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April 5, 2009

Four neighborhoods roll with punches

Recession hits some locations harder than others

Crain's NY Business
by Amanda Fung

And so it goes all across the city as the recession—which many people thought as recently as a year ago might bypass us—hits with increasing fury. Yet the impact of the downturn is highly uneven. In this report, Crain's takes a look at how four very different sections of the city are faring and rates the recession's impact on each.

Big projects stalled out

DOWNTOWN BROOKLYN
Recession Impact: Bloodied

RESIDENTIAL UNITS 2,000
OFFICE SPACE 18 million square feet
RETAIL SPACE 4 million square feet (half on Fulton Street)

Source: Downtown Brooklyn Partnership

AFTER NEARLY 20 YEARS of growth fueled by government agencies and back-office operations for big Wall Street firms, downtown Brooklyn made major strides in recent years attracting private businesses and diversifying its mix of commercial tenants.

Last year, companies including WPP's ad agency UniWorld Group and News Corp.'s Community Newspaper Group signed leases at MetroTech Center, according to Keith Caggiano, a broker at CB Richard Ellis Inc. At the time, landlords were dangling asking rents in the high-$30s per square foot, but this year rents have fallen to the mid-$30s and few deals are getting done. Meanwhile, a number of big projects that promised to make downtown Brooklyn the fastest-growing office market in the city outside Ground Zero are on hold.

Among those are Forest City Ratner's sprawling $4 billion Atlantic Yards project, and City Point, which was supposed to transform the Albee Square site on Fulton Street into Brooklyn's tallest building, a 1.5 million-square-foot residential, retail and office tower.

article

NoLandGrab: More than five years after the Atlantic Yards project was launched, journalists are still misplacing its planned location. Sure, the footprint is near downtown, but it's actual location is in Prospect Heights, bordering Fort Greene.

Kudos, though, to Forest City Ratner's pr team, for its influence on plate tectonics.

Posted by eric at April 5, 2009 10:04 PM