Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Report

OK, there's an agenda for the Quality of Life Community Update meeting on Tuesday at 6 pm, but it's not terribly revealing. I previously suggested some issues to address. Empire State Development (ESD) – Nicole Jordan Atlantic Yards Community Development Corp. (AYCDC) – Tobi Jaiyesimi NYC Department of Transportation (DOT) –Abby Ikner Greenland Forest City Partners (GLFC) – Ashley Cotton  a. Updates b. Barclays Center

The health center is coming fairly soon, but what exactly is it? It's The Pacific Park Brooklyn web site  tells us, "Stay healthy and strong with a new state-of-the-art healthcare facility." It sounds like a nice feature to have in the new real estate complex you might be moving into. And it may be. After all, the 23,000 sf health clinic in 38 Sixth (aka B3), on four floors, including 2,739 at ground floor, will be no doc-in-the-box. But the genesis of the clinic is the Atlantic Yards Community Benefits Agreement, where it was noted for being "affordable to low-income families." A fact sheet distributed when  38 Sixth was funded (click to enlarge) So, will the state-of-the-art facility be geared to the mostly well-heeled residents of Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park? Or to low-income families? Maybe both. We'll see. (Curiously, there's no mention yet on the  38 Sixth web site .) The history According to the June 2005  Atlantic Yards Commun...

According to the latest Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Construction Alert (bottom), covering the two weeks beginning Jan 16 and circulated yesterday at 3:59 pm (way late) by Empire State Development after preparation by Greenland Forest City Partners (GFCP), there should be new work at the B3 site and around the Vanderbilt Yard. At B3, aka 38 Sixth Avenue, site work along the rear of the building should commence, as should roofing on floors 9, 14, and the Main Roof/Bulkhead. Repairs to the approach slap [sic; probably "slab"] at the southern end of the Sixth Avenue Bridge may begin at the intersection of Sixth Avenue and Pacific Street. The work will require traffic lanes to be shifted, but traffic will remain two-way. Water and sewer utility installations are expected to begin inside the fencing along Atlantic Avenue. After hours work As in previous weeks, there may be Saturday work. Saturday work could occur at B2 (461 Dean), B3, B11 (550 Vanderbilt), B12 (615 Dean S...

It was just a casual aside in some fashionista blogger's paid-for gush over the 550 Vanderbilt condo tower: "There’s a roof deck with a gorgeous view for dinner parties, a daycare center going in Pacific Park and tons of retail and restaurants a stone’s throw away." Oh, a day care center ? When exactly is that "going in"? Answer: not soon, not at all. Also, while the gush suggested the day care center as serving market-rate purchasers of million-dollar apartments, the center's justification is to serve the poor. The promised 15,000 square foot "intergenerational center," with child care, youth and senior centers sharing corridors and an atrium--as touted by the Rev. Herbert Daughtry, whose  Downtown Brooklyn Neighborhood Alliance  in 2005 signed the Community Benefits Agreement--was as of 2014 projected to be in Building 6, due in February 2025. That's in the middle of the center railyard block, which requires a costly deck. Accordi...

When will 535 Carlton start leasing up? Well, the Work in Progress sign on the scaffolding long said "Anticipated Completion: 4th Quarter 2016." (See photo at right.) That didn't happen. The lottery for those "100% affordable" (but mostly middle-income) apartments began in mid-July, and is part of a process that typically leads to occupancy in six months, according to a handbook produced by the New York City Housing Development Corporation. (See graphic below.) If so, occupancy should be starting right about now. There's more facade now That doesn't seem likely. As one applicant said 11/21/16 on a message board, "they are anticipating a move in date of March or April of 2017 and since they took so long with the Dean street lotto [my coverage ] they are under some pressure to make this as efficient as possible." Another, on 12/15/16,  said  she was told by her interviewer to expect a decision in January or February and move-i...

Greenland Forest City Partners (GLFC) and Empire State Development Corporation (ESD) will host the next Quality of Life Community meeting: Tuesday, January 24, 6:00 PM Shirley Chisholm State Office Building 55 Hanson Place, Brooklyn NY 11201 1st Floor Conference Room No agenda has been released, so what might be the issues? How about: the murky project timetable the ongoing impacts on the nearest residents the pace of leasing for 461 Dean, with slow move-ins for affordable units and price drops on market-rate ones when move-ins will start at 535 Carlton (and what about the "poor-er floors" ?) the new lottery for 38 Sixth murky plans for Site 5 , now home to Modell's and P.C. Richard, and progress on the lawsuit slowing the process plans to change B4, at the northeast corner of the arena block, from apartments to office the planned sale of three sites (B4, B12, B13) what happened to those Barclays Center preview calendars ? or below-cost use of the ...

So, how well do affordable housing lotteries work? According to a report ( Improving Access to Affordable Housing Opportunities ) by the New York City departments of Housing Preservation and Development and Consumer Affairs, they could be a lot better. As summarized in City Limits , the application process needs to be clarified and streamlined. Indeed, the city also released a guide to applying for affordable housing, Getting Ready for Affordable Housing (also in Spanish ). The guide advises on such things as credit history, housing court history, the establishment of a Housing Connect profile for applications, applying for housing, preparing for an interview, and what to expect after the interview, including how to appeal a rejection. That guide doesn't say how long you'll wait, which is one issue highlighted in the new report. "The number one takeaway from the focus groups was that the application process can be difficult to understand," the guide says, notin...

The changes around the Barclays Center, four years in, are still coming. In the Commercial Observer's 1/11/17, round-up,  Landlord Michael Pintchik’s Big Plans for Retail on Brooklyn’s Flatbush Avenue , there's some news: And Pintchik has recently signed about a dozen leases for new restaurants and retail concepts. His goal is for Flatbush Avenue to be filled with offerings truly worthy of that decades-old vision. ...Of particular interest is what he is doing at 166 Flatbush Avenue, across from Barclays Center. There Pintchik signed a deal with a group of partners led by Peter Levin, the owner of sports bar Professor Thom’s in the East Village, and Jay Zimmerman, the owner of Queens watering hole Astoria’s Sek’end Sun, for a new sports-themed gastro pub called Kings Town with a 5,000-square-rooftop bar. The location will be a place for hardcore sports fans (with private rooms for draft nights), but it will not alienate the casual sportswatcher because it will serve an array ...

From "Think About Your Soul," a poem from Russian poet Roman Osminkin (translated by Keith Gessen), in a recent issue of N+1 magazine . It's about oligarchs, one of whom may be revered more in Brooklyn than at home: The Rotenberg brothers get the pipelines Deripaska gets aluminum Mordashov steel Magomedov grain Kovalchuk gets the TV networks and newspapers Yakunin trains and railroads Anisimov the liquor industry Miller gets Gazprom And the people once again get nothing  Think about your soul think about your soul! Shut your mouth. Think about your soul think about your soul! Shut your mouth up tight.  Yevtushenkov and Soldatenkov get the cellphone networks Timchenko gets oil Kerimov gets potassium and Kovalchuk energy The Rotenbergs again? Take chemical fertilizers! Isaikin gets aircraft missiles and tanks Timchenko terminals and ferries Another Rotenberg gets the Khimki forest highway Gref gets Sberbank and Kostin, VTB Prokhorov gets Norilsk Nickel Prokhorov gets ...

One year after bowing to pressure from animal rights activists (and more) and removing elephants from its shows, the parent company of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus will close down the 146-year-old circus, citing increased costs and a higher than expected decline in ticket sales. PETA claimed victory and called for other animal circuses to follow suit. The circus has had an important place on the event calendar at the  Barclays Center . with 15 performances upcoming in nine days, from Feb. 23 through March 3. (That also meant circus performers in trailers essentially camping out on "the pad" outside the arena loading dock, or parked on neighborhood streets.) And it was to be a staple of the revamped Nassau Coliseum , with 17 shows over nine days, from May 12 through May 21. Both venues, operated by the same parent company, will now have to find substitute family-friendly entertainment. According to CBS , the animals in the shows will be placed in sui...

A 1/13/17 letter to the Times: Apparently those cheering and applauding during President-elect Donald Trump’s news conference were Trump supporters invited by the Trump team who presumed that rather than attending a news conference they were at a Trump rally. Who decided this was a good idea? Is this the political equivalent of a laugh track for a sitcom?  STEVE HORWITZ Moraga, Calif. Why did that remind me of some Atlantic Yards events? No, they don't typically feature allies of the speakers heckling the press, but there's a lot of cheering and support. I remember the press conference before the August 2006 hearing on the environmental impact statement, or the December 2012 launch of the B2 (ala 461 Dean) tower, or the December 2014 groundbreaking for the B14 (aka 535 Carlton) tower. I'm not the only one to notice. Achitecture critic Karrie Jacobs called  the September 2012 Barclays Center ribbon-cutting ceremony "pageant of self-congratulatory bonhomie....

There was a bit of a deja vu quality to Mayor Bill de Blasio's announcement on Thursday, presaged by a New York Times exclusive, touting a record number of affordable housing units built or preserved. After all, the mayoral announcement regarding calendar year 2016 was not unlike last July's announcement regarding fiscal year 2016 (as Rosa Goldensohn of Crain's pointed out ). But there were a couple of Atlantic Yards cameos, with de Blasio stubbornly resisting evidence. Screenshot from  NY1 interview  with Deputy Mayor Alicia Glen The Times article,  New York Secures the Most Affordable Housing Units in 27 Years , was headlined in print as "City Gains More Affordable Housing, but Critics Say It's Not Enough." The city counts 21,963 total units, including 6,844 new apartments. Market Urbanism blogger Stephen Smith  noted  that the mayor "pledged to build, on average, 10,000 new below-market apts each year." And while nearly 20% of the ...

The caption states that the top image indicates the "area  where Pacific Park is being developed," though it omits the extant arena and towers; the caption also calls the  rendering below a "completed street," not a passageway Business Insider's recent piece, 7 billion-dollar mega-projects that will transform New York City by 2035 , indicates that not everyone has gotten the memo about Pacific Park's fuzzy new timetable : Formerly known as Atlantic Yards, the $4.9 billion Pacific Park project will bring 6,430 new apartments (2,250 of which will be priced below market rate), an eight-acre park, and a variety of shops to Prospect Heights, Brooklyn. The site already boasts the world's tallest modular apartment building , which opened in November 2016. The full Pacific Park development should be complete by 2025. Actually, it won't.

The lottery for the 303-unit, 23-story 38 Sixth Avenue tower at the southeast corner of the arena block has opened, with a 60-day deadline, meaning March 14. See below.  Though the tower is "100% affordable," with 35% low-income units, a couple of the headlines put way too much emphasis on that fraction of low-income units: Patch:  'Pacific Park' In Prospect Heights Renting More Low-Income Apartments: How To Apply Brownstoner:  Lottery for Latest Pacific Park/Atlantic Yards Build to Bring $503 Studios to Prospect Heights But half the units are aimed at the highest band of middle-income households, as noted in the ad and on this fact sheet (also below). That means: 33 studios: $2,121/month 66 1 BRs:  $2,663/month 45 2 BRs:  $3,206/month 8   3 BRs:  $3,695/month More than half the units could go to households earning over $100,000, assuming that the applicants are chosen from the upper end of the income bands. Interestingly, the rent l...

The current "outdoor space" next to 550 Vanderbilt It's a thing, isn't it. At least the third ( Part 1 , Part 2 ) style blogger paid to create content enthusing about the 550 Vanderbilt condo building has delivered, spreading the lie that it's "right in the middle of 8 acres of outdoor space." This one also continues the tricky strategy of selling Prospect Heights, which has a lively shopping strip on Vanderbilt Avenue, despite developer Greenland Forest City Partners' claim that the unbuilt, 22-acre Pacific Park site constitutes a new neighborhood. And, of course, the actual cost of apartments --one-bedroom units start at $890,000 and quickly vault $1 million--goes unmentioned. But let's look briefly at  FINDING A HOME IN NYC  from The View from 5'2" producer Christine Petric , who has a very impressive list of "brand collaborators." She writes: Finding a place to truly call home in New York City is extrem...

OK, let's look at a video from Taste of New York--a weekly lifestyle show on Time Warner cable-- video promoting the 550 Vanderbilt condo tower. I'll excerpt the narration in italics, then add comments. Our number one choice for an ultimate homelies at the intersection of five of the borough’s most desirable neighborhoods. This unique full-service condominium residence introduces a new way of living in Brooklyn. A look and feel that blends gracefully with the historic Brooklyn landscape, 550 Vanderbilt is an example of exceptional craftsmanship executed with future generations in mind. Welcome to 550 Vanderbilt, the gateway to a new community at Pacific Park. That's a real journalism there. Then the narrator meets with Forest City Ratner's Susi Yu to talk up the building. Pacific Park is a 22-acre, 16-building development, which was started back in 2008 with the construction of the Barclays Center. Actually, Yu should know the project was announced in 2003 ...

Let's take another look at these videos produced to promote Pacific Park and the 550 Vanderbilt condo tower. I'll put the narration  in italics ,   then interpolate comments. Consider the first video , which is about two years old. "The New York we love is a place that largely happened by accident. But what if it happened on purpose?" And what if it didn't? The Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park project has gone through one name change, multiple schedule changes, and multiple changes in program, with more to come. If you could build an ideal New York neighborhood from scratch, what would you do? Remember how original architect Frank Gehry embraced the opportunity "to build a neighborhood practically from scratch" (misquoted in the Times without "practically"), and how that raised hackles. You would build it in New York's best borough, commission a master plan by America's most celebrated living architect, place it next to Broo...