Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Report

On 9/30/21, Brooklyn Events Center, which operates the Barclays Center, released its FY 2021 financial report, confirming a brutal year in which the arena was largely shuttered by the coronavirus pandemic. (The fiscal year ends June 30.) Net Operating Income: $23 million in the red With revenues of $35.9 million and operating expenses of $58.9 million, the arena suffered a net operating loss of $23 million--and that's before having to pay another $19.4 million in interest on construction bonds, part of a larger payments in lieu of taxes (PILOTs) package. In a "normal" year--though the goal hasn't always been met--the arena is supposed to have sufficient net operating income (NOI) to not just pay off the bonds, but deliver a cushion of profits. No wonder billionaire Joe Tsai, who owns the Brooklyn Nets and the arena operating company, had to pony up $52 million to bolster the arena's finances--nearly four times as much as the $13.5 million that he contributed in t...

Let's note a few things from  the lead story in New York Times Sports section yesterday,  The Nets Had a Chance to Win Over New York. Now, They’ll Try Again. , with the subheading, "Viewed by some as gentrifiers, the Nets finally may have the starpower to win a championship and loosen the grip the city’s other N.B.A. team has on the region." The Nets' abortive title run last June generated a very Marty Markowitzian quote from the mayor to writer Sopan Deb: “I really feel like this is the final act in the renaissance of Brooklyn and giving Brooklyn its rightful place in the world, and that has tremendous importance for the city going forward,” Mayor Bill de Blasio, a longtime Brooklyn resident before his 2014 inauguration, said in an interview before Game 3 of the semifinals series, when the Nets were up 2-0 and a championship run seemed inevitable. But the Nets are after something bigger: “We don’t want to be just the most popular N.B.A. team in New York City,” John A...

The latest Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Construction Update (bottom), covering the two weeks beginning Monday, Oct. 18, was circulated Friday Oct. 15 at 5:39 pm (lead time) by Empire State Development (ESD) after preparation by Greenland Forest City Partners. There were several changes freom the previous update . B15 (662 Pacific Street) Interior & exterior construction of the building is substantially complete. The hoist run is being enclosed and permanent sidewalk work has been initiated. Project completion is anticipated by the end of December 2021. Note that, despite substantial completion and marketing of residential units, the affordable housing lottery hasn't launched. B4 (18 Sixth Avenue) The exterior façade of the building is substantially complete. The hoist disassembly will begin in late 2021 and the façade completed at that time. Interior construction of the residential units continues. The first Temporary Certificate of Occupancy (TCO) is anticipated in the 4th qu...

In an ad on page 21 of the Sept. 14 Commercial Observer , Brookfield--which absorbed Forest City Realty Trust in 2018 --touts office space "at the Center of Brooklyn's most Desirable Neighborhoods." Those towers, originally developed by Forest City Ratner/Forest City New York, include 1 Pierrepont Plaza at the edge of Downtown Brooklyn and Brooklyn Heights and 2 Hanson Place, rising over the Atlantic Terminal mall. And there's a lot of space available. (The retail at the mall is owned by Madison International now.) Below the images of those two towers, as well as one at Forest City-developed MetroTech, is a statement about "Reimagining Real Estate": At Brookfield Properties, we look behind what is to see what could be. We work closely with communities, tenants, and residents to understand what makes them unique. We build and manage to standards of quality and design that enhance entire neighborhoods, elevate entire cities, and raise the bar for real estate e...

So, we've learned a little more about the illluminated artwork planned to be mounted over the Barclays Center subway entrance sometime next week, which I wrote about yesterday.  I noted that it's hard to dissociate anything the arena does from a search for commercial/reputational benefit--and that the privately controlled public space, the sponsored SeatGeek Plaza, doesn't accommodate protesters if they interfere with an event crowd. Note advertising. Photo: N.O. The neon messages, "We belong here" and "You belong here," will be illuminated from 6 am to midnight, just as with the arena's oculus. They could last at least three years. And no city permit was required. "We do not expect that the installation process will have any effect on traffic flow or pedestrian access to the subway station," said a message the arena circulated yesterday from Gregg Bishop, Executive Director of the Joe & Clara Wu Tsai Foundation's Social Justice Fu...

(Deceptive) official rendering, via CityLab Forgive me for being a bit cynical about the illluminated artwork planned to be mounted over the Barclays Center subway entrance sometime next week, as a friendly article in Bloomberg CityLab yesterday disclosed, headlined A Charged Message for Brooklyn, in Neon . Who could quarrel with the welcoming messages, "We belong here" and "You belong here," from (Black, Bahamian-born) artist Tavares Strachan, which reflect the spontaneous use of the plaza for social justice demonstrations starting in 2020? (The "roughly 45-by-18-feet signs" have not been installed yet--just the brackets--and the official unveiling is supposed to be Oct. 23, part of a 4-7 pm celebration with free food and entertainment. Meanwhile, I'm checking on whether permits or permissions were gained--or required--and for what time period the artwork will be up, as well as its daily schedule of illumination.) Advertising on subway entrance. Photo...

Another, for now definitive twist in the Kyrie Irving saga: though the Brooklyn Nets managed to get the city to allow their practice facility opened up for unvaccinated players--i.e., Irving--yesterday the team announced that, for the sake of team chemistry, they won't allow a part-time player. That means the team will eat nearly half his $33 million salary, since he would be eligible to play outside of New York City and San Francisco, which have local mandates. It also opens up chatter about trading Irving, though the mercurial star might now be less welcome. The decision was made by GM Sean Marks and owner Joe Tsai, with players consulted. And, who knows, Irving could change his mind--or get traded, or retire .  So, saturdation coverage from the New York Post, including Mike Vaccaro's Nets GM Sean Marks paying price for bringing Kyrie Irving on board , describing how the GM abandoned the team's slow- build culture when superstars Irving and Kevin Durant decided to team u...

Today at 3:40 pm came a Supplemental Notice to the bi-weekly Construction Update, telling us that Wednesday morning, work will commence at the B12 and B13 sites to backfill the support of excavation along Dean Street between Carlton and Vanderbilt avenues. This backfill area, shown in the red hatch below, is only accessible via Dean Street, rather than (demapped) Pacific Street, which is typically the route for trucks. So there will be one to seven truck trips, backing inhto the site, for seven working days, excluding weekends, between 7 am and 5 pm, Flaggers will be in place to direct vehicular and pedestrian traffic--but the addition of truck traffic to the already compromised block has already alarmed neighbors . Note that the most recent two-week Construction Update said all trucks for a separate crane jump would enter on Pacific Street, with no impact on Dean Street traffic. You'd think they might have mentioned that this was coming, because it surely was on their radar scree...

Annotation added. Photo: Norman Oder Yes, the process behind development at Site 5, longtime home to P.C. Richard and Modell's, has finally been unlocked, presaging a future large building at the parcel catercorner to the Barclays Center, bounded by Atlantic, Flatbush, and Fourth avenues, and Pacific Street. First, a stay was lifted on condemnation of the P.C. Richard site, which, as I reported 10/1/21, potentially indicated a settlement. (Modell's, a tenant of original developer Forest City, was never at issue.) And last week, as first reported yesterday by PincusCo, a settlement document (bottom) surfaced on the city's ACRIS database, indicating a "purchase and sale agreement" and "development agreement"--the contours and cost unspecified--between P.C. Richard's parent company A.J. Richard and a limited liability company called Pacific Park Site 5 Developer, headquartered at Greenland USA, the project's majority owner/developer. Brookfield Pr...

A few things left out of my review of journalist Matt Sullivan’s fascinating new book centered on the 2019-2020 NBA season,  Can’t Knock the Hustle: Inside the Season of Protest, Pandemic, and Progress with the Brooklyn Nets’ Superstars of Tomorrow . I offered some questions and quibbles, but here want to add for the record some more granular comments that I hope will be addressed in the paperback version, so readers are not misled about some elements of the Atlantic Yards/Barclays Center back story. (I suspect the paperback version will have a very interesting chapter/afterword on the current drama involving star Kyrie Irving's vexing resistance, thus far, to getting vaccinated, shutting him out of home games and practices, especially since Sullivan's been out front on that story.) Setting the stage Writes Sullivan about the arena, as of its September 2012 debut: All the subways stopped here: the 2 and the 3...the N, Q and R... the 4/5, the B/D and the C, and Fort Greene...