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May 25, 2007
$10 Billion in 10 Years for A New Downtown Brooklyn
Over 14,000 New Apartments, 1,250 Hotel Rooms Are Coming
Brooklyn Daily Eagle
By Dennis Holt
About $10 billion will be spent in the next 10 years to build a new Downtown Brooklyn, an unprecedented amount of money. The new Downtown will be developed at a pace never experienced before in this borough.
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This information and detailed project summaries have been compiled and made public by the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership, formed last year by the city to coordinate and oversee all current or planned building activity in the area.The partnership, headed by DUMBO resident Joe Chan, has also produced an informative, expertly created map of Downtown Brooklyn. The map is color coded, and will become a much-sought-after item.
The Atlantic Yards project is, of course, included in the totals. While Atlantic Yards will cost about half of the total dollar amount for Downtown, its housing component will provide only 30 percent of all the units to be built there, and its total square footage is only about 38 percent of the Downtown total. There are four reasons for the magnitude of all of the development activity. One is that previous projects, like MetroTech, have demonstrated that Brooklyn is a viable business center. Another draw is the plan for a cultural center, which has drawn the strong support of the city. A third is the recent rezoning of Downtown Brooklyn, which made it practical for developers to plan for development with confidence.
The fourth reason is the proliferation of high-rises with spectacular views, not so frequent in Manhattan anymore. This has come as a surprise to many people who are used to brownstones as the area’s main draw, and is a joy to residential developers.
NoLandGrab: Holt seemingly mocks Atlantic Yards critics by stating "of course" Atlantic Yards would be included in the totals outlined by the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership. The effort to locate the project in "Downtown Brooklyn," when it would commonly be called Prospect Heights, has been a PR construction, led by Ratner, designed to rebrand the site as part of the Downtown area.
How Atlantic Yards, which is a State project, ended up under the auspices of the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership, which is a City program, is a mystery.
In addition, to call Forest City Ratner's MetroTech a "viable business center" is a stretch. Because vacancies are up, the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership is currently working with Ratner to rebrand the MetroTech highrise office park as a potential site for the creative industries. Since the largest tenant in MetroTech is the City of New York, the complex is a "viable center" to which city offices can be moved when the project fails to attract "viable businesses."
Posted by lumi at May 25, 2007 7:04 AM