condo neighbor B13 (277 units), on the southeast block of the site, and, most surprisingly, the B4 tower at the northeast corner of the arena block. The ...

In December, I wrote about how a Prospect Heights woman reported regular sexual harassment from construction workers in the Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park project, and an even worse episode--a "dry hump"--from drunks leaving a Barclays Center boxing event. Those concerns were conveyed secondhand by the friends of the woman, and I kept her name confidential at their request. Now resident Elicia Howard, frustrated after little progress from overseers of the project and the Barclays Center, goes public in a Daily News article headlined A Living Nightmare: Neighbors say life next to Atlantic Yards is like living in 'shark tank ' That "shark tank" quote comes from Howard's original letter. In the article, other neighbors relate regular problems with construction--perhaps not so much "shark tank" as "loud grinder." Howard has apparently been willing to go public because she feels there's been too little progress since that meeti...

There's a hint of delay, though unspecified, in the latest Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Construction Update, circulated at 2:29 pm yesterday (late) for the two weeks beginning yesterday morning, At the B15 site, just east of Sixth Avenue between Dean and Pacific Streets, "A two-story garage remains on site and is expected to be demolished, upon receipt of all necessary approvals," the document states. That, however, is repeated from the previous   two alerts. Perhaps this will be discussed at tomorrow's Community Update meeting . Also notable is that window deliveries are ongoing at the B11 site, aka 550 Vanderbilt Avenue, where the contractor "is installing windows on 3rd through 6th floors on the north low rise." Saturday work may continue at B2 (461 Dean Street, modular), B3 (38 Sixth Avenue), B11 (550 Vanderbilt Avenue), B12 (615 Dean Street), and B14 (535 Carlton Avenue). Night and weekend work is expected at the Vanderbilt Yard. Other new wor...

Empire State Development yesterday released the agenda for tomorrow's Community Update meeting, held at 6 pm at 55 Hanson Place. Notably, there will an "Overall MPT Presentation," regarding plans for Maintenance and Protection of Traffic--in other words, more encroachment on sidewalks and streets. Also scheduled is a presentation of the design for 38 Sixth Avenue, aka B3, which has launched but had not been previously presented at such meetings. It was presented at the 3/15/16 Atlantic Yards Community Development Corporation meeting, and I published the slide show. The latest big issues I'd expect the Daily News report on sexual harassment by construction workers and other incidents--and the developer's delayed response--will come up. Presumably the developer and public officials might respond to the regular stream of seeming construction violations, as documented on Instagram with the #bciza hashtag (Barclays Center Impact Zone Alliance). Notably, ...

Unofficial mockup of planned building at Site 5 I've previously written skeptically about two of the three justifications for shifting the bulk of the tower planned over the arena plaza and creating what I've dubbed the " Brooklyn Behemoth," a giant tower of 1.55 million square feet at Site 5, now occupied by Modell's and P.C. Richard. The notion of "activating" the Atlantic Avenue corridor is pretty thin , and the idea of keeping the arena plaza as permanent open space positions it as a public amenity, rather than a branded business deal . But what about the the third notion, "delivering jobs," to quote Forest City Ratner spokeswoman Ashley Cotton, representing the developer, Greenland Forest City Partners? Building an office tower delivers space for jobs, and the jobs come if there's a market for it. And the market depends on, among other things, the cost of construction. And building the tower at the site originally approved, n...