No Land Grab

Ratner wants to build a $2.5 billion complex of office skyscrapers, apartment highrises and a professional basketball arena on property bounded by Dean Street and Flatbush, Atlantic and Vanderbilt avenues.

The Brooklyn Papers revealed last month that the property at 800 Pacific St. is owned by Shaya Boymelgreen, a rising star in Brooklyn’s soaring real estate development community, who some sources suggest has an increasingly rocky relationship with Ratner.

Boymelgreen has posted on the Web site of a joint investor, Africa Israel, plans to turn the 250,000-square-foot former baked goods factory into 1.1 million square feet of luxury condominiums spread over seven parcels of land. The condo, on a lot bounded by Vanderbilt and Carlton avenues, between Pacific and Dean streets, would be similar to Newswalk, one block down at 700 Pacific St., which Boymelgreen also converted.

Henry Weinstein, who owns adjacent land leased by Boymelgreen at 750 Pacific St., thinks the property going on the market brings the luxury housing plan one step closer to happening.

To get a zoning variance that would allow Boymelgreen to build in the manufacturing district he would have to offer proof that he was unable to lease to a manufacturer or other commercial use acceptable within the current zoning restrictions.

A spokeswoman for Leviev Boymelgreen shared what she said her company thought of as “ideal” uses for the site: either a chain hotel or office space.

The spokeswoman, Sara Mirski, director of development for Leviev Boymelgreen, said the 800 Pacific St. project is still in a “pre-development phase,” and the developer was trying to figure what could work before applying for a zoning change or variance.

“We believe that a national hotel chain servicing the brownstone Brooklyn community and Downtown Brooklyn, or office-commercial space would be the most ideal permitted uses,” said Mirski.

Boymelgreen, who is building a combination boutique hotel and luxury condo high-rise at Atlantic Avenue and Smith Street in Boerum Hill, has invested more than $1.5 billion into the development of downtown Miami, many of which included hotel projects.

“We are hopeful that the highest and best use for the site will be determined within the next six months,” said Mirski, adding that a new tenant “ideally would be one user” not a group that would divide the space.

And if Ratner succeeds in his bid to seize the land within the footprint by having the state deem it blighted? Mirski reassured that provisions would be made with the tenant for a dissolution or transfer of the lease if that should happen.

Through a spokeswoman, Forest City Ratner declined to comment for this story.

“I think that is probably driving Ratner nuts,” said Patti Hagan, a vocal anti-Atlantic Yards activist, who noticed the new space available signs in her neighborhood.

“I think [Shaya Boymelgreen] is probably ultimately planning to do a residential conversion similar to what he did with the Daily News [Newswalk] building,” she said.

“If it needs to go through the hotel phase before it can be straight residential, that’s OK with me.”

Asked how a national hotel development would fit in, Hagan said, “That would be OK. Right now all we have in the neighborhood is the little bed and breakfasts, but that’s all, unless you want to put people down in the Marriott [on Adams Street near Metrotech]."