Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Report

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 ...

From the Commercial Observer, 6/4/18,  TerraCRG Chief Ofer Cohen Tapped to Chair Downtown Brooklyn Partnership : Ofer Cohen, the founder and CEO of Brooklyn-based commercial brokerage TerraCRG, has replaced MaryAnne Gilmartin as the chairman of the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership’s board of directors. [Note: the board list hasn't yet been updated.] ...The longtime investment sales broker has served on the board of the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership since 2014, in addition to serving on the boards of directors for the Brooklyn Navy Yard and the Brooklyn Hospital Foundation. Under his leadership, the local development corporation will continue to pursue its goals of creating a business-friendly environment, producing new office space and attracting new companies and amenities to Downtown Brooklyn. Gilmartin expressed pride in the work accomplished; she in January co-founded L&L MAG, with a broader focus than Brooklyn, so presumably she has less focus on the borough. From th...

Hey, I missed something when I wrote about  the online version of today's New York Times Real Estate section cover story, New Parks Sprout Around New York , The print version does not include the photo of the 550 Vanderbilt open space that was posted online but rather included a tiny, narrow-focused shot, below, looking east. Yes, look to the bottom left of this screenshot. Below is the image, looking west, that showed more of the 550 Vanderbilt open space, but also indicated how limited it is (and, as I wrote, misleadingly said the remainder of the open space would be behind the fence, which is rather the site for two new buildings). Here's a better look at the scope of the open space, regarding 535 Carlton, which is in the distance of the photo above. From my coverage of 535 Carlton open space And here's the schematic. 550 Vanderbilt is B11, 535 Carlton is B14.

The latest Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Construction Update (bottom), covering the two weeks beginning Monday, June 11, was circulated at 9:58 am Friday (lead time) by Empire State Development (ESD) after preparation by Greenland Forest City Partners. No new vertical construction is planned for now, and there's not much change from the p revious update . Barclays Center sidewalk work continues, with with daytime work on Sixth Avenue in front of Sugar Factory for sidewalk and plaza replacement. Night time work will resume Monday night thru Friday night on Atlantic Avenue, with sidewalk chopping and subsequent new concrete to be poured in these areas. This both fixes cracked sidewalks and, as I wrote , obviates the need to clean sidewalks deeply stained by dripping rust. Railyard work at East Portal Installations of Stage 1 MPT [Maintenance and Protection of Traffic] for the East Portal Demolition/Reconstruction will continue, closing close the south sidewalk, southern-most ...

A press release 6/7/18,  BROOKLYN SPORTS & ENTERTAINMENT INTRODUCES NEW BRAND IDENTITY: BSE GLOBAL BROOKLYN – Brooklyn Sports & Entertainment has launched a new company identity, BSE Global. The rebrand comes as BSE has grown its broad portfolio of venues, teams, partnerships and emerging businesses, extending its roots beyond Brooklyn. To complete the rebrand, the company has opened a new global headquarters in Industry City, Brooklyn, one floor beneath the Brooklyn Nets’ HSS Training Center. The move unites the organization’s business and basketball teams under one roof. Located just one subway stop from Barclays Center, the office occupies 70,000 square feet on the seventh floor of the historic waterfront warehouse, which was built over a century ago. The space underwent a full renovation and features an open floor plan with custom furniture by Brooklyn-based powerhouse West Elm. TPG Architecture, which served as the architect of record and interior design firm in the ...

A New York Post editorial, 6/8/18, De Blasio opts to stay a deadbeat : Mayor Bill de Blasio is in no rush to pay the $300,000 he still owes for legal fees he ran up while facing a state probe of his pay-to-play political fundraising. Indeed, it looks he’ll never cough up the dough himself: He wants the City Council to pass a law so he can get lobbyists to pay it for him. He can’t dump the cost on city taxpayers, as he has with another $2.6 million in fees (after long insisting that he wouldn’t). And he won’t sell some real estate to clear the debt. But Speaker Corey Johnson says the council’s not giving him the law he wants anytime soon — one that would let him take fat-cat donations for a legal-defense fund. As the Post notes, the bill is "owed to a firm, Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel, whose lobbying arm represents clients that have business before the city." Kramer Levin is not actually listed as a lobbyist for Forest City New York or Greenland Forest City Partne...

New Parks Sprout Around New York , declares the New York Times Real Estate section, in a front-page article just posted, and, while not ignoring criticism of the Pacific Park open space, inevitably gets things wrong and fails to tease out distinctions between fractional space like the latter and public open space delivered in full, earlier in the development. Writes C.J. Hughes: New parks are coming to life across the city, many courtesy of new apartment complexes, which, in addition to the usual extras, are offering swaths of switch grass and swamp oaks, waterfalls and fountains, benches and boulder-lined paths. And although these nods to nature are created by developers and are on the grounds of condo and rental buildings, you won’t need to have a pricey apartment there to enjoy them. In a change from the residents-only courtyards of the past, these open spaces are truly open and, despite their private roots, can be used freely by the public. Get ready for the self-serving quot...

According to the Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park 2009 Modified General Project Plan from Empire State Development, "All of the Project buildings will be 'green' buildings, meeting, at a minimum, LEED certification, which is the recognized standard for measuring environmental sustainability of new buildings."  That refers to  LEED ( Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification , the "most widely used green building rating system in the world," issued by the U.S. Green Building Council. According to a  project fact sheet , all the buildings are "Designed and/or expected to gain LEED Silver." That's the second highest level. As the USGBC states , "Based on the number of points achieved, a project then earns one of four LEED rating levels: Certified, Silver, Gold or Platinum." ("The federal government now  requires LEED Gold  for every new building it constructs," according to CityLab.) As I  wrote , LEED ba...

In a further confirmation of a retreat from a West Coast project and diminishing ambitions (as previously noted ), Oyster Point Development, controlled by Greenland USA, has sold a 40-acre site in South San Francisco called Oyster Point, destined for office and science lab space. The San Francisco Business Times reported 6/4/18 that Kilroy Realty's payment of $308 million, suggesting "a nice return on investment for the seller, which paid $171 million when it bought the fully entitled site" in August 2016. That seems so, but surely the demolition and infrastructure work already begun has some costs, along with financing.

The Barclays Center has released its June 2018 Community Calendar. It contains seven publicly ticketed events, including six concerts and the NBA draft, plus one private event and four graduations. While the graduations are not specified, a web search turns up Medgar Evers College ( June 4 ), New York City Technical College ( June 4 ), LaGuardia Community College ( June 5 ), and Brooklyn Technical High School ( June 25 ). June is typically fairly slow. That compares with eight publicly ticketed events in June 2017 (below), plus an unspecified number of nonticketed events.

I wrote recently about the unintended consequences of the smoking ban at the 535 Carlton residential tower in Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park, with resident smokers going out on the sidewalk and even across the street.  Housing Connect notice for 535 Carlton According to city housing lottery notices, smoke-free buildings include 461 Dean ,  535 Carlton , and 38 Sixth . The latter two are "100% affordable," while 461 Dean is 50% below-market. It's a little fuzzier at the condo building 550 Vanderbilt. This rental  listing  says it's smoke-free, but the Seventh Amendment to the Offering Plan for the 550 Vanderbilt condominium allows for smoking inside apartments: SMOKING AND ODORS 18.1. No cigarette, cigar, or pipe smoking is permitted in any of the public areas including but not limited to: stairways, hallways, roof deck, basement and elevators. Anyone entering the building or leaving a unit must extinguish all cigarettes, cigars and pipes. 18.2. ...

The Real Deal 5/22/18 published  How to conduct a new development “takeover” , hailing super-broker Ryan Serhant of Nest Seekers International and his team's ability to get 550 Vanderbilt, the only condo building in Pacific Park (formerly Atlantic Yards), from 65 percent to 80 percent sold. The article suggests that the Nest Seekers team's secret sauce, after taking over from Corcoran Sunshine Marketing Group, might have been organizing "a community smorgasbord" with vendors from nearby restaurants and relying on, as the reality TV show star put it, "pure hard work and mass exposure.” This omits two major factors. The first tranche of units at 550 Vanderbilt went to buyers in China, who signed on even before the official launch, thanks to Shanghai-based Greenland's connections there, as noted in Real Deal coverage . Many of them are presumably less price sensitive than domestic buyers, as they want a piece of real estate in New York and also to get th...

The Barclays Center plays an intriguing role--notably, its competition with Madison Square Garden and its apparent willingness to trade profit for prominence--in a music industry controversy that began simmering in late May. As Variety reported in a 5/23/18 exclusive,  Fired MusiCares Exec Accuses Grammy Chief of Steering Money From Charity to Cover Shortfall : In a letter addressed to the Recording Academy Board of Trustees, which is holding annual meetings in Hawaii this week, former MusiCares VP Dana Tomarken accuses chairman/president Neil Portnow of choosing to steer money away from the charity in order to fund a deficit from this year’s Grammy telecast, and of brokering a deal to hold the organization’s annual Person of the Year event at a venue that left the charity with a significant loss in 2018 fundraising efforts, resulting in a projected $1 million for this year’s event, as opposed to $5 million in 2017. MusicCares offers emergency help to those in the music...

Given the hype--and the warnings, since confirmed--about the Atlantic Yards Community Benefits Agreement (CBA), it's worth thinking, albeit with the benefit of hindsight, about how it could have gone differently. One way would have been to tie promises of jobs, job training, and affordable housing into an enforceable CBA, one signed by public entities. Another would have been to avoid a CBA completely, yoking such promises to a rezoning, a process with City Council and City Planning Commission oversight. And another, suggested by Michael Spotts and Ahmad Abu-Khalaf in a 2/7/18 essay for Shelterforce,  What If We Didn’t Have to Beg for Community Benefits? , is to be "reversing the traditional community benefit paradigm in which private market developers provide concessions to the community, and shifting toward a community-based, mission-oriented master developer approach." They work for Enterprise Community Partners , a New York-based, nationally prominent housing no...

So, will the long awaited middle school in Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park, in the 664 Pacific tower (aka B15) east of Sixth Avenue between Dean and Pacific streets, launch in July 2019? Maybe, but it's hardly a lock. A post yesterday on the web site of MS One Brooklyn backers,  Construction of middle school at Atlantic Yards currently set to begin July 2019 , states: Since the time of the January 2016 announcement that the DOE facility at Atlantic Yards will be a middle school, the anticipated construction schedule has shifted, with the developer Greenland Forest City Partners at various times citing factors such as the change in the New York State 421a tax abatement, and the need to negotiate a license agreement with a neighboring property for access. According to the most recent (FY2015-2019) Capital Plan for the New York City School Construction Authority, construction is now expected to begin in July 2019, with an estimated completion date of June 2021. The school is lis...

Atlantic Ave. side Sure, it's hardly the biggest thing about the Barclays Center. But shooting some photos last week I was struck by the distinctly two-tone sidewalk visible bordering both Atlantic and Flatbush avenues, caused by rust dripping from the pre-weathered--but not fully pre-weathered--facade. And I was struck how the sidewalk repairs/replacements on Atlantic Avenue, below right, seem to be limited to structural rather than cosmetic issues, setting up a pattern in which rusty stains prevail. The problem was already visible less than two months after the arena opened, when the New York Times, on 11/27/12, reported : The deliberately rusted facade has dripped patches of bright orange onto some of the surrounding sidewalks, and left them looking as though a very tall and mischievous teenager had gone at them with a can of pumpkin-colored spray paint. Was this the plan? Atlantic Ave. patches Despite the pre-weathering in the factory, the panels were expected t...

As I wrote yesterday in City Limits, Mayor Bill de Blasio's office, in coordination with developer Greenland Forest City Partners, in June 2017 orchestrated positive coverage of a "100% affordable" apartment building skewed to middle-income households, with consultant BerlinRosen--working for the developer and with a claimed "agents of the city" relationship with the mayor--serving as intermediary. Here's some more context. In a December 2017  interview with reporters from the then-closed local websites DNAinfo New York and Gothamist  (the latter has since reopened), de Blasio was asked (by DNA's Rachel Holliday Smith) about a stark smudge on his affordable housing record: nearly 100 apartments left empty at 535 Carlton , a "100% affordable" tower in the Pacific Park Brooklyn project (formerly Atlantic Yards). Half the apartments in the 298-unit building are aimed at middle-income households earning up to 165% of Area Median Income (AMI...