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February 26, 2008
Atlantic Yards quietly scaled back?
Crain's NY Business
By Kira Bindrim and Erik Engquist
Crain's called Forest City Ratner for comment on Norman Oder's article posted today on Atlantic Yards Report.
On Tuesday, watchdog blog Atlantic Yards Report posted portions of a previously undisclosed transcript of an Forest City meeting with investors in early October at the New York Times Building. During the meeting, Forest City executives said the Brooklyn project would span “21 acres in downtown Brooklyn, with 6.5 million square feet of residential and commercial development.” That’s smaller than the 8-million-square-foot, 22-acre project publicly outlined by the company.
But a company spokesman says the 6.5 million figure does not include the Barclays Center, a basketball arena for the Nets, which will be owned separately by Nets Sports and Entertainment, which is 21.5% owned by Forest City. Nor does it include Site 5, current home of P.C. Richard and Modell’s, which will be developed separately. Including the arena and Site 5, the square footage adds up to what was previously projected, he said.
During the meeting, Forest City also referred to the Frank Gehry-designed Miss Brooklyn tower as having 528,000 square foot of zoning rights. Earlier, it had been pegged at over 900,000 square feet. Forest City has nixed plans to include condominiums, instead offering additional office space, which is now seen as more profitable. A company spokesman says the smaller square footage reflects the concession announced last fall to reduce Miss Brooklyn’s height to 511 feet, one fewer than the borough’s tallest building, One Hanson Place.
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During the October meeting, Forest City executive vice president MaryAnne Gilmartin said the firm had signed and completed funding agreements with both the city and the state, allowing Forest City to “be reimbursed for investments made in infrastructure and land to date on the project.” Yet company sources suggested to Crain’s last month that said no such funding agreements had been completed because litigation against the development was still pending.A source familiar with the agreements says they were indeed signed by Forest City Ratner last fall but are still waiting for approval by the city and state comptrollers.
In the comments section, Norman Oder reiterates an important point from his own article:
The evidence suggests there's been a reduction of a couple of hundred thousand square feet, but until full dimensions of the project are released, we can't be certain.
Posted by lumi at February 26, 2008 6:56 PM