September 1, 2010
Lunch with the Critics: Park51 & 15 Penn
Design Observer
The specter of you-know-what looms in a discussion of NYC's latest development controversies.
For this second installment of Lunch with the Critics, Mark Lamster and Alexandra Lange traveled to midtown to visit the Hotel Pennsylvania, across from Penn Station and Madison Square Garden on Seventh Avenue. It is the site of a planned 67-story office tower developed by Vornado Realty Trust that would dramatically alter the midtown skyline, rivaling (perhaps) the Empire State Building. On the subway there, they talked about Park51, the proposed community center and mosque in lower Manhattan that has become a political target. In their previous lunch, they explored the recent renovations to Lincoln Center.
...Mark Lamster: What’s rather insane about 15 Penn is that it actually adheres to the zoning code, and exploits it quite cannily. It seems silly that this property should be allowed a 56 percent (!) bonus because it’s adjacent to a major transit hub and the developers are making a variety of accommodations. The $100 million in transportation renovations Vornado is kicking in will create some very real improvements to the area, but they don’t necessarily assuage all the extra square footage and skyline-hogging bulk. Also, you can’t put all kinds of new pressure on the transit system and then ask for a pat on the back for making sure it doesn’t totally collapse the day you open for business. More to the point, Penn Station needs a massive and comprehensively planned overhaul. It’s not a pig that needs more lipstick.
Alexandra Lange: I agree with all of that. Even in the glory days of the plaza bonus in the 1960s and 1970s, when a mid-block, all-but-hidden passage with a tiny tree sign indicating it was public space could get you extra floors, we were never talking 56 percent. What Vornado is “giving” us is what they should be required to do. Their building isn’t going to be attractive to tenants unless they renovate the transport and paths to it.
The craziness of piling tower on tower in one of the most congested parts of the city reminds me of the oft-ignored community objections to the original Atlantic Yards scheme. Sure, it is great to put an arena on top of a transit hub, but only if it is a transit hub (and an intersection, for that matter) that has extra capacity. The reason the Citibank tower still sits in lonely splendor in Long Island City is an earlier administration’s attempt to spread the office worker wealth, not concentrate it. Unfortunately, it didn’t really work. Or hasn’t worked yet.
Posted by eric at 10:27 AM
August 26, 2010
Brooklyn Broadside Proposed 15 Penn Plaza: Not Worthy of Our Great City
And Ratner Should Have Kept Original ‘Miss Brooklyn’ Design
Brooklyn Daily Eagle
by Dennis Holt
Look who just caught on! All these years, we took Dennis Holt to be serious in his unfettered enthusiasm for every last proposed development, no matter how ill-conceived. But his latest column — in which he finally discovers a project he opposes (in Manhattan, of course) — reveals that it was all just parody.
I’m glad this scrap is taking place across the river and not here, because the current issue is a misplaced one. It really isn’t that Vornado’s proposed building, 15 Penn Plaza, is only 900 feet away from the Empire State Building, or that from New Jersey they look like they are shoulder to shoulder, or that the Vornado building could be 1,250 feet tall. Those are sidebars.
What the issue really concerns is appearance. The proposed building stinks, it is boring, and it shouldn’t be located anywhere, even New Jersey.
...To my dismay, I haven’t heard or read about people talking about style or panache, only about location. Where is the Municipal Art Society? Where is the Art Commission? Where is Amanda Burden? Where are the city’s crack architectural critics? How can something so boring get so far along without a hue or a cry? The tragedy of the Atlantic Yards saga isn’t really that the arena was held up for six years, or approved, for that matter: It is that Frank Gehry’s Miss Brooklyn is not going to be built and its replacement won’t be built where it should have been. (Some of us continue to hope that if and when it is feasible to put a commercial building over P. C. Richard, Bruce Ratner will turn once more to Gehry.)
NoLandGrab: Someone let Mr. Holt know that Frank Gehry was a Southern California Trojan horse from the start, please.
Posted by eric at 9:31 AM
August 25, 2010
Brooklyn Broadside: Domino Development: As Important to Brooklyn As Atlantic Yards
Brooklyn Daily Eagle
by Dennis Holt
Now there's an endorsement!
It is also not hyperbole to predict that the area will continue to bring dramatic change that will have to include new schools, new public services and big-box stores.
And there is reason to concur that the Domino project is at least on a par with Atlantic Yards in importance. The major impacts of Atlantic Yards will be the sports arena and eventually new commercial development. The housing planned for the area will evolve over decades.
The Domino project will bring a lot of new people to a not-so-large area in a very short amount of time. The views from the Williamsburg waterfront will be much better than any view from Prospect Heights, the site of Atlantic Yards.
NoLandGrab: Holt, who grew up during the Great Depression (the first one), refuses to ever use "over" and "development" in the same sentence.
Posted by eric at 11:06 AM
August 24, 2010
The Empire State Building vs. 15 Penn Plaza: the battle over views recalls Miss Brooklyn vs. the Willy B (except there were promises from FCR)
Atlantic Yards Report
After a hearing yesterday, the New York City Council is expected to vote Wednesday to approve a new, 1216-foot tower, 15 Penn Plaza, across the street from Penn Station and two blocks away from the iconic, 1250-foot Empire State Building (ESB).
The ESB's owners protest that the new tower would block a unique asset on the city's skyline--an argument that depends, of course, on perspective, as the renderings below (via the Times) suggest.
And the campaign against that new tower by the ESB's owners, on a web site and in full-page newspaper ads, sounds a little like the criticisms about the impact of Frank Gehry's Miss Brooklyn tower on the iconic Williamsburgh Savings Bank.
There are a few key differences, however:
- in Brooklyn, there was a much stronger case against the new tower, given that Forest City Ratner promised at the start that it wouldn't block the bank's iconic clock
- in Brooklyn, the new building would be positioned on perhaps the main view corridor for the older building
- in Manhattan, unlike Brooklyn, the owner of the older building spent money on a public campaign to raise awareness
The view from Vornado
The view from the ESB's owners
Related coverage...
Gothamist, Could 15 Penn Plaza Be Successful Somewhere Else?
As we mentioned before, a good 76% of New Yorkers apparently think building a 1,200 foot tower two blocks away from the Empire State Building would be detrimental to the New York City skyline. But as The Empire State Building Company's Times ad said, "There will be taller buildings in New York City...but they should merit the height with excellence." We took a look back at some recent New York history to one building that seems to be doing just that. The year was 2009, and Frank Gehry's 76-story Beekman Tower was causing quite a stir.
Developer Bruce Ratner almost had to stop the building at 38 stories due to the economy, but got the project back to its full height after negotiating with labor unions to save costs. And though the 867-foot tower is is changing the city's view of the iconic Woolworth Building (the city's tallest building from its construction in 1913 until 1930), it has not seen nearly as much criticism as 15 Penn Plaza has in just the past few days.
Posted by eric at 10:51 AM
August 23, 2010
Todd Triplett just needs a little cash, that’s all
The Brooklyn Paper
by Aaron Short
Todd Triplett is about to open a new art space in Fort Greene, a second try for the would-be dance impresario three years after his original venue, Amber Art Space, was closed down and seized by the city.
Triplett has found a location — a former parking garage on Atlantic Avenue — to realize his vision of a multipurpose arts and performance space for Prospect Heights and Fort Greene that he is calling “Free Candy.”
...Free Candy is similar to Triplett’s prior effort, Amber Art Space — though he hopes it won’t end the same way.
In 2007, the city took over Amber a mere four weeks before its opening, claiming that the neighborhood around it was blighted and the building was needed as part of the BAM Cultural District plan.
Triplett and his partners had poured $1.2 million into that space, hoping to open a three-story music club on Ashland Place. But the city wanted to build a 187-unit condominium tower on the site, smashing Triplett’s dreams.
The building was never built.
“Basically, they’ve created the blight,” said Triplett. “I’ve moved on. I don’t have any anger. I just want to do it. What’s so hard about supporting the arts? Let’s just go.”
To support Todd Triplett's "Free Candy" project via Kickstarter, click here.
Posted by eric at 10:32 AM
August 22, 2010
Judge won't block Willets Point redevelopment
State Supreme Court judge rejects group's attempt to halt project on environmental grounds.
Crain's NY Business
by Daniel Massey
The same judge who gave the first legal pass to the deeply flawed Atlantic Yards Environmental Impact Statement has done the same for the deeply flawed Willets Point Environmental Impact Statement.
A state Supreme Court judge has denied an attempt by Willets Point's lone resident and nearly two dozen local land and business owners to win an injunction halting the redevelopment of Willets Point, Queens.
The group's members had argued that the environmental review conducted by the city failed to “take a hard look at the environmental impacts” on regional highways, emergency response services and area water supplies, among other complaints.
They had sought an order annulling the environmental review of the project and the City Council and Planning Commission's approvals, as well as an injunction barring the city from continuing with the development until it complied with proper environmental procedures.
But State Supreme Court Judge Joan Madden denied the request, ruling against the Willets Point group on all of its claims—which ranged from questioning the environmental review to contending the office of the deputy mayor for economic development did not have the authority to be the lead agency on the project.
...Jerry Antonocci, owner of Crown Container owner, one of the businesses that filed suit, promised the group would persevere in their attempt to stop the development.
“I'm sure we're going to appeal the decision,” he said. "We just got out of the first inning. It ain't over. We're not giving up.”
Posted by eric at 12:18 PM
August 19, 2010
Williamsburg's Last Domino: A Gentrification Time Bomb?
The L Magazine
A Williamsburg "agent-provocateur" cites Bruce Ratner's Brooklyn boondoggle as the benchmark for mass gentrification.
Dennis Farr, a local activist and lifetime resident, is standing alongside me underneath some of the project's scaffolding on an afternoon in late July. In the middle of our conversation, he looks at me, seriously, and says: "Atlantic Yards pales in significance to what's gonna happen here."
Posted by eric at 9:10 AM
August 17, 2010
The changing face of retail on Flatbush, poised for more change, especially closest to the arena block
Atlantic Yards Report
Norman Oder takes an in-depth look at changes along Flatbush Avenue. If Madison Square Garden is a guide, can Sbarro's and McDonald's be far off?
Flatbush Avenue south of Dean Street has been changing for a while and the anticipated Atlantic Yards arena is likely a significant factor regarding the future of the adjacent block, as well as some factor--though not necessarily the most significant one--further down the road.
Near Seventh Avenue
A few long blocks from the arena site, at Park Place just below the intersection of Flatbush and Seventh avenues, Park Heights Stationers has closed after 25 years, "due to the rising cost of operation," which sure sounds like a rent increase.
As the handwritten comments indicate, the store was appreciated, but as comments on Brownstoner suggest, some thought it too slow to change with the times. (Photos by Norman Oder)
Will it become another chain drug store, just as the Dominican lunch counter across Seventh Avenue became a Duane Reade? Possibly, but it more likely could become an eating and drinking establishment that takes advantage both of the subway access (it's right outside the subway stop for the Q and B trains), and the relative arena proximity.
My information is thirdhand, but a source who spoke to a former employee told me that that employee believed that the landlord sought more rent from an arena-related business.
Posted by eric at 12:06 PM
August 6, 2010
Last Summer at Coney Island
BAM.org
If not for Bruce Ratner and Atlantic Yards, the pillaging of Coney Island would surely be a contender for Brooklyn's worst development tale ever.
Part of the BAMcinématek series Brooklyn Close-Up
Mon, Aug 9, 2010, 4:30, 6:50*, 9:30pm
*Q&A with director J.L. AronsonDirected by J.L. Aronson
(2010) 94min
Coney Island revitalization: seaside salvation or Brooklyn boondoggle? Coinciding with the opening of a new Luna Park this summer, this timely documentary wrestles with the fate of “the world’s playground,” birthplace of the hot dog, and precious vestige of our nation’s past. Featuring interviews with longtime residents and key players on all sides of the recent scuffle, the film details the storied evolution of Coney Island and past and present plans to redevelop it. World premiere.
BAM Rose Cinemas
General Admission: $12
BAM Cinema Club members: $8
Posted by eric at 10:56 AM
New Hotel on Third Ave. in Gowanus Readies for Opening in Early Fall
Brooklyn Daily Eagle
by Linda Collins
A soon-to-open new Brooklyn hotel has discovered an untapped market — construction tourism!
The new 12-story, 130-room hotel, at 181 Third Ave. in Gowanus, on the edge of Boerum Hill, is a project of the Troutbrook Company, a privately owned real estate investment firm based in Manhattan.
...I am excited about bringing the first Fairfield Inn by Marriott to Brooklyn,” said [hotel developer Mark J.] Freud. “With Forest City Ratner finally breaking ground on the Nets Arena, just five blocks away, the Fulton Mall undergoing a $15 million streetscape reconstruction and many other new projects in the area, there has never been a better time for leisure and business travelers alike to stay in Downtown Brooklyn.”
Posted by eric at 9:20 AM
August 4, 2010
Roundtable Wrap: Apple Store Teaser
Brownstoner
On the same day that the blog FIPS reported a Marty Markowitz staffer saying that Apple was not coming to Brooklyn, we sat in the audience at the quarterly Real Estate Roundtable luncheon at the Brooklyn Historical Society at which veteran commercial broker Robert Greenstone said he knew where the new Apple store would be but was sworn to secrecy. He could have been pulling the audience's collective leg, but it didn't seem like it. The whispers after the talk were that it was going to be in or around Atlantic Yards.
NoLandGrab: After 25 years of Macs, might we have to return to the PC? "In" or "around" will make all the difference.
Posted by eric at 12:39 PM
August 2, 2010
Tables for Two: KAZ AN NOU
53 Sixth Ave., between Dean and Bergen Sts., Brooklyn (718-938-3235)
The New Yorker
by Amanda Thompson
If any neighborhood is in need of a morale boost, it’s the stretch between Flatbush and Vanderbilt Avenues, bordering the Atlantic Yards site. The last tenant took a multimillion-dollar payout, Forest City Ratner’s heavy equipment has moved in, and Freddy’s Bar has served its last beer. Just south of the buildings awaiting demolition, though, Kaz An Nou seems determined to bring a bit of Caribbean color and hope. (Its proximity to the Atlantic Yards wrecking ball has caused some concern, but the owners think they’re safe, thanks to the Seventy-eighth Precinct station house next door.)
The restaurant’s name means “our house,” and eating here does have the feeling of home: the host, waiter, and chef, Sebastien Aubert, owns and operates the place with his wife, Michelle Lane, and minimal other assistance.
Posted by eric at 9:33 AM
July 27, 2010
For the New Domino, newly unveiled MOU casts doubt on affordable housing promises
Atlantic Yard Report
Last week, I raised questions about the guarantees of 30% affordability in the New Domino plan in Williamsburg (which approaches a full City Council vote on Thursday).
Now Williamsburg Greenpoint News+Arts advances the story, reporting:
Unlike the Greenpoint-Williamsburg rezoning of 2005, which spelled out the inclusionary housing goals and benefits in the zoning text, the affordability aspects within the New Domino proposal are in a separate letter, a non legally binding document called a memorandum of understanding (MOU).
...In the case of the New Domino plan, the “out” lies not just with the city but with the developer CPCR as well. From a copy of the actual MOU (see at end of article) for the proposed New Domino plan, exclusively obtained by WG News + Arts, paragraph 9 in the text clearly states:
“Whereas, this MOU is not a legally binding instrument and is only intended to set forth the understandings of the parties without creating any legally enforceable rights or obligations.”
If it sounds too good to be true, remember that in other famous MOUs that have so far not been fully met, if at all met, like the second MOU attached to the Atlantic Yards proposal, developers were actually required to pay fines and restitution if the deal were to fall apart.
Related coverage...
Williamsburg Greenpoint News+Arts, New Domino Development Goes to a Vote in City Council w*/ no Guarantees for Community
The Brooklyn Blog [NYPost.com], City set to approve Domino plan -- without guarantees
NY Observer, At New Domino, Affordable Housing Promise More of a Pledge
Alas, this resembles the groundwork of many a development project in New York. While a good number of developers do end up delivering on promises, other projects are sold to the public on the promise of certain public benefits (in exchange, the public's representatives grant approvals), only to see those benefits eroded over time as they prove difficult or impossible to fulfill. A couple other case studies to look at: Battery Park City, once meant to be mostly below-market rate housing; and Atlantic Yards once meant to have a green roof and a Frank Gehry-designed arena.
Posted by eric at 9:26 AM
July 25, 2010
Birth of a new urban model
Crain's New York
By Amanda Fung
This article suggests that the nearly-completed Battery Park City could serve as a template for building sustainable projects that create wholly new communities. How Atlantic Yards could be included on this list is a mystery as there are no indications that the project was planned with sustainability in mind and it is destroying, not creating a community. The article gives credit for the success of Battery Park City to the State's Battery Park City Authority. Atlantic Yards is unique among New York's large projects in having no real oversight.
Now, with major mixed-use development projects looming on the horizon—from the rail yards on the West Side of Manhattan to Willets Point in Queens to Atlantic Yards and Coney Island in Brooklyn—Battery Park City is also being viewed by planners as a potential model for crafting sustainable communities from scratch.
The article also lists several large projects in various stages, including Atlantic Yards. The project is mistakenly listed as being in downtown Brooklyn, instead of Prospect Heights. The project's original goals are listed, but with only a basketball arena being constructed and one residential tower supposedly on the drawing board, nobody can really say what the developer will build in the 25 years allowed by the Empire State Development Corporation. Parking lots are more likely than 16 towers.
ATLANTIC YARDS
Area 22 acres in downtown Brooklyn
Goals The Barclays Center, an 18,000-seat arena, will be home to the Nets basketball team. Future plans for 16 towers for mostly residential units, but project will also include hotel and office space.
Status The foundation for the Barclays Center was recently poured.
Developer Forest City Ratner Cos.
Posted by steve at 8:09 AM
July 24, 2010
Big Footed by the EPA in Brooklyn
The Wall Street Journal
By Julia Vitullo-Martin
The complaint in this op-ed is that the city and state, at the behest of developers, should be in charge of cleaning up the Gowanus Canal. Given the way the city and state bent over backwards for developer Bruce Ratner, it's not surprising that many favor going to the EPA, rather than risk sacrificing a diligent cleanup because of the needs of developers. The quote below invokes the Atlantic Yards project as an example of how not to do intelligent development.
Some neighborhood activists are happy with the Superfund designation. Linda Mariano, co-founder of Friends and Residents of Greater Gowanus, tells me she opposes "premature development." She argues that "the neighborhood belongs to the people—not to the private developers and not for the kind of Atlantic Yards overdevelopment this mayor has been advocating for. The EPA will do a significant cleanup so that we can reuse the brownfields as open space, recreation, adaptive reuse for light industry and artisans."
Posted by steve at 6:55 AM
July 23, 2010
Community Board Approves Its Disapproval of Riverside Center
NY Observer
by Sam Levin
Manhattan Community Board 7 is all for bloated, neighborhood-warping mega-projects — just as long as no one builds one within the confines of Manhattan Community Board 7.
Step one of Riverside Center’s public review is complete.
After four hours of debate in a special meeting devoted entirely to Extell’s 8-acre project, Community Board 7 on Thursday night finalized its own recommendation for the final frontier of the Upper West Side.
...“CB7 endorses the initiatives of the City government,” the [Board's] report says, citing precedent of Atlantic Yards and the New Domino Sugar Factory development.
Posted by eric at 11:07 AM
July 21, 2010
Enough Already
Talking Points Memo
by David Kurtz
TPM Reader MK, a New Yorker, has had enough with out-of-towners like Sarah Plain protesting the mosque near the WTC site:
I first heard about this project a month or two ago, and the thing that struck me the most about it was the overwhelming support it had from the local community board in Lower Manhattan. As you are probably familiar it is nearly impossible to have a community board agree on even the most mundane issues, so to have a community board agree 29-1 on ANY this particular issue is quite an accomplishment.
Furthermore, why is land use in New York City the business of anyone else but the citizens of New York? If so, I would really like to know Sarah Palin's opinion of the Atlantic Yards (or Hudson Yards or the expansion of Columbia University) project, an issue that is 1,000,000x more controversial than this project. That's all this is: a land use issue.
Posted by eric at 11:05 AM
July 20, 2010
New Domino plan passes key hurdle with no essential modification; is affordable housing subject to same loopholes as with Atlantic Yards?
Atlantic Yards Report
When it comes to big developments, you always have to look behind the curtain. And when it comes to the controversial New Domino development in Williamsburg--the second-largest in Brooklyn, after Atlantic Yards--the land use process, the affordable housing, and the urban planning all deserve another look.
Notably, the project has been justified because of the promised affordable housing, but, as with Atlantic Yards, the developer won't commit to building the housing in the announced timetable.
So the likely loopholes should be part of the public discussion.
And here's a number you haven't seen in print: $2.5 million, which is (nearly) the total the New Domino developer spent on lobbying in the last five years (details below).
...I posed several questions to the New Domino developers, including whether the 660 units had to be built in ten years, whether the timing or number of units is subject to subsidy availability, and whether the developer--as in some Community Benefit Agreements--was required to put money in an affordable housing fund up front.
"I apologize, but no one is available at CPC Resources to answer this inquiry," spokesman Richard Edmonds responded.
NoLandGrab: Hey, at least he apologized!
Posted by eric at 9:59 AM
July 15, 2010
18th-Century Ship Found at Trade Center Site
City Room
by David W. Dunlap
How does the discovery of a 200-some-odd-year-old ship relate to the saga of Atlantic Yards? Read on.
In the middle of tomorrow, a great ribbed ghost has emerged from a distant yesterday.
On Tuesday morning, workers excavating the site of the underground vehicle security center for the future World Trade Center hit a row of sturdy, upright wood timbers, regularly spaced, sticking out of a briny gray muck flecked with oyster shells.
Obviously, these were more than just remnants of the wooden cribbing used in the late 18th and early 19th centuries to extend the shoreline of Manhattan Island ever farther into the Hudson River. (Lower Manhattan real estate was a precious commodity even then.)
“They were so perfectly contoured that they were clearly part of a ship,” said A. Michael Pappalardo, an archaeologist with the firm AKRF, which is working for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey to document historical material uncovered during construction.
NoLandGrab: Clearly, AKRF has its claws in nearly every major (and majorly subsidized) construction project in New York City. We've been unable to ascertain, however, whether the World Trade Center Environmental Impact Statement claimed that the project would have "no adverse impact on maritime operations in lower Manhattan."
Posted by eric at 9:48 AM
July 13, 2010
Hidden New York Byways Revealed With 80,000 Photos in the Latest AIA Guide
Bloomberg News
by James S. Russell
Fran Leadon, an authority on New York City byways, wore out four pairs of shoes tramping as much as 20 miles a day to update the classic “AIA Guide to New York City.”
“I love discovering these quiet corners of New York,” Leadon said as I joined him recently on a city walk, referring to a quiet enclave of vine-clad 19th-century row houses called Vinegar Hill. It missed out on the boom decade’s wave of gentrification that seems to have swallowed up much of Brooklyn.
...The AIA guide, sponsored by the New York Chapter of the American Institute of Architects, is a 1,055-page love letter to the city. It obsessively details the greatness of well-known neighborhoods, while luring the reader to bucolic corners of Staten Island and the hidden Art Deco grandeur of the Bronx.
Leadon, who helped update the work of the original authors, the late Norval White and Elliot Willensky, had the daunting task of reflecting the biggest explosion of development in New York since the 1950s. He says he took 80,000 photographs.
...He documents the robust renovation that has energized the neighborhoods all around the planned Atlantic Yards megadevelopment. “None of these areas were in the last edition of the guide,” he said. The riches he uncovers explode the argument that Forest City Ratner’s contentious project was needed as an antidote to blight.
Image: Oxford University Press via Bloomberg
Posted by eric at 11:27 AM
July 12, 2010
Atlantic Yards as Muse
Curbed
The Nets haven't made a big splash in the NBA free agent market, but they're changing the game when it comes to cheap Brooklyn hotels. A new inn on Atlantic Avenue was going to be called the Best Western Downtown Brooklyn, but was renamed the Best Western Arena Hotel because of its proximity to the Barclays Center, even if both names aren't quite accurate when you take a look at the location. Still, we would've gone with Best Western Eminent Domain Environs.
Posted by eric at 9:56 AM
A partnership slows in Downtown B'klyn
Stalled merger exposes political divisions
Crain's NY Business
by Erik Engquist
Something is rotten in Downtown, and guess who's one of the players?
The Downtown Brooklyn Partnership, a local development corporation formed by the Bloomberg administration in 2006 to reshape the city's third-largest business district, has run into financial and political difficulties that cloud its future.
The seed money it was getting from the city, a robust $2 million only two years ago, has plunged to a mere $250,000, forcing it to shed personnel and accelerate a long-envisioned takeover of three local business-improvement districts and their reliable revenue streams. But the longtime head of one BID has balked, and local politicians have put the merger on hold.
The partnership must pull off the ambitious reorganization if it is to survive as anything but a shell. The BIDs would account for $5 million of the organization's proposed $7.5 million budget for the fiscal year that began this month. Member contributions would total just $340,000.
Meanwhile, some Brooklyn City Council members—who view the organization as an arm of the Bloomberg administration, characterized by big salaries and nebulous accomplishments—want it disbanded.
The partnership—which is down to nine employees after cutting several positions from its 19th-story MetroTech suite—has support for its restructuring plan from the large corporations that dominate its board. But Michael Weiss, executive director of the MetroTech BID, who would lose his job in the shakeup, has rounded up political support to stall it.
...Mr. Chan declined to comment, but his spokesman, Lee Silberstein, paints a bright picture of the partnership's accomplishments and future. “On balance, this is playing out as it was supposed to,” he says, noting that the partnership enjoys strong support from the downtown Brooklyn business community, including titans like developer Bruce Ratner, banker Alan Fishman and former KeySpan chief Robert Catell.
...But Councilwoman Letitia James says Mr. Chan miscalculated in his handling of Mr. Weiss's BID. “Joe's usurpation of MetroTech was not wise, was not smart politically. He did not do his homework and is now suffering the consequences,” she says.
Mr. Ratner tried to broker a compromise by offering Mr. Weiss a job paying more than the $165,000 he is making, but Mr. Weiss declined.
NoLandGrab: Of course, Mr. Ratner collects rent from the Partnership, and Partnership personnel have turned up at public hearings to laud his Atlantic Yards project, a good chunk of it on the public dime.
Posted by eric at 9:36 AM
July 11, 2010
Behind the "Best Western Arena Hotel" and its "six blocks away" location
Atlantic Yards Report
We've become used to hearing all kinds of deceptive claims made for the Atlantic Yards project, but now the management of a new hotel is trying to say that, once the Nets arena is complete, guests will be close by. Nope.
Well, the new Best Western Arena Hotel is in Bedford-Stuyvesant, but that has not stopped them from claiming proximity to Downtown Brooklyn, promoting (as in the graphic below) Brooklyn scenes at Fulton Ferry, and drawing a name from the two-years-away Atlantic Yards arena.
A press release claimed:
Located within walking distance to the Atlantic Terminal, guests have convenient access to a variety of attractions including the Barclays Center, future home for the Nets NBA team, Brooklyn Children’s Museum, Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Brooklyn Museum and the world-famous, Coney Island. Just minutes from the hotel, guests will also enjoy shopping at Atlantic Terminal Mall and Macy’s.
“Brooklyn is quickly becoming a top destination for tourists, business and leisure travelers, and with the new Barclays Center, a new sports arena for the New Jersey Nets scheduled to open in 2011, our hotel will be a great addition to the city,” said Mukesh Patel, owner of the Best Western Arena Hotel. “We are only six blocks from the new arena and the only hotel and first stop along the Long Island Rail Road, making it a convenient stay whether they're in the area for work or play.”
Um, the arena is scheduled to open in the fall of 2012.
Also, even the most generous interpretation of "six blocks"--starting at Nostrand Avenue (which should count as a half block away)--is wrong. A walker on the south side of Atlantic Avenue would have to walk seven quite long blocks (Bedford, Franklin, Classon, Grand, Washington, Vanderbilt, and Carlton avenues) before getting to the Sixth Avenue border of the arena site.
As for the Long Island Rail Road, the best arena access would be via the Atlantic Terminal stop. It would be 1.4 miles from the hotel address to the northeast corner of Atlantic and Sixth avenues, and probably about 1.5 miles to the actual arena entrance.
Short blocks in New York City are about 20 blocks to a mile, with the average for long blocks about seven avenues to a mile, the New York Times's 9/17/06 FYI column. That would make the arena hotel about 30 short blocks from the arena, or about ten long ones.
Posted by steve at 2:53 PM
July 2, 2010
Nets Owner to Operate From Seagram Offices
The Wall Street Journal
by Craig Karmin
Russian billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov recently completed his first Manhattan property deal since becoming owner of the New Jersey Nets, taking office space in the Seagram Building on Park Avenue.
His private investment firm, the Moscow-based Onexim Group, has agreed to lease about 2,500 square feet on the 26th floor of the famous building designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson, said a person familiar with the matter.
Mr. Prokhorov plans to use the space as his business office when he's in town and it will serve as an office for the Nets basketball team, this person said.
NoLandGrab: Surely that can't be right. The owner of the future Brooklyn Nets would want to have his office in Brooklyn, wouldn't he? Maybe in the flagship new Atlantic Yards office tower that Bruce Ratner will start building any day now. Oh, wait...
Crain's NY Business, NYC office construction at near standstill
Building starts in first four months of 2010 fall to lowest level in years, with 99% of the work coming in alterations and renovations.
New York City office construction is at a virtual standstill, according to the New York Building Congress, a nonprofit group that represents the construction industry. However, there are signs of a possible recovery in coming years.
According to the group's review of multiple data sources, the value of office construction starts sank to a mere $163 million in the first four months of 2010. At that pace, the value of starts for the year as a whole would come to just $489 million, compared with $2.6 billion in 2009 and $1.3 billion in 2008.
...Currently, the majority of office construction work is in the alterations and renovations category, rather than new ground-up construction. For the first four months of 2010, alterations accounted for more than 99% of all construction starts as measured by value—$162.3 million, versus $700,000 in new construction. In 2009, alterations accounted for $1.7 billion of the $2.6 billion in office starts.
While the data doesn't suggest an imminent turnaround, a review of historical construction data, as well as recent employment and leasing trends, suggest that the office market outlook will be one of gradual absorption of available space, potentially followed by renewed expansion, for the next few years.
NLG: But let's not let this news stop the Empire State Development Corporation from claiming the full Atlantic Yards project will be completely built in 10 years.
Posted by eric at 9:43 AM
Brooklyn Broadside: Domino Joins Brooklyn’s Big Projects
Brooklyn Daily Eagle
by Dennis Holt
This reporter believes that there are five big projects on the Brooklyn lineup, big in terms of size but also big in terms of impact on the borough and for the future. Brooklyn would be totally different, and quite poorer, without them.
...Atlantic Yards has started, and Wednesday’s Eagle reported that nearly 700 cubic yards of concrete has been poured in building the sports arena. In one sense, this is the biggest of the projects because of the number of housing units that might be built, because the impact of the sports arena itself will be almost immeasurable, and because the possibility of a whole new Downtown springing up in a number of years is strong.
NoLandGrab: Even Dennis Holt is right sometimes, as in his admission that Atlantic Yards's housing units might be built. Yet while the economic impact of the arena might be "almost immeasurable," the traffic impact of the arena is already being felt all to well by nearby residents.
Posted by eric at 9:33 AM
June 30, 2010
INTERVIEW | JESSICA PICHARDO OF LINGER CAFE & LOUNGE BROOKLYN, NY
Eating Everywhere
Jessica Pichardo runs from the backyard space of Linger Café & Lounge, her restaurant on Atlantic Ave in Brooklyn where she’s chatting up a group of people to say hello to me. She seems a bit frazzled – the polar opposite of the mood in the restaurant which is more laid back and calm. But such is life when you run a café in a booming neighborhood; working six long days per week. But she’s in great spirits, and is genuinely happy with her life since opening the doors of Linger almost one year ago.
...What do you see happening in this part of Brooklyn right now and going forward?
I see a lot of development – more & more people moving to the area. It’s such a great central location. We’re on the cusp of a lot of different neighborhoods (Boerum Hill/Fort Greene/Clinton Hill/Downtown Brooklyn/Park Slope) within walking distance. It’s definitely an up and coming area especially with the Atlantic Yards project happening. I expect a lot more hustle & bustle over the next few years. I’m excited about being one of the pioneers in this neighborhood, and one of the things that’s important to me is staying true to that mom & pop, small business sort of mentality regardless of how developed the area may become.
NoLandGrab: Linger, unfortunately, is exactly the type of mom & pop shop that one doesn't find amid the fast-food chains surrounding Madison Square Garden, Yankee Stadium and other sports venues.
Posted by eric at 9:36 AM
June 17, 2010
Thor’s Sitt says he was "blindsided" at Coney Island, others say challenges to be expected
The Real Deal
by Candace Taylor
The developers of three significant -- and often controversial -- Brooklyn projects commiserated about the challenges of building in the borough at a panel today, while sharing how they embrace those challenges.
The panel, part of GreenPearl's Brooklyn Real Estate Summit, was held at St. Francis College in Downtown Brooklyn. Panelists included Joseph Sitt, the chairman and CEO of Thor Equities, which owns much of the commercial real estate in Coney Island even after selling 6.9 acres to the city for $96 million last year. Also present were MaryAnne Gilmartin, an executive vice president at Forest City Ratner, the developer of the massive Atlantic Yards project in downtown Brooklyn, and Andrew Kimball, the CEO of the Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Corp.
The moderator of the panel, the Brooklyn Economic Development Corporation's Joan Bartolomeo, asked the three if they ever get sick of the politics and hassles that accompany large development projects in New York City.
Perhaps Joan should've asked Brooklyn residents and property owners if they ever get sick of having their homes seized for private development fueled by massive public subsidies, or the gridlock and endless horn-honking caused by the absence of planning, or the corrupt politics that masquerade as public "process."
Sitt said he was surprised by the emotional public response to his plans to redevelop Coney Island, including removing aging buildings to make way for newer attractions.
"I admit, in the case of Coney Island, I got kind of blindsided," he said.
Ten years ago, the Brooklyn-native said, "nobody had any interest in Coney Island," adding that he got involved in the seaside amusement district "not so much for the investment," but more "as a personal hobby, to try to give back" to the community.
Joe, why didn't you say so? If we'd only known it was all about philanthropy, we would've tossed roses at you and kissed your benevolent feet.
Gilmartin said her company Forest City Ratner is prepared for the "great challenges" that come with their projects. "If you want to be an urban developer, this is what comes with the territory," she added.
Forest City Ratner's projects are often more challenging because they build from the ground up, rather than purchase properties built by others, and the company often engages in complicated public-private partnerships.
Those "complicated public-private partnerships" are well worth the billions in free taxpayer dollars and the handover of other people's properties.
Posted by eric at 9:51 AM
June 10, 2010
Exhibit: The City We Imagined/The City We Made: New New York 2001-2010 (including, of course, Atlantic Yards)
Atlantic Yards Report
An exhibition at The Architectural League, The City We Imagined/The City We Made: New New York 2001-2010, concerns architecture, planning, and development in New York since 2001.
It's well worth watching and, yes, Atlantic Yards is a component of the story. Still--and this is some useful perspective for those of us focused on AY--so much in New York has changed that it's understandable that those elsewhere in the city may find it hard to pay attention to all.
The free exhibition is on view at 250 Hudson Street (entrance on Dominick Street) until June 26 and should move to a summertime venue beginning on the July 4th weekend. It's open Wednesday-Sunday, Noon-7 pm.
Posted by eric at 9:34 AM
How Communism Shaped New York—Literally
NY Observer
by Nicholas Juravich
In his new book, Manhattan Projects: The Rise and Fall of Urban Renewal in Cold War New York, Samuel Zipp, an assistant professor of urban studies at Brown, explores the competing visions of the city that arose in the two decades following World War II. Charting the rise of four major sites of clearance and construction, Mr. Zipp argues that these projects must be understood as products of Cold War battles for cultural superiority, as well as of local developments.
At each stop along the way—the United Nations Headquarters, Stuyvesant Town, Lincoln Square and East Harlem—we encounter government planners, business and real estate interests, liberal reformers and local residents, all struggling to articulate their own ideas of what the postwar "Capital of the World" should be, fighting for "the right to give imaginative shape to the city." The resulting account breathes new life into the ink-stained history of urban renewal and asks important questions about its legacy in today's global metropolis.
...And yet, New Yorkers today not only enjoy the fruits of urban renewal—concerts at Lincoln Center, strolls along the Brooklyn Heights Promenade, apartments—but continue to renew their city—Atlantic Yards, save for its ZIP code, would be right at home in Manhattan Projects—even as they curse the phrase.
NoLandGrab: Then it was Communism, today it's Socialism — for the rich.
Posted by eric at 9:28 AM
June 6, 2010
Is Coney starting to remind you of Atlantic Yards?
Coney Rocks
This blog entry is here to remind us that the city is all too often ready to bend to the wishes of developers. The author seems to be someone who wants to suck up to the powerful, and doesn't care if Coney Island becomes a generic, indoor mall.
First they try to stop hotels through zoning. They lose. Then they try to stop hotels through a historic district designation. They lose again. Now they want to tell the developer how he should develop the buildings. LOL What's next?
Looks quite obvious that those dilipated buildings will be bulldozed and hotels will eventually happen in Coney.
Coney will go year round. Like it or not!
Posted by steve at 7:45 AM
June 3, 2010
Job Growth Requires Vibrant Urban Neighborhoods
The Huffington Post
by Vin Cipolla
The president of the Municipal Art Society, which wouldn't dirty its hands by joining with fellow BrooklynSpeaks members to sue the Empire State Development Corporation over Atlantic Yards, laments the failures of mega-projects to create good jobs while touting the job-growth potential of Columbia U's land grab (with nary a mention of eminent domain abuse).
The debate about the physical development of New York City inevitably focuses on large-scale projects: Atlantic Yards, Hudson Yards, and the World Trade Center site. But those massive developments are not where most job growth typically takes place; they largely involve relocating existing jobs much more than creating new permanent ones. The current slow-down in development brought about by the recession provides a chance to refocus attention on how urban planning can create jobs. With unemployment at 10 percent in New York City, we cannot afford to miss any opportunities, and a number of good ones are in front of us.
...Second, the new 17-acre campus of Columbia University, being developed on the West Side at 125th Street, provides another opportunity. The campus offers enormous advantages to the city, expanding New York's intellectual base and research capacity, and the challenge for the city now is to ensure that, as it develops, the surrounding areas benefit sufficiently from job generation. This, in part, requires that the nearby neighborhoods have the amenities and attributes needed to attract the entrepreneurs and related businesses that the new campus can inspire.
New York will always be a city of mega-projects. It's a city of big dreams. The challenge is to ensure that those dreams are compatible with business growth and do not undercut the job-generating potential of the city's fundamental fabric of urban neighborhoods.
Posted by eric at 8:43 AM
May 30, 2010
Coney Island reopens for summer season, but will buildings be demolished for chain retail and condos? Also, an AY cameo in the saga of a "razzle"
Atlantic Yards Report
Here's a look at how the city continues to work hand-in-hand with a developer to destroy Coney Island as an amusement area even as both claim to revive it.
The summer season has begun at Coney Island, with Astroland replaced by the new rides of Luna Park (named to echo one of the three great amusement parks, open from 1903 to 1944 and replaced by public housing).
That's the cause of much official celebration and, indeed, there are some other signs of life, such as the city's plan to move the famed B&B Carousell to Steeplechase Plaza.
However, as Kevin Baker writes in the Village Voice and the folks at Save Coney Island remind us, much remains contested, notably developer Joe Sitt's plan to demolish some historic structures on or below Surf Avenue and replace them with chain retail and restaurants--and, quite possibly, hotels/time-shares that would be turned into condos, thus leading to the demise of the amusement zone ecosystem (despite Coney's unique zoning).
Perhaps the most basic question is asked by Save Coney Island spokesman, Juan Rivero.
“The Bloomberg administration needs to decide: Will this summer be remembered as the beginning of Coney Island’s rebirth? Or will be remembered as the summer that the City allowed an opportunistic developer to demolish Coney Island’s history?” Rivero said.
Posted by steve at 8:46 AM
May 29, 2010
Coney Island's Grand Past and Grim Future
Requiem for a dreamland
Village Voice
by Kevin Baker
An epic and well-worth-reading piece on the Joe Sitt/Mike Bloomberg/Dominic Recchia/Amanda Burden destruction of the incredibly resilient-but-teetering American playground, Coney Island, wouldn't be complete without a mention of the epitome of the modern "razzle" — Atlantic Yards.
Coney Island today is a place where you can drink beer, "shoot a freak," see a geek, see a burlesque show, see fish, catch fish, eat fish, ride the Cyclone, ride the waves, win a kewpie doll, play Skee-Ball, go to a ballgame, see a band, lie on the sand. It is the last stand of the demimonde, the last place where you can feel the openness and the energy of 1970s New York, stripped of the accompanying dread of crime and decay.
The city and the developers they favor now propose to rescue us from all that, just as, in the past, they "rescued" a unique, prosperous community of 100,000 people by turning it into a bereft, isolated slum of 50,000 people. Where, 50 years ago, an unaccountable, unelected city authority tore down much of Coney Island under "Title 1," now an unaccountable, unelected city authority endorses tearing it down again under "Phase 1." And once again, anyone who objects is accused of championing "the nostalgic fables of the past."
It's not just Coney. Much like Thor Equities, Michael Bloomberg's administration has forwarded its development schemes everywhere with "renderings of some fantastic building." On and on it goes, from the Olympics and the West Side Stadium, to the gargantuan "airport village" in Jamaica, to the wall of condos planned for the Queens and Brooklyn waterfront along the East River, to the Hudson Yards project on the West Side, newly revived—an endless carny game of bait-and-switch, sold on the promise of one amazing, futuristic building after another, none of which ever seem to get built.
A veritable catalog of such swindles—past, present, and future—can be found in a triumphalist 2006 copy of New York magazine on "Tomorrowland"—the Oz-like New York it imagined would exist by 2016.
Therein can be found a headline that reads, "Brooklyn (Like It or Not) Will Get a Shimmering Frank Gehry Crown."
It refers, of course, to the Atlantic Yards project, where somehow no shimmering crowns ever appeared—only plans for a cheesy, college-style fieldhouse, built to house a bad basketball team owned by a mysterious Russian oligarch. In the process, the city—which currently claims to be unable to afford to let schoolchildren ride the subway at half-price—may well have squandered nearly $200 million for the cash-strapped MTA, money it left on the table in its rush to hand the site over to a single mega-developer that ended up flipping the whole project.
Actually, Bruce Ratner has only flipped the Nets, and 45% of the arena, which he had to do to keep the project solvent. Of course, he's also flipped the bird to Brooklynites.
Just down the page, in the same New York article, is a mention of another coming attraction in Tomorrowland: the Thor Galleries Tower, in Albee Square.
The real problem here, though, isn't Joe Sitt, or even Mayor Mike, the developers' buddy, but the driving force behind them and so many other mayors and developers over the years. It's a mentality, a secular religion, a form of warped corporate progressivism that insists order and sterility and profit can always be imposed upon the vast creative anarchy of this city.
Down on Coney Island, they know better.
..."I think the island is both welcoming and malicious. I think it'll thwart them in some way," says Richard Snow, who remembers seeing the remnants of the foundation holes dug for the great Friede Globe Tower, still visible into the 1970s. "I think I know enough about Coney to say that it won't work out the way anybody's saying it will."
Posted by eric at 1:46 PM
May 24, 2010
Looking a Gift Horse in the Mouth? An Examination of Brooklyn Bridge Park in Terms of the Politics of Development
Noticing New York
Michael D.D. White publishes an epic three-part look at the politics of development in New York City, viewed through the prism of Brooklyn Bridge Park. It touches only tangentially on Atlantic Yards, but the delays in construction of the park conjure scary visions of a 50-year buildout in Prospect Heights.
This three-part article, which is principally about the new Brooklyn Bridge Park currently under development, wends a long, more serpentine path through the politics of New York City development than perhaps any other we have written. As you would expect, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's appearance is much more than a cameo. We don’t offer him praise.
Inevitably the metaphor of looking a gift horse in the mouth comes to mind when we contemplate the spectacular change to the city’s waterfront that will one day be Brooklyn Bridge Park. Whatever our government agencies ultimately do, the park will provide desirable benefits that will be extremely hard to complain about. But not conscientiously examining “gifts” that government officials deliver just doesn’t work in the political environment of New York. Besides Brooklyn Bridge Park is not truly a gift; it is something that community activists worked for years to obtain. Our elected representatives are, after all, supposed to be working for us. It is their job to properly administer our available public resources. Whether they are doing so requires a conscientious examination. We hope you will find that conscientious examination takes us on an interesting and worthwhile trip.
Posted by eric at 10:59 AM
May 15, 2010
Behind “Vision Plan for the Fourth Avenue Corridor,” a "community-based process," including concerns about Atlantic Yards
Atlantic Yards Report
Remember how a Department of City Planning official admitted that the city had had no interest in developing the Vanderbilt Yard, and that Atlantic Yards was a developer-driven project?
Well, now Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz (the biggest booster of AY) has spearheaded a "community-based process" to help figure out how to improve the major artery of Fourth Avenue, which, at its northern end, nearly reaches the Atlantic Terminal mall and the Atlantic Yards arena site.
In fact, the report (embedded below) issued yesterday recommends improvements in open space on the south side of Flatbush Avenue very near the arena site. The source of funding for this and other improvements, such as landscaping, is unclear.
Yes, a plan for a main artery like Fourth Avenue is not the same as a plan for an arena plus housing, but the contrast in process remains striking.
Posted by steve at 7:23 AM
May 11, 2010
EMINENT DOMAINIA: The Big Apple Bites!...
Courier-Life Newspapers via NYPost.com, Last holdouts face eviction to make room for 'Willoughby Square Park'
There are dozens of tenants left in the city-acquired properties on Albee Square between Willoughby and Fulton streets, some of whom allege that the city isn’t helping them find new homes.
“They keep telling us that they’ll help us get a place, or that they’ll pay us to move out — but they lied,” said Ray Ahamed, a 14-year resident of one of the properties. “Some people have been living here for 50 or more years. My family will have a hard time finding a place to go.”
Ahamed added that he was given a July deadline to get out — a date not confirmed by the city.
...“What’s the worst-case scenario? We’re not sure,” said an HPD official, who asked not to be named.
Posted by eric at 10:50 PM
May 10, 2010
What We Built (and Didn’t)
Bloomberg’s surprisingly unchanged city.
New York Magazine
by Justin Davidson
At times during the last decade, it felt as though every part of New York was constantly trying on new identities, and not always so comfortably. “The City We Imagined/The City We Made: New New York 2001–2010,” a sweepingly particular new exhibit presented by the Architectural League in a storefront at 250 Hudson Street, chronicles that period of convulsive construction. On one side of a snaking line of panels is the imagined New York: a time line of dreams, fights, proposals, announcements, visions, and revisions. On the other are 1,000 photographs of the city as it really became. You could walk through the displays repeatedly and follow a different story line each time. The show is a sentimental journey through a decade’s worth of real-estate-development fights.
In these ten years, New Yorkers discussed what was to be built with vituperative intensity. Architecture mattered—architects themselves became celebrities—and the city’s soul always seemed to be hanging in the balance. What dominated discussion were the grandest dreams and angriest battles: the threat of a stadium looming over the West Side, the vision of a jagged Olympic village bristling at Hunters Point, the alternately hopeful and paralytic saga of Moynihan Station, the demoralizing arc of Atlantic Yards, the tortuous tale of the World Trade Center. Many of these are stories of soufflélike fantasies that collapsed and left their sites in 2010 essentially as they were in 2001—or worse.
Posted by eric at 11:08 AM
May 9, 2010
A Tower Grows at Flatbush and Myrtle
The Wall Street Journal
by Anton Troianovski
A high-rise called Toren hovers over Brooklyn's jumbled cityscape like a sci-fi robot elevated on a platform of dimpled, zigzagging metal panels.
"It's like something from outer space," says Deborah Johnson, who walks past the new apartment tower on the intersection of Flatbush and Myrtle a few blocks from the Manhattan Bridge on her trip home from work.
...Up the street is Forest City Ratner's Atlantic Yards project. "Over time it's going to mature and it'll be a different kind of place," Mr. Duffy says of the stretch of Flatbush occupied by Toren.
But some are nervous. Standing at Toren's base, Manhattan attorney A. Mason says, looking upward, "The reason I chose to live in Brooklyn is because it does not look like that."
NoLandGrab: Of course, Toren doesn't look like that, either. In one of the classic marketing-brochure fantasy shots of all-time, BFC Partners issued a rendering showing the building surrounded by green lawns, rather than in its true locale, shoehorned among other high-rises smack up against chaotic Flatbush Avenue.
Posted by eric at 10:10 PM
May 6, 2010
The Times's Dining section discovers new restaurants thriving less than a block from blight
Atlantic Yards Report
From a New York Times "$25 and Under" restaurant review yesterday, headlined The Vanderbilt and Kaz an Nou:
The service was slick, the room was handsome and the food reliably good at the Vanderbilt, a well-groomed gastropub that opened last fall in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn. But something was missing.
It was not half as pleasurable as Kaz an Nou, a new French-Caribbean place two blocks away with half its size and sophistication.
Looking at the map
Those living nearby or checking the map know that the two blocks between Kaz an Nou (on Sixth Avenue between Bergen and Dean, closer to Dean) and The Vanderbilt (on Vanderbilt Avenue between Bergen and Dean, closer to Bergen) are long east-west blocks.
By contrast, each restaurant is less than a single short north-south block from the corner of Dean Street, which happens to be the southern border of the Atlantic Yards footprint.
Why does this matter? Because the Empire State Development Corporation, in its Blight Study, declared at the outset:
This report presents an evaluation of conditions in the area proposed for the Atlantic Yards Arena and Redevelopment Project which themselves are evidence of blight or which may retard the sound growth and development of surrounding areas.
(Emphasis added)
Posted by eric at 9:57 AM
April 28, 2010
Community Pacts Questioned in the Zoning Process
The New York Times
by Terry Pristin
Now, in a report that is likely to have considerable influence on policy makers, the New York City Bar Association has urged the city to stop allowing community benefits agreements to be part of the zoning approval process. The report warns, among other things, that the agreements could create an opportunity for corruption.
Ya think?
“It is our recommendation that the city announce that it will not consider C.B.A.’s in making its determinations in the land-use process,” the bar association said in the report last month. The report, which was in the works long before the armory proposal was defeated, also urged the city to declare that it would no longer play a role in “encouraging, monitoring or enforcing the agreements.” The report acknowledged that there was no way to prevent developers from making deals with community groups. But it said the city should get involved, if at all, only when the developer was seeking a public subsidy.
And when don't developers seek a public subsidy?
In recent years, city officials have opposed these private agreements on the ground that the city review process provides ample opportunity for community groups to seek concessions from developers. But previously, the Bloomberg administration championed or helped foster the agreements for projects like the Atlantic Yards development in Brooklyn; the Gateway Center at Bronx Terminal Market, a Related Companies project; and the expansion of Columbia University.
Of course, in the case of Atlantic Yards, there was no city review process.
While acknowledging that many residents believe that the city’s formal zoning process, known as the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure, or Ulurp, “fails to adequately consider or protect their interests,” the bar association report raised these and other questions about the private agreements:
¶Do the groups involved in the C.B.A. truly represent the community or are they simply seeking advantages for themselves?
¶Are they experienced enough to strike a good bargain with the developer, or will they sell out too cheaply?
¶Could benefits that require public subsidy — like affordable housing, for example — be awarded to a particular neighborhood to win acceptance of a project rather than on the basis of where these benefits are needed most?
NoLandGrab: The Atlantic Yards CBA, of course, fails all those tests, and badly.
Additional coverage...
Atlantic Yards Report, In Times, City Bar task force members warn against CBA abuses; Atlantic Yards examples are actually more egregious
A New York Times Real Estate page (Square Feet) article today headlined Community Pacts Questioned in the Zoning Process takes off from the critical report on Community Benefits Agreements (CBA) issued last month (my coverage).
Notably, while the article makes but a glancing reference to Atlantic Yards, the abuses referenced all relate to projects that go before the City Council; Atlantic Yards didn't even face that level of oversight, given that it was shepherded by the unelected Empire State Development Corporation, ignoring the role of both the local Community Boards and the local Council Member.
Moreover, the report contains what might be considered a slap at ACORN, given that one influential lawyer warns against a Council Member designating which affordable housing group should be selected. In the case of Atlantic Yards, there was not even that minimal level of local involvement; the decision was made by Forest City Ratner.
Posted by eric at 10:10 AM
April 15, 2010
Big finish
Mega-projects forge ahead
NY Post
by Max Gross
In just about every real estate cycle, you’ll find the wild-eyed dreamer — the person who makes the case that the moment is ripe to try something new. Something expensive. Something labor-intensive. Something that will change the face of the city as we know it.
Of course, these dreamers only get a hearing during the boom years. Everything changes with a bust. But, yes, we admit that these visions can get pretty far afield before their patriarchs are led to a padded cell.
Our most recent real estate cycle was no different.
Some huge projects got under way over the past decade. Many of them involved hundreds of millions of dollars (in some cases, billions) in investment and years of work. And a surprising number are soldiering on — economy be damned.
...ATLANTIC YARDS & DOWNTOWN BROOKLYN
Yes, the Nets are getting their arena.
It’s been a long time coming. There were a lot of disruptions along the way. “Obviously, the timing of Atlantic Yards, that’s been deferred,” says Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz. “The original plans that we were so excited about back in 2004 — obviously the world’s changed.”
But after court challenges, protests and a deal with Russian billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov, ground was broken last month on the Nets’ Barclays Center, set to open in the spring of 2012. (Jay-Z and Beyoncé were in attendance.) The Barclays Center is the crown jewel in the $4.9 billion Atlantic Yards project, which will include 6,430 new housing units (2,250 of which will be affordable). And Atlantic Yards is its own jewel in Downtown Brooklyn’s crown.
NoLandGrab: The Nets are getting their arena if Mikhail Prokhorov didn't violate U.S. sanctions against Zimbabwe's Mugabe regime.
Additional coverage...
Atlantic Yards Report, Post real estate section says Atlantic Yards is among megaprojects that "forge ahead"
What? How can the Post be sure it will include everything they say? I guess there was no reason to read the Development Agreement that 1) gives the developer 25 years to build the project, 2) offers the option of building the project 44% smaller, without penalty, and 3) provides for ample extensions if there's a lack of affordable housing subsidies.
The implies less a jewel than an ongoing construction site.
If Atlantic Yards is a jewel in Downtown Brooklyn's crown, it's a jewel off a dogleg, since it doesn't even fit into the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership's map.
Posted by eric at 11:33 PM
April 12, 2010
Where to Live in 2014
Everyone wants to spot the next Soho or Park Slope. Ten real-estate experts offer their nominees.
New York Magazine
by S. Jhoanna Robledo
Prospect Heights
Chosen by: Jonathan Butler, founder of Brownstoner.com.
If Butler were in the market, he says he’d be looking here. “It’s got some Park Slope in it but a little Williamsburg, too”—that is, brownstone warmth plus some bite. “You can’t read a magazine or a blog without seeing another bar or restaurant opening on Vanderbilt and Washington Avenues,” says Butler. His tip: stick to streets not directly affected by Atlantic Yards.
NoLandGrab: There are streets not directly adjacent to Atlantic Yards, but streets not directly affected by Atlantic Yards? If Bruce Ratner realizes his dream, there's a decent chance they'll all be a nightmare.
Additional coverage...
Atlantic Yards Report, Prospect Heights in 2014: great, if you avoid "streets not directly affected by Atlantic Yards"
I'd add that the "blighted" strip of Vanderbilt Avenue with cool restaurants and bars is adjacent to that massive planned interim surface parking lot.
Posted by eric at 12:38 PM
April 6, 2010
The DBP's "Downtown Development Story" and the Atlantic Yards asterisk
Atlantic Yards Report
Norman Oder comments on Dennis Holt's column yesterday about Downtown development projects.
Holt acknowledges that "no one really knows right now" how many of the announced 6430 apartments would be built" and thus that, without the AY figures, the numbers under planning don't seem so impressive.
Still, he concludes by accepting the DBP's figures:
The Partnership's new score card is thus a very useful format, and tells the story of the building of a new Downtown Brooklyn in a more meaningful manner. The totals are impressive. They include $9.7 billion spent to create 22,615,000 new square feet of built space, and 14,481 new housing units.
But there's no assurance that figure is being spent or will be spent. Remember, only 24% of that square footage has been built.
Posted by eric at 9:49 AM
Partnership’s Report Details Downtown’s Development Story
Brooklyn Daily Eagle
by Dennis Holt
More than six years into this thing, and Dennis Holt is still insisting that the Atlantic Yards site, snug in the midst of the low-rise Brooklyn Neighborhoods of Fort Greene, Prospect Heights and Park Slope, is somehow part of Downtown Brooklyn.
Looking at this new statistical method, one very important element leaps out at you: How the Atlantic Yards project dominates the Downtown Brooklyn numbers. For example, of all the cost estimates, the Yards account for 41 percent of the total. About 44 percent of the new residential units are for Atlantic Yards, and the entire Yards site takes up almost 38 percent of all the space.
The sports arena part of the planned project -- Barclays Center -- takes up a relatively small part of the total project numbers.
At the moment, no one really knows how many of the planned 6,430 housing units will be built.
NoLandGrab: Actually, Bruce Ratner probably knows, and it's probably a lot less than 6,430, too.
Posted by eric at 12:03 AM
March 20, 2010
Brooklyn Broadside: Major Development Projects Proceed Quickly in Brooklyn
Brooklyn Daily Eagle
by Dennis Holt
Dennis Holt is someone who never met a real estate development he didn't like. (He'd rather someone just hurry up and build on the banks of the Gowanus Canal rather than waste time cleaning up a toxic site.) He takes a look into his credulous crystal ball and predicts buildings without plans occupied with tenants who can't be found.
During this first quarter, as just about everybody knows, holes were dug for the official birth of Atlantic Yards and the sports arena. Thus, movement begins, after so long a delay, on what promises to be the second core center of Downtown Brooklyn.
The old, first core is itself being revamped — it started more than 20 years ago with MetroTech — and the new core already consists of the Atlantic Center and Atlantic Terminal, the office building and P.C. Richard. It is only a matter of time before an anchor tenant comes forth to permit building a commercial building, probably above the P.C. Richard store.
NoLandGrab: Bruce Rather says: "Can you tell me when we are going to need a new office tower?"
Posted by steve at 7:56 AM
March 17, 2010
Bar Association: Reform Community-Developer Dealmaking
NY Observer
by Eliot Brown
The Association of the Bar of New York City doesn't seem to think all that highly of the current process by which landlords cut formal, non-standardized deals with community groups—known as Community Benefits Agreements—to win approvals for planned developments.
CBAs proliferated in recent years, particularly in the late real estate boom, as community groups and elected officials rushed to try to wrest concessions and mitigations from developers who may or may not be financially prepared to shower a bounty on the community. The use of CBAs has been criticized, in part because of the somewhat arbitrary manner in which they are formed (there is no standard for which groups end up being signatories in a CBA or participate in the negotiations with a developer, for instance), and the offerings from developers may not necessarily benefit the larger public interest, but rather just assuage a certain small constituency that happens to be negotiating the CBA.
CBAs have popped up at Atlantic Yards, Columbia University's planned West Harlem expansion, and recently at the Kingsbridge Armory development in the Bronx, which was voted down by the City Council after the requirement of a "living" wage became a make-or-break for the elected officials involved.
The well-researched Bar Association's report piles on more criticism and suggests that the tit-for-tat linking of a council land-use approval with a CBA is improper, if not illegal, given that developers are effectively buying zoning changes by paying certain community groups.
NoLandGrab: Or, in the case of Atlantic Yards, paying "community" groups that didn't exist before the developer itself created them in order to have a handful of entities that would agree to flimsy community benefits!
Posted by eric at 11:22 PM
March 16, 2010
A Quiet Alarm Sounds
A multimedia art exhibit in Fort Greene examines the neighborhood-changing going on all around it.
City Limits
by David Alm
Fort Greene — “The Gentrification of Brooklyn: The Pink Elephant Speaks,” at the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts, 80 Hanson Place, Brooklyn. Open Wed. – Sun, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., Suggested donation $4, through May 16.
Anyone who’s lived in New York for a while has done it: Walked down a familiar block and remembered the old days – even three or four years ago – when that yoga studio was a bodega, that multinational bank was a local business, and you could rent a one-bedroom apartment for under $2,000.
Depending on your politics, income and connection to a place, such changes can be a welcome sign of new amenities and safer streets, or symptoms of a kind of urban cancer. And few places in the city reflect such trends more in recent years than the neighborhoods of northwest Brooklyn. Take a walk through Fort Greene, Clinton Hill or Bed-Stuy today and you’ll barely recognize the world filmmaker Spike Lee immortalized two decades ago in his classic "Do The Right Thing."
“The Gentrification of Brooklyn: The Pink Elephant Speaks” brings together more than 20 artists to inspire thought and conversation around these seismic shifts in New York’s fastest-growing borough. Centered at the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts in Fort Greene, the four-month-long project combines art exhibitions with discussions, a play, a poetry reading and other events to reach beyond black-and-white diatribes and polarizing prescriptions.
...With the controversial Atlantic Yards construction site looming just beyond MoCADA’s front door, “The Gentrification of Brooklyn” sounds a quiet alarm, one that grows louder the longer you listen.
NoLandGrab: "Do the Right Thing?" Not any more, apparently. Spike Lee attended Bruce Ratner's Atlantic Yards groundbreaking last Thursday.
Posted by eric at 10:37 AM
March 14, 2010
Downtown Brooklyn losing its big edge
Crain's New York
By Joe Cavaluzzi
This article points out the failure of Bruce Ratner's Metrotech as large tenants seem prepared to decamp from this publicly-subsidized dead zone in downtown Brooklyn. The obvious question: Why is the ESDC, which is supposed to be about job creation, sinking taxpayer subsidies into Atlantic Yards when there is no market for additional office space in Brooklyn?
Much like New York's other traditional overflow market—the Jersey waterfront—downtown Brooklyn is suffering from not one but two setbacks. It has seen a huge dulling of its competitive edge as it competes with vastly lowered Manhattan rents, and it has seen tenants of all types and tastes reduce their space needs in response to the recession. What's more, those setbacks come at a time when several major developers are weighing plans for new office buildings—led by Forest City Ratner Cos.' plans for a vast commercial/residential project at the edge of downtown Brooklyn at Atlantic Yards, which had been mothballed for two years.
“It's hard to see who would have an appetite for large chunks of office space in downtown Brooklyn,” says Marisa Manley, president of Commercial Tenant Real Estate Representation. She notes that MetroTech and Pierrepont Plaza were both developed 20 years ago with an eye toward back-office use by big financial firms, including J.P. Morgan, Chase Manhattan and Goldman Sachs. “It's not clear that the companies that originally leased those spaces have the same appetite for space now.”
In fact, the city's Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications is eyeing 85,000 square feet of office space at 2 MetroTech Center, part of the 434,000 square feet being vacated by Securities Industry Automation Corp., a unit of NYSE Euronext. The company's lease expires in November.
...
Pressure is building, however. Industry sources say that several of the area's largest tenants may not renew their leases when they come up. Meanwhile, there are some large blocks of space already on the market, including the Chase Building at 4 MetroTech Center, where Jones Lang LaSalle is currently marketing 428,000 square feet for owner Forest City Ratner. The asking rent is $30.50 per square foot.
...
Don't worry, New York City is happy to follow the ESDC's lead of subsidizing Bruce Ratner by shoveling more money into Metrotech, ostensibly in the name of job creation.
A combination of aggressive landlord incentives and New York City's Relocation and Employment Assistance Program attracted just a handful of tenants to downtown Brooklyn last year. Those signing long-term leases or renewals of 10 years or more for prime space at MetroTech Center were able to negotiate free rent of six months to a year, along with tenant improvement allowances of up to $40 per square foot, according to Glenn Markman, executive vice president at Cushman & Wakefield Inc. On top of that, there were REAP benefits in the form of a $3,000-per-employee tax break for 12 years, which Mr. Markman notes works out to a subsidy of about $15 a square foot.
Posted by steve at 7:35 AM
Mayor Bloomberg likes the big picture, but he should keep an eye on the details, too
Daily News
By Adam Lisberg
Mayor Bloomberg loves to think big. The little things may need some attention.
He was in his element last week at the groundbreaking for the Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn - thousands of jobs, billions of dollars (plus more than $200 million in public subsidies), shovels, hardhats, progress.
...
All this attention to big projects comes at a price, though.
Some of the price comes out of your pocket - water and sewer rates have skyrocketed under Bloomberg, and the city's construction debt is higher than ever before.
Some of the price comes in the changed character of a city marked by giant footprints - neighborhood haunts like Freddy's Bar and some apartment buildings replaced by a new Brooklyn arena.
And some of the price comes in opportunities lost, inattention to detail, small problems that could have been fixed before they became big ones.
...
History doesn't worry much about a few hundred million extra here and there. It's the taxpayers' job to look at the price tag.
NoLandGrab: Two "little details" the Mayor seems to have missed are that the new Nets arena is projected to be a money-loser by the City's own Independent Budget Office and that there is no market for additional office space and, thus, few permanent jobs generated by this project.
Posted by steve at 7:24 AM
March 10, 2010
Space TALK: Commercial Realty Firm Moves to Site Close to Atlantic Yards Development
Brooklyn Daily Eagle
by Linda Collins
Though groundbreaking isn't happening until tomorrow, the Eagle seems to think that "Atlantic Yards" is already a place.
he boutique commercial real estate brokerage, Terra CRG, has moved its offices to a new location across from Atlantic Yards and just off the intersection of Atlantic and Flatbush avenues in Park Slope.
Posted by eric at 11:53 PM
March 9, 2010
Rev. Flake, rapper Jay-Z exit sinking Aqueduct bid
Withdrawals come amid ongoing federal and state investigations into how AEG was picked to develop huge racino in Queens.
Crain's NY Business
by Amanda Fung
Jay-Z is pulling out of a crooked real estate deal — but it's not Atlantic Yards.
After weeks of controversy and federal and state investigations involving Gov. David Paterson's selection of Aqueduct Entertainment Group to develop the Aqueduct racino, Rev. Floyd Flake and rapper Jay-Z both withdrew themselves from the project Tuesday afternoon. The defections come at a time when the deal was already foundering, and sources say that it is now coming apart quickly and could be canceled by the governor within days.
...Jay-Z, who also withdrew his participation in the group Tuesday, according to sources, had a small stake amounting to 2% in AEG through an entity called Gain Global Investments Network.
NoLandGrab: As Norman Oder pointed out last week, Atlantic Yards makes the Aqueduct Racino deal look squeaky-clean. When can we expect the federal and state investigations?
Posted by eric at 4:55 PM
March 8, 2010
Developer Steve Roth: "the more the building was a blight, the more the governments would want this to be redeveloped"
Atlantic Yards Report
A New York Observer piece on Vornado Realty Trust Chairman, headlined Steve Roth, Uncorked, described the developer's strategy in holding a key site at Lexington Avenue and 59th Street, later to become the Bloomberg LP tower.
The rationale--acknowledged developer's blight--sounds a lot like a strategy pursued by Forest City Ratner for the Atlantic Yards site.
The Observer reports:
There was another plus to waiting, [Roth] noted, offering a refreshingly candid developer's take on one way to pursue government subsidies:
"My mother called me and said [of the site], 'It's dirty. There are bums sleeping in the sidewalks of this now closed, decrepit building. They're urinating in the corners. It's terrible. You have to fix it.'
"And what did I do? Nothing.
"Why did I do nothing? Because I was thinking in my own awkward way, that the more the building was a blight, the more the governments would want this to be redeveloped; the more help they would give us when the time came.
"And they did."
Laughter followed.
NoLandGrab: ROTFLMAO? No.
Posted by eric at 9:21 AM
March 4, 2010
New condos, Oro and Toren, rise in downtown Brooklyn
Urbanite [amNY]
by Garett Sloane
The wrapping is off Toren, Downtown Brooklyn’s latest star condo tower, and with it a neighborhood is transforming.
Down the street another condo high-rise, Oro, soars above Flatbush Avenue and Gold Street, and it’s surrounded by new rental towers: the Brooklyner, Avalon Fort Greene and the Brooklyn Gold building.
The nearby BellTel Lofts just released more units on the market to hopefully catch a wave of prospective buyers.
...There are new apartments to accommodate an influx of thousands of residents. Flatbush Avenue, a little dreary now, is set for a makeover by the city, and a developed Atlantic Yards would bring the Nets nearby.
Posted by eric at 1:12 PM
March 3, 2010
Real-estate machers praying for Jehovah’s properties
The Brooklyn Paper
by Andy Campbell
More competition for Bruce Ratner's planned Atlantic Yards luxury condos.
The Jehovah’s Witnesses’ planned pullout from Brooklyn is huge news for the faithful, but it’s even bigger news for the real-estate market.
The Witnesses — known officially as the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society — announced last week that the group will move forward with an $11.5-million residential and administrative headquarters in upstate Warwick, after more than 101 years in the Heights.
Richard Devine, property manager for the organization, said he doesn’t know what will happen to more than 30 first-class properties that the Witnesses own in Brooklyn Heights and DUMBO. Some properties have been on and off the market for years, but now that the sect has officially announced its eventual pull-out, real-estate brokers are chomping at the bit.
“If these properties go on the market — which will take a long time, I imagine — they’ll bring in a lot more residents who will spend in arguably some of the strongest markets in the borough,” said Chris Havens, CEO of Creative Real Estate in the Heights.
...“They have [a vacant lot zoned] for 1,000 units of housing right off the bridge in DUMBO, which is a big deal,” Havens said. “They’ll probably sell it at some point, but they’re smart. They’ve been watching the market literally for decades and we probably won’t see much on the market until the economy is better.”
NoLandGrab: Right about the time Ratner will be seeking a market for his condos. View of Manhattan or view of the Nets? You decide.
Posted by eric at 9:27 PM
February 18, 2010
Brooklyn Broadside: Atlantic Yards Opponents Are Only the Latest Opposing Atlantic-Flatbush Development
Brooklyn Daily Eagle
by Dennis Holt
The Atlantic Yards-obsessed Holt relates the story of Baruch College's 1973 proposal to relocate to the current site of Bruce Ratner's Atlantic Terminal and Atlantic Center malls, but gets the headline wrong: there's no mention in the story of local opposition to that plan. Nor any mention of plans to use eminent domain back when (though the College is a public entity), nor to bolster the college move with billions in subsidies. Nor any thought of dropping an arena directly across the street from low-rise residences in an override of city zoning. In fact, almost nothing about that 1973 proposal smacks of the Atlantic Yards project.
Except The Eagle's misleading headline.
Posted by eric at 9:12 PM
February 11, 2010
B'klyn hot spot
Downtown's population exploding
NY Post
by Rich Calder
Brooklyn's fastest-growing residential neighborhood isn't in the Brownstone Belt from Brooklyn Heights to Park Slope -- it's all happening Downtown. New data show that since 2000, Downtown Brooklyn has gone from a struggling business district saturated with 99-cent stores to home to more than 9,000 people (see the map and census information [PDF]).
Interestingly, the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership itself locates the entirety of the Atlantic Yards footprint outside of downtown Brooklyn, something that would be news to Forest City Ratner, which has for years claimed the project was "downtown" rather than in the midst of the low-rise Brownstone neighborhoods of Fort Greene, Prospect Heights and Park Slope.
[Downtown Brooklyn Partnership President Joe] Chan also said he expects the area to be boosted by the $800 million arena planned for the Nets in nearby Prospect Heights. The arena is part of Bruce Ratner's $4.9 billion Atlantic Yards project, which was slated to bring more than 6,000 new units of housing before lawsuits and the credit crunch held it up.
Whether the rest of Atlantic Yards is built or not, Chan expects that "the impact of the arena will be historic," adding, "It's a game-changer for Downtown and the borough."
NoLandGrab: It'd be a "game-changer," no doubt.
Posted by eric at 3:09 PM
February 7, 2010
The Observer points to the 2006 "historical delusion" perpetuated by those pushing Stuy Town; weren't similar delusions behind AY?
Atlantic Yards Report
The purchase of Stuveysant Town by Tishman Speyer Properties and BlackRock Realty turned out to be a disaster due to overly-rosy projections. A more critical look at unrealistic projections for the proposed Atlantic Yards development could avert a disaster before it happens.
In a New York Observer article this week headlined The Selling of Stuy Town, Eliot Brown and Dana Rubenstein write:
To flip through the pages of the 2006 offering book for potential buyers of the 11,200-apartment Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village-a deal that has devolved into the largest individual property default in modern history-is to immerse oneself in an historical delusion, one that, from today's privileged vantage point, appears as likely as Iraqi WMDs.
The book wove the strands of possible Stuy Town revenue into a real estate dreamscape, one in which the largely rent-regulated complex could become a wealthier community, complete with an elite private school, gourmet grocery shops, private spas, gated communities, Santa Cecilia granite countertops in every apartment.
Well, there were other historical delusions put forth in that heady year, perhaps not of the precise magnitude, but significant nonetheless.
How about the projected Atlantic Yards timeline, which in April 2007 I suggested might be a fantasy?
Posted by steve at 8:28 AM
February 3, 2010
Review and Comment: Hotel Town
Brooklyn Daily Eagle
by Henrik Krogius
The Eagle's Krogius gets all gee-whiz over the 40 hotel projects claimed to be in the works in Brooklyn (motto: "if the condo market is toast, build hotels"), reminisces about his childhood pre-Jackie Robinson, and fluffs Marty Markowitz.
A rush toward new hotels was encouraged by the rezoning for new construction downtown, by the growing cultural district around the Brooklyn Academy of Music, by the continuing gentrification of brownstone areas, and by such potential magnet projects as Brooklyn Bridge Park and Atlantic Yards. However, since the plans for new hotels were made before the financial collapse in 2008 and the resulting deep recession, it will be interesting to see if all the 40 actually get built and how many of them will thrive.
Question: When was the last time you, or anyone you know, booked a hotel room in conjunction with attending an NBA game? Think hard now.
The loss of the Brooklyn Dodgers didn’t help Brooklyn’s hotel situation. Without the Dodgers, Brooklyn lacked a destination magnet to compensate for the general perception that it was a prime example of urban decay and crime. As long as they were in Brooklyn the Dodgers not only drew people to hotels but they also stayed in them during the baseball season.
Fun fact: an NBA roster can have a maximum of 12 active players. That doesn't fill a lot of hotel rooms.
Where Golden lacked charisma, his successor, Marty Markowitz, has little actual power but plenty of infectious personality that carries beyond the borough’s borders. With Marty cheerleading the way, and with urban decline largely in reverse, here’s hoping that Brooklyn as a revived hotel town can actually be realized. That future depends also on other projects like Brooklyn Bridge Park and Atlantic Yards going forward in the face of a still uncertain economy.
NoLandGrab: H1N1 is infectious, too — and you wouldn't want to catch it, either.
Posted by eric at 4:07 PM
February 1, 2010
Another reason not to trust the KPMG report to the ESDC on the housing market
Atlantic Yards Report
There's yet another reason not to trust the report (dated August 31) that KPMG delivered to the Empire State Development Corporation on the housing market in Brooklyn.
Remember, the report claimed that Richard Meier's On Prospect Park was 75% sold. However the New York Times reported September 27 that the developer asserted that half of the units had been sold and the web site StreetEasy.com documented only 25 closings.
KPMG also claimed that the Oro Condos in Downtown Brooklyn were 75% sold. That didn't ring right.
In September, Crain's reported that prices at Oro had been slashed 25%. And yesterday the New York Times reported that the building is 44 percent sold.
Why does this matter?
Because the ESDC relied on the "expert" KPMG to validate its dubious estimate that the Atlantic Yards housing could be absorbed in a decade, a crucial defense in the case challenging the ESDC's approval of the 2009 Modified General Project Plan and the failure to issue a Supplementary Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS).
The information on Oro further undermines KPMG's expertise.
Posted by lumi at 4:10 AM
January 29, 2010
40 Hotel Projects in Pipeline for Brooklyn
Brooklyn Daily Eagle
by Linda Collins
This round-up of hotel construction manages to include this whopper in figuring how many hotel rooms might exist in the Brooklyn of the future:
And this does not include the proposed hotels at Brooklyn Bridge Park (100-200 rooms estimated) and in Forest City Ratner’s Atlantic Yards Plan (150 rooms estimated in “Miss Brooklyn”).
NoLandGrab: The "Miss Brooklyn" moniker was used for a monstrous piece of office tower vaportecture designed by Frank Gehry who was long ago kicked off he project. There's no design or schedule for this building, and even Bruce Ranter says “Can you tell me when we are going to need a new office tower?”
Posted by steve at 4:25 AM
January 23, 2010
The dirt on development
Crain's takes the measure of six key projects citywide and assesses the chances that renderings will become realities
By Andrew Marks
The deepest recession in decades and a financial market catastrophe that has all but dried up once-mighty credit flows have both contributed to the 550 stalled real estate development projects that dot the city, from Riverdale in the Bronx to Todt Hill in Staten Island.
For the city's biggest projects, ranging from the rebuilding at Ground Zero to the transformation of the rail yards in downtown Brooklyn into a 22-acre mini-metropolis, the normal headaches of political infighting, community opposition and myriad legal challenges now pale in comparison with the great question of the moment: When will tenants once again start banging on doors to demand more office space for their companies or more living space for their families? Only when the market shows signs of reversing its downward spiral—as assessed by measures ranging from rents to land prices—will lenders even think about further risking their battered balance sheets.
As the new year gets under way, Crain's takes a look at half a dozen of the city's biggest projects and judges their chances of completion.
ATLANTIC YARDS
Size/Scope: 22 acres; an arena and 16 mixed-use towers
Date announced: December 2003
Original cost estimate: $2.5 billion
Current cost estimate: $4.9 billion
Developer/lead government agency: Forest City Ratner Cos./None
Thanks to a Russian billionaire, the New York State Court of Appeals and an overwhelming response from bond buyers just last month, it appears that Bruce Ratner's mega-redevelopment of downtown Brooklyn will start to become a reality. At least, that's the case for the new home of the Nets basketball team, the 18,000-seat Barclays Center planned for the corner of Flatbush and Atlantic avenues; construction could begin this month.
The overwhelming bulk of the project still awaits financing, not to mention tenants. After the dismissal of Frank Gehry last year over cost issues, the project also needs an architect.
But Mikhail Prokhorov's $200 million purchase of a majority stake in the Nets and a chunk of their new home, along with Forest City's successful sale of $511 million in bonds, has given the project something it hasn't had in months: hope.
The arena is now expected to be completed this year. But the fate of the original plan, including more than 300,000 square feet of office space, 250,000 square feet of retail, a hotel, and 6,400 apartments—2,000 of which are earmarked for affordable housing—is still in doubt.
“Taking that first step is very important, but between the economic downturn, the luxury housing glut and the state of the office market, it will be a steep climb to get all that built in the next 10 years, if not much longer,” observes Mary Ann Tighe, chief executive of the tristate region for real estate brokerage CB Richard Ellis.
HUDSON YARDS
Size/Scope: 26 acres; 12.4 million square feet of commercial, residential and recreational space
Date announced: September 2006
Original cost estimate: $15 billion (including $2.1 billion for extension of the No. 7 line)
Current cost estimate: $15 billion
Developer/Lead government agency: Related Companies/ Metropolitan Transportation Authority
It may be a first in New York: At Hudson Yards, the sprawling, mixed-use project slated to be built above the rail yards west of Penn Station, the city is actually further along with its part of the project than the private developer is. The MTA broke ground early last year on the extension of the No. 7 subway line to 11th Avenue and West 34th Street, and it plans to complete the project in 2014.
In the meantime, Related Companies, which has agreed to build the planned 5.5 million square feet of commercial space, 5,500 apartments and 4 acres of parkland atop a $1 billion platform over the yards, is in a holding pattern. Last February, the developer—which stepped in after original winning bidder Tishman Speyer Properties dropped out the previous spring—requested a one-year extension on closing its $1 billion deal with the MTA.
Related's first $43.5 million payment is due in just a month, and company officials are hopeful.
“We're working diligently with the MTA and expect to meet the deadline,” says a company spokeswoman.
A crucial rezoning of the western section of the site was approved last month after the city and Related tentatively agreed to preserve or build 551 affordable apartments in the area, in addition to the 743 that were already pledged.
With both the developer and the city committed to the plan, its prospects look good in the long run.
“The opening of the subway means that something will get built there,” says Jon McMillan, a director at TF Cornerstone Inc., which is building apartments on West 37th Street that will front the yard's planned boulevard. “Once we've got the 7 line here, it will be [an example of], 'If you build it, they will come.' ”
MOYNIHAN STATION
Size/Scope: 400,000 square feet (plus 750,000 square feet of private retail and commercial redevelopment)
Date announced: May 1999
Original cost estimate: $500 million
Current cost estimate: $1.4 billion
Developer/Lead government agency: None yet/Empire State Development Corp.
The plan to shift passengers from cramped, dingy Penn Station to a new space in the rebuilt Farley Post Office across Eighth Avenue has long made sense. But efforts to line up agreements from local landlords, as well as the necessary city, state and federal approvals—and cash—have repeatedly fallen short.
“It has been a case of one lost opportunity after another,” says Vishaan Chakrabarti, now director of Columbia University's real estate development program, who was a director at the Department of City Planning before moving to Related Companies to develop a public-private plan for the station in 2005.
That plan, which would have moved Madison Square Garden into the back of the Farley Building, went by the wayside when MSG pulled out in April 2008. The Paterson administration is now hoping that working out a less-grandiose scheme will finally get shovels in the ground.
“We're taking a phased approach now, and we could be poised to start the first actual work on Moynihan [this month],” says Peter Davidson, executive director of the Empire State Development Corp.
The state has applied for $98 million in federal stimulus money to get the project rolling, but getting the funding is hardly assured.
“We think our chances are good,” Mr. Davidson says.
That money, along with another $100 million previously obtained from Washington, would let the ESDC start below-ground work to extend passenger concourses and build additional platforms to service existing tracks under Farley. The second phase—developing the station above the tracks—could go ahead simultaneously. But that would require another $400 million.
In the most hopeful sign to date, Amtrak agreed in September to move its operations, serving about 25,000 daily commuters, to the new station—should it ever be built.
Nothing is set as far as the 750,000 square feet of retail and commercial office space proposed for the rear of Farley. Discussions with private developers are continuing, says Mr. Davidson.
“The market is not yet conducive to solidifying a deal, but we have reason to be optimistic and are progressing steadily toward that end,” he adds.
GROUND ZERO/ WORLD TRADE CENTER
Size/scope: 16 acres; 10 million square feet in six office towers, memorial, museum, transit hub, performing arts center
Date announced: January 2003 (master plan)
Original cost estimate: $10 billion
Current cost estimate: $15 billion to $18 billion
Developer/Lead government agency: Silverstein Properties Inc. and Port Authority of New York & New Jersey/Lower Manhattan Development Corp.
First, the good news: The Sept. 11 memorial is on schedule to open on the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attacks. The surrounding plaza, however, will not follow until 2013.
After that, the news becomes still more grim. Gov. David Paterson and Mayor Michael Bloomberg failed in their attempts last August to get leaseholder Silverstein Properties and the Port Authority, the site owner, to settle their long-running dispute over financing two of the three buildings that Larry Silverstein is hoping to build on the site. Mr. Silverstein opted for binding arbitration instead.
As recently as 2008, Towers Two and Three were targeted for completion in 2012. According to a Port Authority estimate, that date could now stretch to 2037, though Mr. Silverstein is aiming for 2016.
Tower Four, a planned 1.8 million-square-foot property that rose above grade last month, could also soon be in limbo. Although both the city and the Port Authority have committed to lease 600,000 square feet apiece, the building's 2012 completion date now hinges on resolution of a range of issues with the agency, including the schedule for the completion of necessary infrastructure.
“The dispute delays development of the entire site, not just the towers,” says Seth Pinsky, president of the New York City Economic Development Corp. Because of the way the master plan was developed, he explains, “every element of the site is necessary for the completion of the other elements.”
No matter what an arbitrator decides, the arguments and delays will go on for years.
“The arbitration solves only one of hundreds of disputes [between Mr. Silverstein and the Port Authority],” says Mr. Pinsky. “They need to agree to work together.”
Meanwhile, the transit hub is running as much as five years behind its planned 2013 completion date. 2019 now looks like the best bet for 1 World Trade Center, the erstwhile Freedom Tower.
“The government agencies have made the project much more difficult than it should be,” says Daniel Libeskind, Ground Zero's master planner. “But we used to argue about major things, and now we're down to discussing street widths.”
JACOB K. JAVITS CONVENTION CENTER
Size/Scope: Renovation of 790,000-square-foot building plus 40,000-square-foot expansion
Date announced: June 2004
Original cost estimate: $1.8 billion
Current cost estimate: $463 million
Developer/Lead government agency: Empire State Development Corp. fills both roles
The Javits Center has been lambasted as an undersize embarrassment to the nation's largest city almost since its doors opened 23 years ago. Over time, a series of proposals to expand it—and even to supplant it with a convention center in Queens—have come and gone.
After years of false starts, the latest plan has at least one thing going for it: its sheer modesty, with a downscaled price tag to match. The plan entails spending a mere $463 million on a retrofit and 40,000-square-foot expansion of exhibit space, replacement of the roof and construction of an entirely new exterior envelope.
That's quite a comedown from the Pataki administration's $1.8 billion scheme, much less the $5 billion project, including a 160,000-square-foot expansion, advanced by Eliot Spitzer.
“There's a lot less to it, but something is a lot better than nothing,” says Louis Coletti, president of the Building Trades Employers' Association, of the latest plan, which will be entirely funded by a bond issuance backed by a $1.50-per-day tax on hotel rooms that will be applied for the next 40 years. “It means jobs, and it will result in a more appealing convention center that will bring more money into the city.”
Work began last July on the extension—which includes “support” space ranging from loading docks to bathrooms—and is expected to be completed in July of this year. After that, it will serve as “swing space” for exhibitions while the entire existing structure undergoes a phased renovation, expected to be completed in full by 2013. The center's leaky black windows will be replaced with a translucent skin, and new HVAC systems will be installed.
“The Javits Center project still includes an expansion,” points out Peter Davidson, executive director of the Empire State Development Corp. “But everyone agrees that the first need is to rehabilitate what we already have.”
WILLETS POINT
Size/scope: 62 acres; 1.5 million square feet of office, retail, entertainment, hotel and residential space for 18 acres in first phase
Date announced: Spring 2007
Original cost estimate: $3 billion
Current cost estimate: $3 billion
Developer/lead government agency: None yet/New York City Economic Development Corp.
The city's Economic Development Corp. garnered 29 responses to last November's search for developers interested in turning the Iron Triangle—a heavily polluted industrial zone of auto repair shops, junkyards and manufacturers—into a Queens version of Battery Park City. In coming weeks, the EDC will whittle that list down and send out a request for proposals to build the envisioned residential and office buildings, park, school and convention center.
Persuading the remaining land-owners in the area to sell their properties may be far harder. Working with a budget of $400 million, the EDC has bought up more than 60% of the site, and 70% of the property where the redevelopment will be concentrated. But Richard Lipsky, a lobbyist representing Willets Point United—a group of 20-plus holdout property owners—estimates that the city will need at least $700 million, based on prices paid thus far.
“It's pretty clear they're intending to use eminent domain to force out businesses that don't want to leave,” Mr. Lipsky says.
EDC President Seth Pinsky insists that his agency will continue to negotiate, but adds that his staffers will do what's needed to keep the ball rolling. In fact, eminent-domain procedure hearings could begin as soon as this month.
The EDC has scrapped its original plan of bringing in a single developer in favor of adopting a rolling, three-phased project, starting with the southernmost section bordering Citifield, that could have multiple developers.
The only bids solicited thus far have been for the $150 million infrastructure contract to bring in badly needed sewage and storm-water drainage systems. Work is expected to begin in 2011, paving the way for a planned 1.5 million square feet of retail, entertainment and commercial space, 2,000 housing units and 400 hotel rooms.
B'KLYN BRIDGE HAS A PARK TO SELL YOU ON ... REALLY!
So it took 25 years. With the official opening of the park's first phase, Pier 1, at the base of the Brooklyn Bridge, slated for this winter and the first phase of Pier 6 debuting in the spring, the struggle to transform the moribund piers along the Brooklyn waterfront into a park will be over.
Almost. While money is already in the coffers to bankroll Piers 4 and 5, the joint state-city project needs another $100 million or so to finish Pier 6 and move on to Piers 2 and 3. Peter Davidson, executive director of the Empire State Development Corp., is confident.
“We've got two years to line up the financing,” he says. “In the meantime, we'll be getting the first 70% done.”
Size/Scope: 85 acres stretching south along 1.3 miles of waterfront from the Manhattan Bridge
Cost: $350 million
Who's in charge: New York state
Completion date: 2013
Posted by eric at 11:04 AM
January 1, 2010
Starting in the New Year: Domino Sugar Fight
NY Observer
by Eliot Brown
A story about the controversial Domino Sugar factory project begins thusly:
Just because Atlantic Yards is (probably) now happening, that's not to say Brooklyn has seen the last of big development battles.
Posted by eric at 3:32 PM
December 22, 2009
Mayor Touts Council O.K.'s for West Side Yards, Broadway Triangle; Rebukes Kingsbridge Rejection
The New York Observer
By Eliot Brown
The proposed Atlantic Yards project gets a mention as a project that may happen soon, although there's no more market for office space or condo's than for the other large projects listed. The ESDC, the tool of developer Bruce Ratner, has put all of its efforts into seeing that an economically questionable arena gets built.
Speaking to reporters, the mayor ticked off a list of projects he put under the banner of progress: Coney Island, Willets Point; Hunter's Point South in Queens; Homeport in Staten Island.
"For decades, leaders have tried to tap the potential of these projects, but they're actually getting done now," he said. "These projects are leaping off the drawing boards and into reality. They're creating jobs for New Yorkers and affordable housing for families."
Such a characterization as "leaping" is a stretch to be sure, as the largest projects, while approved by the Council, now depend on the market, and few, if any, are moving anywhere fast. The city has made some movement in these projects, though no one can realistically expect Coney Island or Willets Point to be developed any time soon. (Then again, the Atlantic Yards project is poised to move forward at the end of the month.)
Posted by steve at 6:05 AM
December 17, 2009
At Long Last: Atlantic Terminal to Open Next Week
NBC New York
We can't possibly get any more excited about this than Brownstoner, which has already decreed it the "most momentous news in the history of time," but here it is: the Atlantic Station LIRR terminal entrance is supposed to open next week. That would be this thing, which was originally slated to be finished in 2007 after about 156 years of construction. Above: the plans versus the result. Brownstoner also reports that there'll be a completion ceremony inside the terminal tomorrow. All in all, it's been a big week already for Bruce Ratner: first the bonds for the Atlantic Yards basketball arena sell out, and now Long Islanders will be able to get there in style if the thing gets built.
NoLandGrab: Let's not forget the lovely security perimeter surrounding the new terminal entrance — likely a preview of Barclays Center defenses.
Posted by eric at 12:53 PM
Willets Wonderings
The Architect's Newspaper Blog
by Matt Chaban
The A|N Blog's Chaban continues to do good reporting on Atlantic Yards and other controversial NYC development projects.
 |
It appears the city’s plan to trifurcate development out at Willets Point has been a smashing success, as the Economic Development Corporation announced on Friday that 29 developers from across the country have expressed interest in the first phase of the project, an 18-acre swath of land on the western section of the 62-acre Iron Triangle that contains the densest mix of uses. “The quantity and quality of these responses are strong indicators that the development community has confidence in the successful redevelopment of Willets Point despite current economic conditions,” Seth Pinsky, president of EDC, said in a release. An RFP is expected sometime in 2010 for a selection of those 29 respondents. After that, the next hurdle is finishing land acquisition, which stands at 75 percent of the phase one area controlled by the city. If need be, the city has not ruled out acquiring what’s left through eminent domain, a specter that has cast a long shadow over the area’s redevelopment, though one that could be sunsetting.
29 companies interested in developing Willets Point "despite current economic conditions," yet in 2005, when everything was rosy, only Bruce Ratner (and Extell) was interested in developing the Vanderbilt Yard? Something's fishy.
Following a court ruling that the state could not seize land in the Manhattanville section of Harlem so that Columbia could build a new campus there, Atlantic Yards opponents are hustling to have their ultimately unsuccessful case reheard, a last-ditch effort to impede the sale of Forest City Ratner’s bonds. Whether or not they succeed, all this eminent domain tumult—combined with the recent collapse of plans for the Mother of Them All in New London, Connecticut—could nudge New York over the edge, taking it off the list of a handful of states that have yet to enact eminent domain reform since the Kelo decision four years ago. State Senator Bill Perkins certainly thinks so, calling for the governor to live up to his previous promises of a moratorium on eminent domain in the state.
Willets Point is one of the most egregious examples of eminent domain abuse, since the city, for years and years, denied the many productive businesses there the most basic services, like paved streets and sewer connections.
How could this all pay out in Flushing, Queens? David Lombino, a spokesperson for EDC, emphasized the agency’s strong track record on reaching deals with business owners in the area, despite the continued intransigence of some. “The response from the private sector is encouraging,” he said. Should it come down to eminent domain, but eminent domain is no longer there? EDC, while proffering hypothetical projects, does not respond to hypothetical questions.
Posted by eric at 12:30 AM
December 10, 2009
Atlantic Yards YES! Brooklyn's 237 stalled building projects NO!!
New York State has one set of rules for Bruce Ratner and another set of rules for everybody else.
Crain's NY Business, Stalled construction site total hits 515
Brooklyn is hardest hit borough, followed by Queens; further stalled projects are unlikely as work has to start in order to be halted.
Construction work has halted on 515—mostly residential—properties across the five boroughs according to the latest analysis of the city's Department of Buildings inspection records. Hardest hit is Brooklyn.
Nearly half, 46%, of the stalled projects citywide are in Brooklyn according the New York Building Congress, which conducted the analysis. Northern Brooklyn neighborhoods such as Williamsburg and Greenpoint, which had seen a housing boom in the years leading up to the market collapse, have the most stalled projects, making up 30% of the 237 sites in the entire borough.
...Since the city DOB began tracking stalled construction sites weekly in July, the total has increased by 30% as of Nov. 29. The good news is the numbers aren't expected to worsen because there aren't too many new projects in the ground, said Mr. Anderson. “You need them to get started before they can be stalled,” he noted.
...“To have all these sites just sit there is not encouraging. They do not generate jobs and tax revenues,” said Mr. Anderson. “There is a great deal of construction activity throughout the city that can hopefully be unleashed with the right kind of programs.”
NoLandGrab: That's right, folks. With literally hundreds of residential development projects — many of which could be converted to affordable housing — sitting idle and incomplete, the Empire State Developerment Corporation is pouring all its efforts into breaking ground for a basketball arena. And no, that's not a typo.
Posted by eric at 9:21 PM
December 7, 2009
Willets Point United's fight against eminent domain again causes its lobbyist to gyrate
Atlantic Yards Report
From a press release from Willets Point United:
Willets Point United, Inc. – a group of more than 20 property owners in Queens, NY, fighting to keep their land despite the city’s desire to condemn it and turn it over to a yet-to-be-named private developer – believes the NYC Economic Development Corporation’s (EDC) approach to improving Willets Point is inappropriate, and we will oppose it in every way. Today we have notified the EDC via letter of the very disturbing track records of certain developer firms likely to respond to the EDC’s Request for Qualifications (RFQ) by today’s deadline and asks that these firms be disqualified from future consideration for receipt of a Request for Proposals (RFP).
(Emphasis added)
One contact on the press release was lobbyist Richard Lipsky, the same guy who declared Atlantic Yards opponents should get "a well-deserved delay of game penalty" and sneered "Enough already! It's high time that the DDDers, took their settlement monies, and went back to their lattes."
Lipsky is having to gyrate on eminent domain. He supports eminent domain for his client, Forest City Ratner, but opposes it for his client, Willets Point United, as well as for his client Nick Sprayregen of Tuck-It-Away, who has so far successfully challenged eminent domain for the Columbia University expansion.
Commenter Daniel Goldstein writes:
Wouldn't Lipsky help his Queens and Manhattan clients more if he dropped ranks with his Cleveland-based client and joined ranks with the eminent domain plaintiffs in Brooklyn who are fighting the same exact thing he and his clients are fighting in Queens and Manhattan?
Wouldn't he sleep better at night? A few thousand bucks really can't be worth all the agita from that much cognitive dissonance.
Posted by eric at 9:44 PM
Coney Island site attracts 50 interested bidders; how was the Vanderbilt Yard different?
Atlantic Yards Report
From a New York Daily News article today headlined Coney Island redevelopment plan attracts 50 amusement park companies from seven countries:
The competition to build a new amusement park at the faded seaside mecca has reached a fever pitch as a who's who of amusement operators work to put together proposals by a Dec. 18 deadline.
...It was standing room only when city officials presented their request for proposals at the Las Vegas IAAPA convention last month, after sealing a deal to buy 6.9 crucial acres from developer Thor Equities for $95.6 million.
Some 50 companies from at least seven countries showed up for the information session.
Yet when it came to a "great piece of real estate" (in the words of Forest City Enterprises CEO Chuck Ratner) like the Vanderbilt Yard, only one bidder besides Atlantic Yards developer Forest City Ratner responded to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's July 2005 Request for Proposals.
Could that have been because city and state officials had already been backing FCR's plan for the past 18 months?
NoLandGrab: Nah, 'cause if the city had been backing the FCR plan already, that would mean there was a pre-textual situation, like with Columbia. And the courts have said that wasn't the case, right?
Posted by eric at 9:37 PM
December 3, 2009
Appellate Division overturns ESDC's use of eminent domain for Columbia expansion; how different is it from AY?
Atlantic Yards Report
A big development in New York City eminent domain news — the Appellate Division has ruled against the ESDC's planned use of eminent domain for Columbia University's Manhattanville land grab.
From the majority opinion in the Appellate Division's 3-2 overturning of the Empire State Development Corporation's (ESDC) planned use of eminent domain for the Columbia University expansion:
It is recognized that Kelo, as described below, did not concern an area characterized as "blighted." However, the blight designation in the instant case is mere sophistry. It was utilized by ESDC years after the scheme was hatched to justify the employment of eminent domain but this project has always primarily concerned a massive capital project for Columbia. Indeed, it is nothing more than economic redevelopment wearing a different face.
So too did the Atlantic Yards petitioners argue that blight was a pretext because it wasn't mentioned as a justification for the project for more than a year after it was announced--an issue ignored by the majority in the Court of Appeals decision last week.
Underutilization
Wrote Justice James Catterson (who also filed a fiery concurrence in the case challenging the AY environmental review):
The most egregious conclusion offered in support of the finding of blight is that of underutilization. AKRF and Earth Tech allege the existence of blight from, inter alia, the degree of utilization, or percentage of maximum permitted floor area ratio ("FAR") to which lots are built. The theoretical justification for using the degree of utilization of development rights as an indicator of blight is the inference that it reflects owners' inability to make profitable use of full development rights due to lack of demand. Lack of demand can only be determined in relation to the FAR when combined with the zoning for the area in question. Manhattanville, for the relevant period, was zoned to allow maximum FAR of two, leaving owners essentially with a choice between a one or two-story structure. No rationale was presented by the respondents for the wholly arbitrary standard of counting any lot built to 60% or less of maximum FAR as constituting a blighted condition.
This is the exact same ratio used in the Atlantic Yards Blight Study.
Norman Oder has more details on the other side of the link.
NoLandGrab: This is great news for the business owners who steadfastly refused to cave in under the threat of eminent domain, but it does leave Atlantic Yards opponents scratching their heads and asking, "how is Columbia U. so different from Bruce Ratner?"
Posted by eric at 3:18 PM
December 2, 2009
Star of Real Estate Boom Is Confronting Hard Times
The NY Times
By Christine Haughney
This story of developer Shaya Boymelgreen's declining fortunes includes a bit about his deal with Atlantic Yards developer Bruce Ratner to double-cross footprint property owner Henry Weinstein and the lingering issues with the Newswalk building, which is located in the curious cutout of the megaproject's outline:
Residents of the 173-unit Newswalk building, a former Daily News printing plant in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, that Mr. Boymelgreen finished converting into condos in 2002, have spent $5 million in repairs and legal fees to address structural problems, said Michael Rogers, a member of Newswalk’s condo board. He said the building had so many leaks that some of its original concrete beams had started to fall apart.
“This was a really solid building,” Mr. Rogers said. “The construction is so poor. It’s construction that could have hurt people.”
...
Then there is the convoluted eviction battle: Henry Weinstein, who owns a Prospect Heights building that Mr. Boymelgreen leases, and where he has his office, sued Mr. Boymelgreen in 2003 for selling the lease on the building to Forest City Ratner, the developer of the Atlantic Yards project. The office is located within the Atlantic Yards site.But hours before Mr. Weinstein was to evict Mr. Boymelgreen, Henry Herbst — whose company installed telecommunication systems in Mr. Boymelgreen’s projects and who also had his offices in the building — filed bankruptcy proceedings against Mr. Boymelgreen, according to public records and interviews with Mr. Herbst and Mr. Weinstein’s lawyer, David Brody. Mr. Herbst said he feared losing his office and the offices he sublet to others.
“He refused to go into bankruptcy,” Mr. Herbst said. “So we put him into bankruptcy.”
Posted by lumi at 6:08 AM
November 22, 2009
Mapping Out Forest City Ratner’s Monopolistic Strategy of Subsidy Collection
Noticing New York
This blog post points out how Forest City Ratner, developer for the proposed Atlantic Yards project, has pursued a strategy of sucking up available public subsidies by being the only developer considered for any given project. Atlantic Yards is a perfect example of the developer being given a huge chunk of Brooklyn real estate, and subsidies, without competitive bidding.
The ever-growing Ratner monopoly is illustrated with maps showing growth starting from 1 Pierrpont Plaza and spreading further into Brooklyn.
The post finishes with the following:
We conclude simply with this. If monopolies have always been recognized to be bad, such that we have national laws against them, and if monopolies facilitate “rent seeking” behavior that enables developers like Forest City Ratner to manipulate gains for itself at society’s loss, why is the government fostering these real estate monopolies for one real estate company’s unprecedented takeover of so much of Brooklyn? It doesn’t make sense to us but it’s a really BIG question. We hope that our mapping it out helps to visualize just how big.
Posted by steve at 7:16 AM
November 17, 2009
BRONX LIVING WAGE BATTLE MOVES TO CITY COUNCIL
As the City Council takes up consideration of the Kingsbridge Armory redevelopment plan, the developer and local pols are locked in a dispute that could derail the project.
City Limits
by Jarrett Murphy
Atlantic Yards makes a cameo in a report on the battle over the Kingsbridge Armory redevelopment, living-wage jobs and community benefits as an example of a project whose alleged benefits are looking very tenuous.
Behind the wage issue is a struggle over who holds the power in deciding how public land and money are used to develop under-served city neighborhoods. Pointing to other recent deals where community benefits are in doubt—like Yankee Stadium and Atlantic Yards—Diaz told an October 25th KARA rally that the push for a better deal from Related was part of "our revolution here, our new civil rights movement here, and that is economic development."
NoLandGrab: NLG pop quiz! Read the paragraph below and then guess which way the Kingsbridge Armory project will go when it comes to a Council vote.
Now the matter moves to the City Council, which along with the mayor has final say on the proposal. Related Companies, which has a number of projects besides the Armory that require government approval or assistance, has spent at least $150,000 lobbying city officials and agencies this year and donated $132,000 to municipal campaigns in the 2009 cycle; Land Use Committee chairwoman Melinda Katz, who ran for comptroller this year, was the biggest recipient with $41,650 in Related contributions. Carrion received $29,750, and Queens Councilman Eric Gioia—a member of the zoning subcommittee who ran unsuccessfully for public advocate—garnered $11,050 in Related money.
Posted by eric at 1:57 PM
November 12, 2009
The Coney Island comparison and the Atlantic Yards paradox
Atlantic Yards Report posted a couple of items comparing the City's attempt to redevelop Coney Island and Bruce Ratner's Atlantic Yards.
The City has finally struck a deal with Coney Island landowner Joseph Sitt to purchase 6.9 acres for $95.6 million. Having reportedly paid $93 million for approximately 10 acres, Sitt's tidy profit amounts to an increase in the value of the land.
Cut to Atlantic Yards, where the MTA recently renegotiated its deal with Bruce Ratner, spreading payments for the Vanderbilt Railyard over 22 years at a very generous interest rate and agreeing to allow the developer to build a replacement railyard with less capacity than the current railyard. The effective decrease in the value of the land over the railyard is another one of those curious Atlantic Yards paradoxes.
NoLandGrab: For Atlantic Yards's next trick, watchdogs like Norman Oder are keeping an eye on the land values that will have to magically increase in order to justify the triple-tax-free bonds that Ratner and the Empire State Development Corporation are hoping to float before the end of the year.
Pastor Guillermo Martino of the Tabernacle of God's Glory Church in Crown Heights, who testified not so coherently on June 22 before the Metropolitan Transportation Authority Finance Committee in favor of the Atlantic Yards plan (video below), has a curious profile when it comes to development disputes.
In November 2007, he protested the mayor's plan for Coney Island. As reported by the Bay News, Martino was "one of the dozens of people who turned out wearing bright yellow hats carrying the message 'The Bloomberg Plan: How Much? How Long? Who Pays?'"
...
Martino and fellow protesters came on buses chartered by Sen. Carl Kruger, who, as the Daily News later reported, spent several thousand dollars from his campaign fund. (After all, Kruger has a huge campaign fund but an untouchable seat.)
...
Of course, the same questions, including those on the yellow hats, could be raised about Atlantic Yards. Note the Kruger team included not only Martino but also James Caldwell (right in photo), president of Atlantic Yards Community Benefits Agreement signatory BUILD (Brooklyn United for Innovative Local Development), who heads the 77th Precinct Community Council in Crown Heights.
NLG: So exactly what is these guys' guiding principle?
Posted by lumi at 4:59 AM
November 2, 2009
Stealth By Design
How the city is sneaking great little buildings into unexpected places.
NY Magazine
By Justin Davidson
Congratulations Bruce Ratner, your Atlantic Yards megaproject is part of the City's elite club of overdevelopment follies:
The map of Michael Bloomberg’s New York bears the scars of vast, unfinished dreams of renewal. Hudson Yards, Atlantic Yards, Coney Island, Willets Point, ground zero, Governors Island, the Gowanus Canal—all those glittering megaplans, derailed, deferred, or debased. Yet the Bloomberg administration can claim triumphs at a tiny scale: Station house by station house, library by library, the city has been doggedly smuggling high-level architecture to the neighborhoods that need it most.
Posted by lumi at 4:41 AM
October 29, 2009
A Stalled Vision: Big Development as City’s Future
The New York Times
by Russ Buettner and Ray Rivera
Here's The Times article about which Atlantic Yards Report wrote this morning.
Over the past seven years, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has presided over a historic re-envisioning of New York City, one that loosened the reins on development across the boroughs and pushed more than 100 rezoning measures through a City Council that stamped them all into law.
...And when the economy was burning white hot, as it did for several years, the mayor’s plan appeared to be bold and forward-looking, a prescient decision to remake portions of the city in order to lure companies, create jobs and increase economic vitality.
But that vitality is missing in some sections of New York today, where developments spurred in part by easy credit and in part by city initiatives are now stalled or in danger of collapse.
...That investigation has expanded into the activities of the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership, which the city helped create in 2006 to help push through development plans following a broad rezoning of the area.
The city awarded the group a $6 million three-year no-bid contract. The group raised another $1.1 million in private donations, tax records show. And Mr. Doctoroff installed a top aide, Joe Chan, to run it. The partnership has become a key voice for the development of Downtown Brooklyn, inserting itself, critics say, into the debate over a plan to build a Nets area and high-rises at the Atlantic Yards. It has spent some $200,000 on lobbying expenses.
NoLandGrab: Irony alert! When we navigated to this article this morning (headline reminder: "A Stalled Vision"), the banner advertisement below appeared at the top of the page.
Posted by eric at 8:37 AM
The Times takes on stalled development: barely a mention of AY but questions about the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership
Atlantic Yards Report
The photo attached to today's front-page New York Times article, headlined A Stalled Vision: Big Development as City’s Future, is of the CityPoint site at the Fulton Street Mall in Downtown Brooklyn, but it could just as easily have been of various parts of the Atlantic Yards site.
But Atlantic Yards--well, a segment of it--might get going, so maybe it wasn't the perfect poster child.
Still, the development deserves significant mention because it has been enormously delayed: when Atlantic Yards was announced in 2004, the arena was supposed to open in 2006; when the project was approved in 2006, the arena was supposed to open in 2009; and now it's supposed to open in 2012, though uncertainties abound.
In fact, Atlantic Yards gets barely a tangential mention in an article that touches on Downtown Brooklyn, Hudson Yards, new baseball stadiums, Willets Point, and more.
The mention follows up on an investigation by the Attorney General's office into apparently illegal lobbying by lobbyists for Willets Point, with a revelation that there may be similar questions concerning the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership (DBP) when it comes to AY.
Posted by lumi at 6:01 AM
October 27, 2009
Survey finds 601 troubled condo projects
Figure from grassroots alliance Right to the City-New York covers just six neighborhoods but is far above the official tally for the city as a whole
Crain's NY Business
by Amanda Fung
There are a total of 601 condominium buildings scattered across a half dozen neighborhoods in the city that have substantial numbers of vacant units or where construction has stalled, according to preliminary data compiled by Right to the City-New York, an alliance of grassroots community organizations. That figure is well above the 454 recorded by the Department of Buildings for the city as a whole.
[Emphasis, ours]More than 150 members of Right to the City canvassed six neighborhoods in Manhattan and Brooklyn to identify buildings that feature many vacant units or stalled construction. The group, along with several members of the City Council, will announce the results Tuesday afternoon at a rally in downtown Brooklyn as part of an effort to urge the city to convert vacant condos into affordable housing.
...In July, the city unveiled a $20 million pilot program, the Housing Asset Renewal Program, designed to turn unsold condos and stalled residential buildings into as many as 400 affordable housing units. Community groups and local officials like Right to the City say the housing renewal is a good start, but it is not enough to resolve the proliferation of vacant buildings, the decline in low-income housing and the city's increasing homelessness rate.
Among the 126 buildings in downtown Brooklyn, Right to the City identified Be@Schermerhorn, a 246-unit luxury condo, with a vacancy rate of more than 93%, and Forté, a 108-unit luxury condo, with a vacancy rate of more than 60%. Both buildings have been on the market for at least a year. Forté was recently taken over by its lender Eurohypo bank. The group has not identified specific buildings in the Manhattan neighborhoods yet.
“Clearly HARP is not sufficient to meet the needs for the entire city,” said Councilwoman Leticia [sic] James, who will be attending the afternoon rally.
NoLandGrab: Here's an idea — turn off the subsidy pipeline to Atlantic Yards, take back whatever other city cash Ratner hasn't already spent, and drop it all into HARP. 'Cause it's clear that Atlantic Yards' planned 4,180 units of not-Gehry-designed market-rate housing are not going to be in demand any time soon.
And who's surprised that the City of New York is grossly understating the size of the condo glut? Instead of pushing blindly ahead on Atlantic Yards and fighting the Superfunding of the Gowanus Canal, maybe they should be exercising eminent domain, paying the condo speculators the 20¢ on the dollar that their empty buildings are worth, and solving the affordable-housing crisis all at once.
Nah.
Posted by eric at 4:58 PM
October 22, 2009
Sharp Drop in Building Residences in the City
The NY Times
By Charles V. Bagli
After five consecutive years in which residential construction in New York exceeded 30,000 apartments and houses annually, fewer than 6,300 units will be built this year, according to the latest report from the New York Building Congress, an industry trade group.
...
More than 460 residential projects have been delayed, nearly a third of them in Brooklyn, according to the latest figures from the city’s Buildings Department. Many analysts say it will take several years for the market to absorb all the luxury apartments that have been built recently.
NoLandGrab: And we're supposed to believe that Atlantic Yards developer Bruce Ratner is really planning to keep his commitment to build 6,430 residential units in the next ten years?
Posted by lumi at 6:53 AM
October 21, 2009
The 15-year time horizon for a project less than one-third the size of AY
Atlantic Yards Report
The New York Times reports on East River Plaza, a six-acre project in East Harlem that will soon open as a big-box vertical mall:
Looking back on his experience at East River Plaza, [developer David] Blumenfeld said that developers of complex projects needed a lot of patience. “Ten to 15 years is probably the right time horizon,” he said. “I don’t know if a lot of people have the stomach for that.”
The site was purchased 15 years ago. Partner Forest City Ratner came on board five years ago and helped speed things up.
Even with FCR's capacity to move projects, surely a 22-acre project like AY that would affect Brooklyn neighborhoods with engaged activists might take a while. Or is the state's decade-long timetable plausible?
Posted by eric at 9:48 AM
October 17, 2009
Jane Jacobs, Star Edition
Metropolis
By Suzanne LaBarre
Here is another example of Mayor Bloomberg backing a project and refusing to listen to any alternatives. In this case, the City plans to build a salt shed, garbage garage and maintenance facility at Spring Street, on Manhattan's lower west side. John Slattery, the actor who has recently become well known for his role on the series "Mad Men", has lent his voice to an alternate plan called "Hudson Rise".
In this article, the proposed Atlantic Yards project again becomes the example of how not to do development in New York City, as Slattery observes the unwillingness of city officials to look at alternatives.
Slattery has a point. New York has made sport of bad planning, from the demolition of Penn Station decades ago to the psychic mess of Atlantic Yards. PlaNYC, Bloomberg’s sweeping effort to green the city, was supposed to change everything. But what’s green on paper doesn’t always translate to the street. The Department of Sanitation facility meets PlaNYC’s imperative because it’s expected to earn LEED certification even though just looking at the thing, it’s obvious there’s nothing particularly green about it. “I think some of the problems in New York City is the architecture that gets approved,” said Slattery. “This is a chance to actually implement something community-related, sustainable, and forward-thinking.”
Posted by steve at 6:05 AM
October 16, 2009
At the Board: Atlantic Terrace Coming Soon
The Local [Fort Greene/Clinton Hill]
by Jordan Shakeshaft
On Nov. 1, applications will be available for Atlantic Terrace, the 80-unit mixed-income residential development at Atlantic and South Portland scheduled to top off next month. Construction should be complete by May, followed soon after by a city-sponsored lottery.
Heather Gershon of the Fifth Avenue Committee, the nonprofit housing advocacy group that is developing the site, said that residents can expect a LEED-certified green building. “I’m pleased to report that not only are we using sustainable practices and materials, we’re actually buying the majority of our finishes locally,” Ms. Gershon said. The IceStone countertops made of recycled glass and concrete, for example, are all produced at the Navy Yard.
NoLandGrab: Let us get this straight. The Atlantic Terrace project, which was announced on June 13, 2007, will begin accepting applications for its mostly affordable units on November 1, 2009, and will be ready for occupancy probably during the summer of 2010, a scant three years from start to finish.
Right across the street, the Atlantic Yards project, which was announced on December 10, 2003, and which has received overwhelming political backing largely (and allegedly) for it promise of affordable housing, has yet to break ground almost six years later.
What, we might ask, is preventing Bruce Ratner from building affordable housing on all the empty lots he's created in Prospect Heights, with attendant good-paying union construction jobs? Could it be that Atlantic Yards was never really about affordable housing and jobs at all?
Related coverage...
Brownstoner, Atlantic Terrace Applications Available Nov 1
Image via Brownstoner
Posted by eric at 4:59 PM
October 15, 2009
In the Heights
Prospect Heights could be the next Cobble Hill
NY Post
by Katherine Dykstra
Talk to almost anyone affiliated with Brooklyn’s Prospect Heights, and their unofficial line on Vanderbilt Avenue is that it’s what Cobble Hill’s Smith Street was 10 years ago. By that, they mean it’s primed to become the local go-to stretch for everything from a cup of coffee and a seat outside to a locally sourced gourmet dinner. And residential developers are also a big part of this thoroughfare’s land grab.
...The neighborhood’s affordability has many buyers willing to overlook the possibility of the neighborhood changing massively if and when the much bandied about Atlantic Yards ever finds its footing. And with the recent investment of Russian billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov in the Nets, it’s looking more likely than ever that at least an NBA stadium will be built.
“It’s not even on my radar,” says finance guy/Brooklyn blogger Kenny Eng, who bought a 1,450-square-foot three-bedroom in the Washington for $545,000 three years ago. “The part [of the Atlantic Yards site] that’s closer to me, on Vanderbilt, will probably be a parking lot for the construction workers, so I’m not too thrilled about that.”
After a moment, he adds: “That whole project is 10 to 15 years off, even more. Who knows? I could be gone by then.”
Posted by eric at 8:43 PM
Review and Comment: Us Against Ourselves
Brooklyn Daily Eagle's Henrik Krogius is at it again:
The latest perversity is the concerted opposition to an expansion of Brooklyn Friends School into Boerum Hill. Just as the saying goes that no good deed goes unpunished, so no good project for Brooklyn goes unopposed. (One can only imagine the agitated uproar if Jesus were to come back to earth in Brooklyn.)
By "good project," Krogius means Bruce Ratner's eminent domain-abusing, subsidy-sucking historically dense Atlantic Yards overdevelopment:
With Atlantic Yards, too, the unease about outsiders coming in has clothed itself in a variety of more respectable arguments, including traffic (never mind that the site is uniquely well served by public transit), eminent domain (which affects a small handful of people for a 22-acre project), impact of scale on brownstone neighborhoods (which in fact don’t abut the site), and financing arrangements (as if the developer hadn’t incurred considerable risk). That’s not to say there isn’t reason for concern about what the as yet unrevealed, Gehry-less major part of the project will look like.
NoLandGrab: By "outsiders" Krogius may mean the multi-billionaire Russian oligarch that Ratner has lined up to help salvage his taxpayer-funded boondoggle.
Posted by lumi at 7:23 AM
October 7, 2009
Condo prices slashed 25% at big Brooklyn tower
Forty-story Oro in downtown Brooklyn to emphasize bargains over luxury.
Crain's NY Business
By Amanda Fung
In an aggressive effort to boost sales, the developer of the 303-unit Oro tower in downtown Brooklyn said Tuesday that it is slashing prices of its remaining unsold condominiums by as much as 25%.
To date, just 90 units have closed and 30 are in contract at the 40-story tower in the Flatbush Avenue corridor.
NoLandGrab: And Bruce is going to start on a residential building nearby within months of breaking ground on the arena. Yeah. Sure.
Posted by lumi at 5:08 AM
October 5, 2009
Divided on development and AY, Marty Markowitz and Kevin Powell talk past each other in the Dreamland Pavilion
Atlantic Yards Report
At the Dreamland Pavilion: Brooklyn and Development Conference held this weekend at Kingsborough Community College, Atlantic Yards was not only the theme of one panel but the central--yet divergent--example for the two main speakers at the inaugural dinner.
Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, a longtime Atlantic Yards booster, maintained his support for the project, while writer and activist (and periodic political candidate) Kevin Powell offered a more critical take on AY and the process of development.
..."There's not a project in this borough more important than Atlantic Yards for this and future generations," Markowitz declared. "One of the most difficult things that I've had to tackle as Borough President is to somehow get over the limited vision of so many people, who don't think about what tomorrow will bring, only what affects me today. It's very hard, when you're in a position of leadership.... you have to begin shaping what tomorrow will bring as well as what this immediate day and tomorrow brings. And Atlantic Yards taught me that, and continues to teach me that."
...Powell, noting that he'd risen from poverty thanks to education, said, "I've seen the world through the eyes of poor and working-class people, but I've also seen the through the eyes of someone who's a property owner and a business owner."
"So, as I was sitting there, at this Atlantic Yards hearing, it saddened me deeply, because you began to realize, if you're someone who cares about all human beings... and you really love people, and you really love Brooklyn... you don't want to see that kind of ugliness, because you realize that all these people, ultimately, are being manipulated, and only a handful of folks are really benefiting from this thing."
Posted by eric at 9:56 AM
October 4, 2009
Finding a bottom in Brooklyn
A neighborhood breakdown of prime Kings County -- aka Brooklyn -- shows where prices have dropped most
The Real Deal
By Sarah Ryley
Though Lyin' Bruce Ratner tells everyone that Atlantic Yards is in Downtown Brooklyn, after reading this article about the state of residential development in Kings County, he'll be glad it isn't.
The neighborhoods of Downtown Brooklyn, Clinton Hill and Fort Greene were among the most rapidly gentrified during the real estate boom. Now, the district has also experienced the most rapid fall in median sales price, 29 percent over the past two years.
"Downtown Brooklyn has done worse than just about any other neighborhood, even worse than Williamsburg, for two reasons," said Miller Cicero's Falsetta. "The bulk of the developers in Downtown Brooklyn have been generally unwilling to cut pricing.
"And the other reason is, Downtown Brooklyn never really finished gelling as a neighborhood."
According to the article, it will take years for the market to shake out.
Robert Knakal, chairman of Massey Knakal Realty Services, which is marketing several distressed assets in Brooklyn, predicted prices will bottom sometime next year, at the same time unemployment peaks, and then flatten for two or three years after that.
Ultimately, he said the firm expects prices to drop an additional 5 to 10 percent.
NoLandGrab: Meanwhile, as the demand for luxury housing has evaporated, all of the assumptions that Ratner used when Atlantic Yards was first announced in 2003 are moot.
Posted by lumi at 5:42 PM
September 24, 2009
Bloomberg may be pro-development, but it's much more than that: it's an idée fixe
Atlantic Yards Report
Bloomberg's posture goes well beyond a basic philosophy; it entails (take your pick) loyalty to a certain developer class, unswerving support once he's announced it, and an unwillingness to do the math you'd think a billionaire businessman would feel comfortable doing.
When confronted with evidence from a New York City Independent Budget Office report that the Atlantic Yards arena would be a money-loser for the city, Bloomberg said, according to the Observer:
“I don’t know what the IBO studies would have shown back when they tried to establish the value of Central Park or Prospect Park or anything else,” he told reporters. “These are the kinds of projects you have to do because without that we don’t have a future, and we’re going to get this one done.”In a January 2004 radio interview, he claimed erroneously that "any city monies of any meaningful size will be debt issues financed by the extra tax revenues that come from this."
As it happens, the IBO, whatever the limits of its report on AY, has done a far more thorough and honest job than the New York City Economic Development Corporation or Empire State Development Corporation, which have produced economic benefit studies that ignore or downplay subsidies and public costs.
Posted by eric at 11:08 AM
September 23, 2009
The Specter of Atlantic Yards
Whether it's a dispute over a new school on State Street, the expansion of a historic district, or more scandal at ACORN, Atlantic Yards — like vaportecture — forever looms in the background.
The Brooklyn Paper, ‘State’ of disunion! Residents clash over school expansion plan
As much as the community might want a residential building, IBEC says that it’s just not feasible at this time. Indeed, other projects in the neighborhood, including the massive Atlantic Yards development are experiencing similar problems with financing.
Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Council OKs Prospect Hts Historic District
At the time, residents feared that the neighborhood’s rich historic architecture was threatened by the Atlantic Yards project, a proposal by the developer Forest City Ratner to build 16 towers and a sports arena on a site adjacent to the neighborhood.
The American Spectator, Yes, ACORN Does Cheat on Its Taxes
ACORN also sold out its poor constituents in Brooklyn in exchange for a cash bailout from Forest City Ratner, a wealthy developer trying to build the Atlantic Yards project.
Posted by eric at 10:37 AM
September 3, 2009
It came from the Blogosphere...
Inversecondemnation.com, Amicus Brief In NY Court Of Appeals In Goldstein/Atlantic Yards Case: NY's Public Use Clause Prohibits Judicial Rubber Stamp Of Takings
Willets Point United has filed an amicus brief supporting their fellow New York City property owners in the public use case now pending in the New York Court of Appeals regarding the Atlantic Yards "redevelopment" project in Brooklyn, Goldstein v. New York State Urban Dev. Corp. As we noted here, Willets Point is under the takings gun itself, and has our Owners' Counsel colleague Mike Rikon helping them (he also filed the amicus brief).
The brief argues that the Court of Appeals should not follow the Kelo rule of total deference to economic development takings: "The majority decision in Kelo v City of New London written by Justice Stevens was wrong, wrong in its holding and wrong on its facts."
Brownstoner, Atlantic Yards Misrepresents Ownership
The Atlantic Yards Report points us towards a little sleight-of-hand by the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC). In the comments filed regarding the Modified General Project Plan (GPP) for the Atlantic Yards development, local property owner Henry Weinstein states that the GPP uses an old and inaccurate map of Forest City Ratner's holdings. The map, dated November 1, 2006, falsely implies that Forest City Ratner owns or controls Weinstein's property, which includes a building and two lots used as a parking lot at the corner of Carlton and Pacific.
Brownstoner Forum, Buying into Newswalk?
It's just one person's opinion — "perhaps" believes that Bruce Ratner's Atlantic Yards plan is a point of consideration before purchasing a unit in the Newswalk building:
It's also important to consider newswalk's engulfed (almost) by the Atlantic yards project - units facing away from the yards (south exposure) are preferable, but you'll see that reflected in pricing
Queens Crap, "Affordable housing" promise becomes even more of a joke
"Crappy" reposted Atlantic Yards Report's analysis of the Daily News follow-up on the Atlantic Yards Report scoop on lack of affordable housing guarantees for Bruce Ratner's Atlantic Yards megaproject.
Architectural Lamentations, The Ignominious Brooklyner is Now Brooklyn's Tallest
111 Lawrence Street is now Brooklyn's tallest building with 51 stories of bland condominiums. It is impressive that this building managed to escape relatively unscathed, from public outcry or protest. This is especially so considering the amount of attention Frank Gehry and Bruce Ratner's Atlantic Yards Project Miss Brooklyn received.
The Local, Linkfest: Final Word, Crime Alert and More
The Daily News calls the race for the City Council 35th District seat as being a battle over Atlantic Yards. Candidate Delia Hunley-Adossa said incumbent Letitia James’s unflinching opposition to the project without considering a negotiation is “unacceptable.”
On a similar note, Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn wants opponents of Atlantic Yards to register for a walkathon to raise funds for legal action against the development. The walk route ends with a party at Fort Greene’s Habana Outpost.
Posted by lumi at 6:22 AM
August 18, 2009
Will Brodsky look into the curious assessments in the Atlantic Yards arena block?
Atlantic Yards Report
[W]hile the questionable assessments in the case of the new Yankee Stadium generated vigorous criticism from Assemblyman Richard Brodsky, he has mostly been agnostic about Atlantic Yards and hasn't turned his attention to the assessment issue.
On Sunday, at the press conference on the bill concerning public authorities reform, I asked Brodsky if he knew about the issue and would look into it.
His answer was careful, neither ruling Atlantic Yards in or out: "There are a lot of very reasonable questions about the role of the assessor's office in these large authority deals, that are currently under review."
NoLandGrab: Our bet is that Brodsky is more about grandstanding and making noise over shady done deals, than getting in the way of those still in progress.
Posted by lumi at 5:46 AM
August 13, 2009
Good Luck on That Condo Thing Bruce
Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn
Bruce Ratner wants to build 1,930 luxury condo units not far from this site:
Goldman Sachs' Brooklyn condo bet sours
The company, along with partner The Clarett Group, is negotiating with German lender Eurohypo Bank to turn over the 30-story Forté tower after sales went nowhere.
Crain's
By Amanda FungForté, a 30-story luxury residential tower in the Brooklyn Academy of Music cultural district in downtown Brooklyn, is underwater.
Manhattan-based developer The Clarett Group confirmed Thursday that, along with its majority partner Goldman Sachs Group Inc., it is negotiating with the project’s construction lender to transfer control to the lender. After two years of marketing, the 108-unit, upscale FXFOWLE Architects-designed building is only 37% sold.
NoLandGrab: This doesn't bode well for sales of not-designed-by-Frank Gehry Atlantic Yards condos. The Forté is about as close to Atlantic Terminal transit as any of Ratner's buildings would be, and it's a nice building (we've been there) with spectacular views. Goldman, by the way, is lead underwriter for Atlantic Yards arena bond sales.
Posted by eric at 6:08 PM
Stimulus funds for CityPoint; could there be stimulus funds for AY? Not from Recover NYC
Atlantic Yards Report
City Point, the big Fulton Mall development project, was just awarded $20 million in tax-exempt bonds under Recover NYC, which directs Federal stimulus funds.
Might Atlantic Yards be next?
It would be tough for Atlantic Yards to make the deadline, given that the NYCEDC would announce the candidates for the second round on November 3, before the Atlantic Yards eminent domain case is likely resolved.
But the issue's moot. Only projects located in the yellow recovery zones would be eligible, and the parcel going east of the intersection of Atlantic and Flatbush avenues isn't included. But I wouldn't be surprised at other efforts to gain some stimulus funding for AY.
Questions of fairness
In the Times, one watchdog questioned the Recover NYC program:
“This is a sort of David-and-Goliath example of small businesses that are paying the rent and providing services to a diverse constituency of Downtown Brooklyn and having something kind of dropped on top of them, which is a big wealthy developer getting subsidies,” said Bettina Damiani, director of Good Jobs New York, which studies the use of economic development incentives. “So the impact on the local community needs to really be taken into consideration before we move forward with economic stimulus.”
NoLandGrab: We're pretty sure fairness is of little concern to Bruce Ratner.
Posted by eric at 10:42 AM
July 13, 2009
The Billyburg Bust
A working-class neighborhood became a bohemian theme park, which in turn became a fantasyland for luxury-condo developers. Now, littered with half-built shells of a vanished boom, Williamsburg is looking like something else entirely: Miami.
New York Magazine
by David Amsden
A big honking overdevelopment cautionary tale is unfolding ever-so grimly in Williamsburg and Greenpoint. Are you paying attention, Empire State Development Corporation and Governor Paterson?
With sales across Brooklyn down a staggering 57 percent from a year ago, Williamsburg, with its high density of new construction, has taken on an ominous disposition. Walk down virtually any block and you’ll come across an amenity-laden building that sits nearly empty: relics of a moment in history that seems, increasingly, like a fever dream. Some developers with iffy financing have quietly been forced to go rental, others have lowered prices to the point where losses are inevitable, and a handful of projects, including two buildings Maundrell had been selling, have gone into foreclosure.
Most unsettling are the cases of the developers who seem to have vanished, leaving behind so many vacant lots and half-completed buildings—eighteen, to be precise, more than can be found in all of the Bronx—that large swaths of the neighborhood have come to resemble a city after an air raid. “I mean, look at that,” Maundrell said as we drove down a particularly grim block on North 9th Street that was lined on both sides by pits of mud where luxury buildings were supposed to be going up. “No signs of anyone actually building anywhere. It’s crazy. My lovely Williamsburg is filled with all these vacant sites everywhere you look.”
NoLandGrab: With hundreds of finished apartments sitting vacant in Greenpoint and Williamsburg, and thousands more coming on line this year and next, remind us again: why is the ESDC pushing full speed ahead on Atlantic Yards?
Posted by eric at 12:48 PM
July 11, 2009
The Downtown Brooklyn Partnership's AY fig leaves
Atlantic Yards Report
The Downtown Brooklyn Partnership essentially serves as a representative for developers, so visitors to their website (a screenshot of it is here) should have their b.s. detectors in good working order. Fortunately, Norman Oder is here to set things straight.
You'd think the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership (DBP) would've gotten this right, especially since its representatives last month testified in favor of Atlantic Yards before the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the Empire State Development Corporation.
However, it claims on its web site that Atlantic Yards would be "built over the rail yards near Atlantic and Flatbush Avenues...."
For the record, Atlantic Yards would cover 22 acres; the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's Vanderbilt Yard is about 8.5 acres. The project can't be built over the rail yards.
Also, some of the numbers are off; as approved in December 2006, the project would include 6430 housing units, a reduction from the 6800 once promised and stated on the DBP web site. There is no plan as of now for hotel space.
And, of course, the Atlantic Yards site is not in Downtown Brooklyn, but would extend it.
Why bother with these seemingly minor issues? Because some people unfamiliar with the project may take the DBP's representations at face value.
Posted by steve at 8:01 AM
June 26, 2009
July 1, Wed, 10 am: City Council Hearing on Coney Island Rezoning
Noticing New York
The Bloombergian machine (assisted on Atlantic Yards by the increasingly confused and foundering Governor Paterson) is certainly revved up to shove things down the public’s throat.
Atlantic Yards, Willets Point, Dock Street — next up... Coney Island.
Posted by lumi at 4:59 AM
June 23, 2009
What could $20 million buy? Only a little more than this small Lower East Side site
Atlantic Yards Report
The day after the Metropolitan Transit Authority Finance Committee rubber-stamped the $20M cash-up-front deal for the arena portion of the Vanderbilt Railyard with Atlantic Yards developer Bruce Ratner, watchdog Norman Oder continues his series examining what $20M will get you on the open market.
From the Fourth Quarter 2008 Massey Knakal Sales Journal:
A 91’ x 75’ development site at 154 Delancey Street on the Lower East Side of Manhattan was sold by Massey Knakal Realty Services in an all-cash transaction valued at $15,750,000. The property is located on the north side of Delancey between Clinton and Suffolk Streets. Based on the C6-2A proposed zoning (current zoning is C6-1), it contains approximately 47,706 buildable square feet.
...
The segment of the Vanderbilt Yard at issue is 495' x 200', or 99,000 square feet, some 14.5 times larger than the Lower East Side site. If you multiply the Upper East Side price by 14.5, it comes out to $228.4 million.
NoLandGrab: Bruce Ratner knows that only poor suckers buy property on the open market and secure private financing to develop it.
Posted by lumi at 5:15 AM
June 17, 2009
What could $20 million buy? Not even two small DTB development sites
Atlantic Yards Report
While Atlantic Yards developer Bruce Ratner is set to strike a deal with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority by which he'll cough up only $20M up front for the development rights to the portion of the Vanderbilt Railyard on which he plans to build the arena, Norman Oder pokes around looking for comps:
Here's an example of a lot nearly one-seventh as small that in late 2007 sold for more than half the $20 million sum.
From the First Quarter 2008 Massey Knakal Sales Journal:A 187’ x 80’ development site with plans for hotel rooms at 300 Schermerhorn in Downtown Brooklyn was sold by Massey Knakal Realty Services in an all-cash transaction valued at $11,900,000 to a hotel developer and operator... The as-of-right buildable square footage is approximately 83,000 square feet for a mixed-use development project, or 90,000 square feet for a community use property. The site is also located near several mixed-use retail, residential projects, office buildings and is only blocks from one of the strongest retail corridors in New York City, the Fulton Mall.
Keep in mind that the segment of the Vanderbilt Yard at issue is 495' x 200', or 99,000 square feet. The 300 Schermerhorn site is 14,960 square feet.
Yes, the market has changed, but has it changed that much? And isn't a site supporting an arena, housing, and more somewhat more valuable than a hotel site?
NoLandGrab: Long-time watchdogs will recall that Ratner's deal with the MTA was already the lowball bid. Uh-huh... RATNER IS SHORTCHANGING HIS OWN LOWBALL BID.
Posted by lumi at 5:02 AM
June 15, 2009
Don’t build it — They will come
MetroNY
As public apathy turns to disdain for Bruce Ratner's Atlantic Yards megaproject, commentator Neil deMause recalls other publicly funded megaprojects that died a slow death for the better:
But history shows that red tape sometimes has its silver lining:
• The better part of my childhood was spent in anticipation of Westway, which for roughly a zillion dollars was going to tear up the Hudson River waterfront and bury an expressway beneath it. Thirteen years of bitter public fights later, an endangered-fish lawsuit finally killed the plan, at which point the city instead got the cash for new subway cars and a beautiful scaled-down waterfront promenade.
• Before that, Robert Moses’ Lower Manhattan Expressway, which would have linked the Holland Tunnel to the Williamsburg and Manhattan Bridges, was debated for most of the 1960s before being abandoned. In the interim, the “blighted” district he had wanted to pave over became ... Soho.
When big projects falter, there’s no shame in stepping back and asking: “Why are we doing this again?” and “What else could we do instead?” It’s what a bunch of good-government groups have already asked about Ground Zero — which blew yet another deadline of its own last week — saying a Westway-style trade-in for mass transit cash makes more sense than subsidizing office towers that will sit empty for a generation.
Posted by lumi at 6:52 AM
What could $20 million buy? A warehouse in the Bronx
Atlantic Yards Report
Would the Metropolitan Transportation Authority be getting a raw deal if it agreed to Atlantic Yards developer Bruce Ratner's offer of $20 million up-front for the development rights for the arena portion of the Vanderbilt Railyard. To get a sense of what $20 million is worth these days, Norman Oder has been running a series on what $20 million will buy you these days.
From the 6/10/09 LoHud.com: NAI Friedland Realty, a commercial real estate firm based in Yonkers, said that it recently helped complete one of the largest real estate sales of the year in the Bronx. The 144,000-square-foot Paradise Foods warehouse at 1080 Leggett Avenue in the Hunts Point area of the Bronx has sold for $20 million. Manhattan Beer Distributors purchased the 4.9-acre property from Paradise Foods.
That's a little more than twice as much acreage as the section of Vanderbilt Yard at issue, but the warehouse is much smaller than the development planned for the segment of the railyard.
Posted by lumi at 5:25 AM
June 6, 2009
Silver hints W.T.C. consensus is to build more towers
Downtown Express
By Julie Shapiro
The main point of this article is to try to understand what is planned for the World Trade Center Site, even though elected officials are keeping those plans secret. The proposed Atlantic Yards project gets a mention.
Silver listed the other office projects that are falling through, from Hudson Yards to Atlantic Yards, which will make the World Trade Center towers all the more important.
Posted by steve at 7:12 AM
May 19, 2009
LHinks: Bits and bytes post-woodland retreat
LighthouseHockey.com
Long Island watchdogs and hopeful hockey fans are keeping an eye on the Atlantic Yards arena and how recent events affect their chances of getting a new arena for the NY Islanders:
"I'm not dead yet." -- Because no land development news happens without a "how does this relate to the Islanders?" angle: Another hurdle surpassed for the Atlantic Yards development (and the quest to move the New Jersey Nets -- which I am told is a "basket-ball" team) -- to Brooklyn. There has been a long, hard-fought effort to stop this development, but if it ever launches -- now October is the target -- calls will renew for that to be the Lighthouse alternative for the Long Island Brooklyn Islanders.
Note: "The Lighthouse" is Long Island's version of a boondoggle mixed-use megaproject attached to a new arena.
Posted by lumi at 5:28 AM
May 13, 2009
Brooklyn Exchange opening
Produced by architecture and communication design students at Pratt Institute, this exhibition presents downtown Brooklyn’s past, present and future development projects in order to imagine a more creative and just vision for its future.
Opening Reception: Friday May 15, 6-8 PM
http://www.metropolitanexchange.org/bex
Metropolitan Exchange
33 Flatbush Avenue
2/3/4/5 to Nevins, B/N/R/Q to DeKalb
A/C/G to Hoyt-Schermerhorn, G to Fulton
or B/D/M/N/R/Q/2/3/4/5 to Atlantic Avenue
Gallery Hours, May 16-June 1, W-Sa, 12-6PM
Note: This exhibit also addresses some Atlantic Yards issues.
Posted by lumi at 7:13 AM
The Perils of Public-Private
The NY Observer
By Eliot Brown
While the effort to rebuild the World Trade Cetner site has become the poster-project for the pitfalls with public-private development deals — especially when the economy sours and the private partners seek to renegotiate subsidies and contracts — Bruce Ratner's controversial Atlantic Yards megaproject is next in line:
The imbroglio downtown brings into glaring view a flaw common to public-private development deals in New York, a city where progress on large-scale projects so often proves elusive. Struck in strong economic times under aggressive assumptions, agreements on large government-administrated developments almost inevitably falter when the economy shifts, causing private developers to petition the public sector for new concessions or subsidies to keep the deals alive. The result is a system in which large projects seem to rarely provide the public with the value initially advertised, at least not within the time frame once imagined.
While the World Trade Center is by all measures an extreme example, with a host of other factors contributing to the mess, this pattern appears again and again in a glance at some of the city’s largest real estate projects on public land in recent years.
In Brooklyn, at the imperiled $4 billion Atlantic Yards project, developer Forest City Ratner is negotiating with a host of agencies to delay or decrease its hundreds of millions in obligations to the public sector, as the viability of the project is now threatened.
Posted by lumi at 6:31 AM
WOW factor on Dean St.
Corcoran's online listing for a penthouse in the Newswalk building tries to sugar coat fact that it is "near" Bruce Ratner's Atlantic Yards project:
This is the most Dynamic Pent House in the building with a true WOW factor.... Located in Prospect Heights near the proposed Atlantic Yards, which involves the designs of world famous architect Frank Gehry and a stadium for the New Jersey Nets basketball team.
NoLandGrab: Wow — by "near" they mean actually surrounded by Bruce Ratner's contorversial Atlantic Yards high-rise complex. [Click image to enlarge.]
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Not to nitpick, but a realtor ought to know the difference between a "stadium" and an "arena." Stadiums are bigger, right?
Posted by lumi at 6:17 AM
May 6, 2009
WTF, ESDC? Recession Twists State’s Economic Development Arm
New York Observer
by Eliot Brown
You probably never would have guessed this, what with its slick handling of, and all the progress with, the Atlantic Yards project, but the Empire State Development Corporation is in disarray.
STILL, multiple business leaders and others who deal with the ESDC said that in New York City and elsewhere in the downstate region, the agency does not seem to have adopted a new approach amid the recession. The ESDC’s downstate efforts have generally been defined by a series of high-profile private and public development projects—Atlantic Yards, the expansion of Penn Station—many of which have been stalled.
“I think it is fair to say that if ESDC has a plan for economic development, nobody downstate knows what it is,” said a leader of a downstate economic development organization who interacts with the ESDC.
NoLandGrab: "Nobody downstate knows what" the plan for economic development is? Sure they do. It's "In Bruce We Trust."
Read the full article to learn about the frosty relationship between the ESDC's Chairman and CEO, and how the "keen priority" of filling the job of downstate president has dragged on for the better part of a year. Could it be the psychological test?
Posted by eric at 12:24 PM
May 5, 2009
Another gentrification discussion, the hard to find "sweet spot," and the "public realm"
Atlantic Yards Report
Norman Oder reviews a preview of a live WNYC broadcast of a discussion on preservation and gentrification, and ties it ever-so-obliquely to Atlantic Yards.
A caller named Manny, who grew up in the Lower East Side and Washington Heights, expressed understandably mixed feelings.
"Is the city safer, yes, but at what cost?" he asked rhetorically. "To have $90-a-plate food [at restaurants] on Avenue B is crazy... It's good, but it's also bad, because the poor people at the end have to pay."
Well, that's only if the city allows developers and homeowners to share the benefits of rising property values without any sharing the wealth--redistributing tax money in the form of "public realm" investment, requiring subsidized housing as a tradeoff for increased density, and making non-gentrified neighborhoods more attractive thanks to better transit and parks.
(Oh yeah, what's the connection to Atlantic Yards? Had the city been doing this all along, a project like AY--essentially a private rezoning--wouldn't have been seen as a savior by some and wouldn't have been so polarizing.)
Posted by eric at 10:29 AM
April 29, 2009
In discussion about Fort Greene and Clinton Hall, history, transition, gentrification, and, yes, Atlantic Yards
Atlantic Yards Report
It’s hard to do justice to the sometimes compelling, sometimes disjointed, wide-ranging panel discussion concerning Fort Greene and Clinton Hilll presented last night by the New York Times’s blog The Local at the Brooklyn Public Library’s Dweck Center at Grand Army Plaza.
But the session, titled “Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow,” did touch on the important and sometimes fraught intersections of neighborhood transition, development pressure, and race/class relations. (Of the panelists, two were black and two were white.)
And, despite some overlong monologues (from both panel and audience) or off-topic questions, it left people longing for more, for the messy humanity of in-person dialogue, in contrast with often-anonymous online interaction.
...The growth of new residential towers, mainly at the neighborhood’s edges--and in several cases the unexpected consequence of a Downtown Brooklyn rezoning aimed to produce new (but ultimately unnecessary) office space, provoked dismay from [Nelson] George, who linked them to the planned Atlantic Yards project, which would be built just across the border in Prospect Heights.
Posted by eric at 9:17 AM
April 28, 2009
Lessons from Times Square redevelopment: even after legislative approval, financial accountability is needed
Atlantic Yards Report
Norman Oder looks at Atlantic Yards through the lens of "Lynne Sagalyn's 2001 epic analysis of redevelopment, Times Square Roulette."
Closer evaluation
Sagalyn argues that, given the lengthy project buildout and economic changes--situations that have recurred in the case of AY--further analysis was warranted:
This context of review intensifies the accountability issues attached to public deal making, as does the task of coping with a changing economic context and its implications for already-cut deals. Both issues make apparent the need for financial accountability of public deal making, after initial legislative approval. By the conventional norms of public policy, this means some type of review of the public’s financial commitments, an ex-ante evaluation of a deal's costs and benefits or an ex-post audit of financial transactions or both. That the public resources in question may be in the form of off-budget foregone revenues (rent credits or tax abatements) or long-term contingent commitments (ESAC) rather than direct cash grants or loans does not change the logic. It only complicates the tasks of analysis and explanation.
(Emphasis added)
...Accountability needed
Sagalyn concludes:
If deal making is to progress as an effective and politically sustainable strategy in the took kit of development officials and city planners, the protocols for democratic accountability need to be further refined.
Posted by eric at 11:05 AM
April 9, 2009
NYC EDC head on recent past: "We’ve been much more the 'Real Estate Development Corporation'"
Atlantic Yards Report
When we thought that "EDC" meant "Every Developer Corporation," we weren't far off. NYCEDC Prez Seth Pinsky explains why:
The current issue of City Hall News contains excerpts from a March 13 "On/Off the Record" breakfast session with New York City Economic Development Corporation President Seth Pinsky.
Q: You are the president of the Economic Development Corporation. At this moment of recession, general economic turmoil, what do those words even mean?
A:...What occurred to me was that, really, for much of the last several years, even though we call ourselves the Economic Development Corporation, we’ve been much more the “Real Estate Development Corporation”, and that’s been because the economy has been growing on its own without much need for the city’s interference.
In the full quote, Pinksy admits to an "epiphany" that hardly inspires confidence.
Posted by lumi at 6:03 AM
April 7, 2009
Crain's Two-fer Tuesday: Atlantic Yards buzz kill edition
All signs point to an Atlantic Yards project that, for a long, long time, might be nothing more than a basketball arena. Don't expect condos anytime soon.
Condominium sales in the boroughs outside of Manhattan plummeted in the first quarter, but several neighborhoods are still faring better than others, according to a report released Tuesday.
While Manhattan saw a 63% decline in condo sales in the first three months of 2009 from the year-earlier period, Brooklyn wasn’t far behind, with a 61% drop in sales volume. Meantime, sales in Queens and the Bronx were down 58% and 50%, respectively.
The data come from a quarterly study conducted by ResidentialNYC.com, a web site operated by the Real Estate Board of New York.
...Citywide, average condo sale prices fell 10%, to $1.2 million, the report said. Prices in Brooklyn recorded the largest percentage drop compared with other boroughs, tumbling 12%, to $516,000, from the year-earlier period. In Manhattan, average prices fell 5%, to $1.7 million.
Well, at least they can build some office space, right? Er...
Office rents: Biggest plunge in 25 years
Enormous growth in sublease space pushed Manhattan office rents to their biggest quarterly decline in 25 years as they fell 6% in the first three months of this year, according to a report released Tuesday by Cushman & Wakefield Inc.
Rents fell to an average of $65.01 a square foot in the first quarter, and the $4.43 drop from the end of 2008 was the largest quarterly descent since Cushman began keeping records in 1984.
Rents have slid 11% since hitting a high of $72.97 a square foot in the third quarter of 2008. By the end of the year, rents are likely to plunge 30% from their peak, according to Joseph Harbert, chief operating officer of Cushman & Wakefield’s New York Metro region.
...The larger issue is the inability to get debt financing,” Mr. Harbert said. “It is going to take a while for the situation to work itself out.”
The outlook seems grim. There are only $100 million worth of properties under contract now, down from $3.5 billion a year earlier.
NoLandGrab: With Manhattan rates plunging, and office space abundant, any pricing advantage that Brooklyn once held is rapidly eroding.
Posted by eric at 4:21 PM
April 6, 2009
Atlantic Terrace construction
Video, Tracy Collins, via flickr Atlantic Yards Photo Pool.
From Tracy Collins, some stop-action-y video of the Fifth Avenue Committee's Atlantic Terrace project.
Unfortunately, they are not going to install solar panels as planned, as the building would be virtually in perpetual shade due to the towers of Atlantic Yards, which would be to the south, across Atlantic Avenue.
Posted by eric at 8:37 PM
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: BloodiedRESIDENTIAL 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.
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 10:04 PM
Brian Lehrer Takes Stock of the Building Boom: We Ask Some Coulda, Shoulda Questions About the (AOL) Time Warner Center
Noticing New York
This blog entry is largely concerned with assessing the Time Warner Center. Included is a prediction of the effect that the World Wide Web will have on the history of developments.
No one in the future will ever forget or lose access to all the details of the Atlantic Yards fight when you have forever afterwards all of Atlantic Yards Report, No Land Grab and Develop Don’t Destroy’s websites, including many other permanent assets like Bob Guskind’s Goawanus Lounge. The plans like the Unity Plan and the Pacific Plan which are better far better alternatives to the Ratner designs for Atlantic Yards will not fade away as they will remain easily accessible on the web. By the same token, all the ways that the Ratner/ESDC lack of proper public process shortchanges the public will remain just a click or two away.
It is doubtful that were the monstrosity of Atlantic Yards ever built, Paul Goldberger and Hugh Hardy would have a blithely forgetful conversion on Brian Lehrer’s program only eight years after the end of a development battle of so many years running. To be fair though, Atlantic Yards is bigger, much worse than the Time Warner Center since it is a net negative for the public rather than a net positive. Also, so far, unlike the AOL Time Warner Center, Atlantic Yards involves no competitive bids an no compromises from the developer!
A “Time Warning” Question: Will We Be Different in the Future by Having a Different Past?
Our take-away point with respect to the (once-AOL) Time Warner Center is that it is amazing that something from just a few years ago is so remote when we seek to refresh our memories in order to gain perspective on the present. We note, however, that things are changing with the new capabilities of the internet. With those new capabilities, we wonder whether the future will unfold in such a way that we have a quite different relationship with the recent past.
In the future, perhaps 15 years from now, you might even find your perspective on what could have been versus what is shaped by revisiting the current Brian Lehrer series taking stock of what is happening to the built environment in the city. You may find your future perspective shaped when, listening to the series in the far future year, you are reminded that, in the month of April 2009, you phoned in or commented on the program’s web page to express your hopes about what the city could be.
Posted by steve at 8:06 AM
April 3, 2009
Downtown tower keeps going and going and going…
The Brooklyn Paper
The 491-unit residential tower, slated to top off at 514 feet, or two feet taller than the legendary Williamsburgh Savings Bank Building, is at 111 Lawrence St., between Willoughby Street and the vestigial remnant of Myrtle Avenue, in rapidly changing Downtown.
...
A year earlier, some Brooklynites were aghast to discover that Frank Gehry’s iconic Miss Brooklyn tower, the trophy skyscraper at the gateway to Bruce Ratner’s Atlantic Yards mega-project, would rise to 620 feet and obscure some views of the bank building’s clocktower. But later that year, Ratner agreed to lower its height to just below 512 feet (though, not to sound like a broken record, the project is stalled due to the economic downturn).
NoLandGrab: Though many Brooklynites decried the notion that "Miss Brooklyn" would dethrone the Billyburg Building, others questioned the notion that the new tallest building in Brooklyn should be around the block from the former.
Though Bruce Ratner's atlanticyards.com web site would have you believe that the planned Atlantic Yards project is in Downtown Brooklyn, the Lawrence St. tower actually is.
Posted by lumi at 5:42 AM
March 30, 2009
‘Half-built sites’ cast shadow on New York’s economic landscape
Arab Times (AP)
A New York City contractors’ group has tracked over 100 projects in the city either stalled or canceled since last fall’s credit crisis dried up developers’ financing. The city’s Department of Buildings said more than 30 construction sites have been idled during recent inspections, and “we suspect that there are more,” spokeswoman Kate Lindquist said.
One of the biggest is Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn, a 22-acre (9-hectare) development where a new arena for the New Jersey Nets basketball team and up to 16 towers are planned. Construction activity stopped in December and won’t resume until a residents’ opposition lawsuit is resolved. The developer, Forest City Ratner, has delayed closing on a deal to purchase all the land until they have enough financing for the $4 billion megaproject.
Posted by lumi at 5:28 AM
March 25, 2009
Boro shopping stripped: New report says Brooklyn is hardest hit by shuttering of small businesses
NY Daily News
By Jeff Wilkins, Amanda Prescott and Erin Durkin
Hard times are compounded by Bruce Ratner's Atlantic Yards ghost town, for one small business owner located near the footprint of the project.
Paul Laidlow, the owner of Living Lights near Clinton Ave., added that the nearby Atlantic Yards project's dormant construction site has also driven shoppers away from the avenue.
"I had my eyes on that project as the lifeline of my business," said Laidlow. "Right now, it's basically survival. We're not even looking to make profit. ... We may not be here much longer if it doesn't turn around."
Posted by lumi at 5:21 AM
March 19, 2009
Best Western Adds Sunset Park, Downtown Hotels
Brooklyn Daily Eagle
In a recent article covering plans for new hotels in Brooklyn, reporter Linda Collins forgot the "cow pie" meter:
If you believe that Bruce Ratner's Atlantic Yards project is NOT in Downtown Brooklyn, despite claims by the overdeveloper's marketing materials, this one is even more of a stretch:
Best Western Downtown Brooklyn, 1324 Atlantic Ave. at Nostrand Avenue in Bed-Stuy, is expected to be the first completed, with its opening anticipated this summer.
Last we checked Bruce Ratner hasn't built the arena or the rest of Atlantic Yards, but someone forgot to tell hotelier Mukesh Patel:
He has had a lot of negative comments about the hotel’s location but he had that for the others, too. “But today, Fourth Avenue is changing,” he said. “Today, everyone is going to Williamsburg.” “This [Atlantic Avenue] location is not far from Downtown Brooklyn, it’s not far from the new stadium and Atlantic Yards development, and it’s easy to reach me: by public transportation — there is a Long Island Railroad station right in front of my property.”
Posted by lumi at 5:33 AM
March 14, 2009
Downtown B’klyn to get Hyatt, Best Western
The Brooklyn Daily Eagle
by Linda Collins
This article talks about the coming glut of hotel rooms in downtown Brooklyn. It is estimated that if all the proposed devlopment is completed, there will be 2,000 hotel rooms in the area.
The article concludes by making mention of the hotel rooms that would be added by the proposed Atlantic Yards project.
And this does not include the proposed hotels at Brooklyn Bridge Park (100-200 rooms) and in Forest City Ratner’s Atlantic Yards Plan (150 rooms in “Miss Brooklyn”).
NoLandGrab: Not only is Atlantic Yards not in downtown Brooklyn, there is currently no estimate as to when, if ever, "Miss Brooklyn" might be built.
Posted by steve at 8:08 AM
After the Bubble
New York Times
By Jonathan Mahler
One might think that The New York Times was going out of its way to misrepresent the proposed Atlantic Yards development. In an article in this weekend's real estate supplement, the author recalls a meeting with then deputy mayor for economic development, Dan Doctoroff. Atlantic Yards is mentioned as part of Mayor Michael Bloomberg's master plan (emphasis added).
As a violent summer storm raged outside, Doctoroff sketched out for me Bloomberg’s ambitious plans for New York. The rail yards and warehouses of the far West Side would be replaced by condos, hotels and retail stores. Thousands of apartment units and a new arena for the Nets would rise on the site of the Atlantic Yards in downtown Brooklyn. Penn Station would undergo a gut renovation (and be renamed after Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan). Lower Manhattan would be transformed into a recreational playground, with cafes, performing-arts pavilions, ball fields, an outdoor ice rink, even a floating garden on the East River.
"Atlantic Yards" is the name of a proposed mixed-use development planned for Prospect Heights, Brooklyn.
-The location of the development is Prospect Heights (or at least say "Vanderbilt Yards" if you're thinking about the Long Island Railroad facility).
-The location is outside of downtown Brooklyn.
-Only about a third of Atlantic Yards would be built over the existing rail yard. The rest would be built by razing the adjoining part of Prospect Heights.
Posted by steve at 7:50 AM
March 13, 2009
After taking over Governors Island and Brooklyn Bridge Park, would the city oversee Atlantic Yards? Nah
Atlantic Yards Report
NYC is planning on taking over the Governor's Island project and is thinking of doing the same for Brooklyn Bridge Park. Norman Oder explains why Bruce Ratner's controversial Atlantic Yards project won't go the same route:
Now, why wouldn't New York City want to take over Atlantic Yards? Well, first of all, it's not a joint city-state project; rather, it's a state project with city contributions.
...
Let me suggest several other reasons the city wouldn't take over:
- the project requires a state override of city zoning
- a city takeover would make a mockery of the lack of city input during the approval process
- a state agency, the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC), not a city one, has proposed using eminent domain
- the ESDC has led the way defending the project in court
- the city doesn't have any more money to contribute
- City Council member Letitia James, an AY opponent, might have some questions
- City Council members Bill de Blasio and David Yassky, sometime AY critics and current attention-seeking citywide candidates, also might have questions
- AY is a political hot potato, likely the only project that elected officials and civic groups have opposed as unworthy of federal stimulus funds
Posted by lumi at 6:10 AM
Hotels’ shaky bet on success in Brooklyn
Crowds flock to downtown Brooklyn’s Fulton Street Mall for discount school clothes at Cookies or hip-hop wear at Jimmy Jazz. But a new industry is in a risky bid during the recession to dominate the area: luxury hotels.
MetroNY
By Amy Zimmer
Even the hotel portion of Bruce Ratner's Atlantic Yards megaproject is looking like it's not going to fly, as a staggering number of hotel rooms are already in the pipeline in Brooklyn during a serious citywide occupancy downturn.
A staggering 2,000 hotel rooms are in the pipeline for downtown Brooklyn — 750 alone on Duffield Street, a tiny block off of Fulton believed to have been a stop on the Underground Railroad.
“If a new hotel doesn’t have financing, it’s not going up,” said Dan Lesser, of CB Richard Ellis. “That’s just the reality.”
...
Manhattan’s hotels filled only 67 percent of their rooms last month, according to preliminary data from PKF Consulting. A year ago they were 82 percent full. Average room prices plummeted from $250 to $206.
Posted by lumi at 6:00 AM
March 12, 2009
Changes at 470 Vanderbilt: The Box plus a new residential building
Atlantic Yards Report
The real news in a report on plans for the conversion and expansion of the former Atlantic Telecom building on the northwest corner of Atlantic and Vanderbilt avenues may be the land valuation.
In April 2007, I wrote about Forest City Ratner's flirtation with a plan to add 470 Vanderbilt Avenue, a nine-story former tire plant turned significantly empty telecom center just north of Atlantic Avenue, to the Atlantic Yards footprint.
That plan went by the wayside, and the telecom center became increasingly empty. But now it's showing signs of major changes: a renovation and rebranding of the office space, with new new retail, plus a new residential building slated for the site's large parking lot.
And there's an important Atlantic Yards connection; follow along to the bottom and take note of the assessed value of the land.
...Assessed land value: under $11
It's worth looking at Department of Finance records to see the latest assessment. While DOF does not provide the square footage of the site, multiplying the dimensions (441.67 feet x 218.92 feet) yields a lot size of 96,690 square feet. PropertyShark calculates 90,500 square feet.
The land is valued by the city at $990,000.
That's under $11 a square foot. Such valuations near the Atlantic Yards site will become increasingly relevant if and when the arena block is assessed for the purposes of issuing tax-exempt bonds, especially given the example of Yankee Stadium.
NoLandGrab: To make the numbers work for those bonds, the valuation of the land beneath the planned arena would have to be many, many times that of 470 Vanderbilt, which is just a stone's throw away.
Posted by eric at 9:50 AM
March 9, 2009
Smith: How Bloomberg Could Finally Build Moynihan Station
NY Magazine, "Daily Intel"
By Chris Smith
The state sponsor of Bruce Ratner's Atlantic Yards megaproject gets dissed by an unnamed government official in an article about efforts to get the Moynihan Station project back on track (emphasis added):
It would be wildly premature to hire another stonecutter, but there is new hope that Moynihan Station will get underway. Senator Chuck Schumer, with the help of the recession, has reframed the project along its original lines: Creating a new transportation hub instead of redeveloping a vast stretch of Midtown West all at once by moving Madison Square Garden to Ninth Avenue, as private developers Vornado and Related Companies intended to do when they won bidding rights four years ago. “Vornado and Related can’t get financing for the larger project right now, and they don’t know where they’re putting the buildings,” a government official says. “Dealing with trying to move Madison Square Garden is an intractable mess, and ESDC [New York State’s development agency] is not capable of running such a project. So this simplifies things by putting the Port Authority in charge and making transportation the central part of the project again.”
NoLandGrab: We can't speak for the competency of the ESDC, however it is commonly believed that it was chosen so the Atlantic Yards project would be scrutinized under a less stringent land-use review process and, by law, the State could supercede all local zoning restrictions.
Posted by lumi at 5:33 AM
March 7, 2009
The Answer to Our Question About NYC Density - Destiny Is National News
Noticing New York
Plans to close portions of Manhattan's Broadway to vehicular traffic probably bring a smile to pedestrians. However, this policy is an indication that the City's approach to development has led to too great a density.
In the case of midtown Manhattan, closing streets to traffic is a possible safety valve. But what safety valve could Mayor Michael Bloomberg use in Brooklyn for the density-busting Atlantic Yards? (Emphasis added.)
The shutting down of the street space is also “answer” to the density question in another sense: although it was likely not anticipated when more density was being created, it serves as an after-the-fact escape valve adjustment to deal with it. That raises the question in our mind: What will happen in those situations where we build to cram in maximum additional density and we don’t have extra streets and avenues to close down as an escape valve or way to adjust when it turns out that we get more congestion than we can otherwise handle? The question is urgent because cramming in maximum additional density is the new Bloombergian planning style.
We are thinking in particular of areas of the city that will experiment with combining superblocks with never before tried levels of density with FARs (zoning code parlance for “Floor to Area Ratio”i.e. “density”) that only become legally possible with such street closings. Ironically, important acknowledged urbanists like Jane Jacobs would call for more streets and avenues (particularly for pedestrians) as a means to cope with high density. Two examples of situations where we therefore may be building without the kind of escape valve option being used here are Atlantic Yards and, considered by the City Planning Commission only last Wednesday, construction of a dense new superblock of towers at what is now Fordham University’s midtown campus site.
Posted by steve at 6:33 AM
March 4, 2009
Plenty of rooms & deals - but no one's staying
NY Daily News
By Elizabeth Hays
According to an article in yesterday's Daily News, there's a glut of hotel rooms in Brooklyn, with more on the way:
As Brooklyn’s hotel boom goes bust, it’s hard times for hotel proprietors. But, for visitors, it’s never been better.
...
"Brooklyn . . . is hurting pretty bad," said hotel developer Sam Chang, who opened five Brooklyn hotels in recent years, including the Holiday Inn Express on Union St., but sold off his last one two years ago."There are too many hotels," he added.
The situation is only going to get worse if the economy doesn't pick up quickly, proprietors predicted.
Nearly 800 luxury hotel rooms are currently under construction downtown, according to the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership, including a Sheraton hotel set to open this spring.
Still, other projects are hoping additional construction days will help them ride out the recession.
NoLandGrab: Every few months or so, as the tide shifts in the local real estate market, Bruce Ratner predictably lets on that the configuration of his Atlantic Yards scheme has changed. When commercial vacancies were way down in Manhattan, the signature tower was primarily devoted to offices. Then the condo market was on fire, and planned office space morphed into luxury condos. [Officially, as a hedge, two configurations have been approved by NY State.] For the past couple of years, Brooklyn couldn't host enough hotels, and, like magic, Ratner included a hotel in his plans.
The moral of the story is that the Atlantic Yards is actually a big "whatever" — just give Bruce more money and he'll figure it out along the way. The public doesn't really need Atlantic Yards and this article is more proof that the marketplace doesn't need Atlantic Yards.
Unfortunately, the one feature of Atlantic Yards that the public seems to need or want is the affordable housing, which is supposed to get under way when the "whatever" gets built.
Posted by lumi at 4:46 AM
March 1, 2009
Huge glut of office space coming soon
Queens Crap
From Bloomberg:
New York’s biggest banks and securities firms may relinquish 8 million square feet of office space this year, deepening the worst commercial property slump in more than a decade as they abandon a record amount of property.
JPMorgan Chase & Co., Citigroup Inc., bankrupt Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and industry rivals have vacated 4.6 million feet, a figure that may climb by another 4 million as businesses leave or sublet space they no longer need, according to CB Richard Ellis Group Inc., the largest commercial property broker.
What a great time to build Willets Point and Atlantic Yards up with offices!
Posted by steve at 5:47 AM
February 21, 2009
Manhattan on Sale
Barron's
by Leslie P. Norton
With all the awful goings-ons in the financial markets this week, what did Barron's choose to put on its cover this week? A report on New York City's teetering luxury real estate market.
First came Miami, Las Vegas and Phoenix. Now Manhattan's high-end housing market is cratering. With Wall Street firms stepping up layoffs, and money for big-ticket mortgages drying up quickly, prices for new york apartments and townhouses of $5 million or more have been falling and may well drop by another 30% before finally bottoming out. That could help turn the Big Apple into the ugliest housing market in America.
While Barron's reported three months ago that the New York luxury market was headed for trouble ("Sand Castles," Nov. 24, 2008), the outlook has become notably worse, with some experts citing the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers as the breaking point.
The local economy is reeling as the securities industry moves to cut some 46,000 jobs by the summer of 2010. Affluent investors have pulled back from house shopping to nurse wounds inflicted by the stock market. Even that most voracious of buyers -- the hedge-fund manager -- has lost his appetite, as angry investors yank their money from his funds.
article [subscription required]
NoLandGrab: Sure, Manhattan's not Brooklyn, but this can't bode well for big, Manhattan-style luxury high-rise buildings in outer boroughs that haven't yet broken ground, like, um, those planned for Atlantic Yards. It's very possible that market assumptions for the project's nearly two thousand condo units are now out the window.
Posted by eric at 2:50 PM
February 13, 2009
Back and Forth: Developing Agenda with Marisa Lago
The Capitol
by Andrew J. Hawkins
A sharp-eyed reader tipped us off to this November interview with the president and CEO of the Empire State Development Corporation.
Over the summer, Gov. David Paterson (D) began to put together a team to run the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC), first appointing M&T Bank chief executive Robert Wilmers to chair the economic development agency. Two months later, he nominated former Citi executive Marisa Lago to be president and CEO.
Since then, Lago has been traveling to communities upstate and down in an effort to better acquaint herself with the state’s dire economic conditions. She agrees that times are tough for major development projects like Moynihan Station and Atlantic Yards, but sees opportunities for job growth and retention.
Lago talks about the search for a downstate chair, the need to improve infrastructure even during tough times, and the criticisms of Wilmers as a reluctant executive.
Posted by eric at 10:02 AM
February 3, 2009
Adventures in real estate: agent hypes property next to AY site
Atlantic Yards Report
Sometimes you have to wonder if descriptions of properties located near Atlantic Yards are intended as marketing or full disclosure:
Ingram & Hebron Realty, marketing three contiguous properties at 670-674-678 Pacific Street, bills them as "[d]irectly across the street from $4 billion Atlantic Yards/Nets Arena project" and advertises them using a deeply aspirational map of the AY footprint.
(Photo by Tracy Collins shows the brick Spalding building in the background, to the west on Pacific Street.)
After all, nothing has been built, and the property for sale/lease would directly border the site of Building 15, which would first serve as a staging area for arena construction, should it go forward, and then, in four years or more, become the home of a 272-foot tower. It could take decades, if ever, to build the towers in Phase 2, east of the arena block.
In other words, anyone living or working at that location had better bring earplugs.
Posted by lumi at 5:17 AM
From Ratner to Trump?
Atlantic Yards Report
A high-profile official at another highly leveraged development company asserts that they are looking for opportunities to take over projects stimied by the current economic climate. Then again, Ivanka did work for the Brucester.
Posted by lumi at 4:45 AM
January 28, 2009
Atlantic Yards as footnote
The troubled Atlantic Yards project frequently pops up as a context-setter — usually as the what-not-to-do example.
BrooklynPaper.com, What’s up, Dock? Lobbying fees, that’s what
For example, when Bruce Ratner’s Atlantic Yards project was nearing its approval by Albany lawmakers in 2006, the developer spent $2.105 million to lobby elected and appointed officials, up from less than $500,000 the year before.
Brooklyn The Borough, An Update on Brooklyn Bridge Park
With even Bruce Ratner scaling back, who is going to invest in more overpriced residences during an economic crisis?
Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Navy Yard, B’klyn Waterfront Are Bright Lights in Otherwise Dismal ’09 Econ. Outlook
George Sweeting, deputy director of the NYC Independent Budget Office and the panelist focusing on the city as a whole, also said a turnaround is far off.
...Asked about [Forest City Ratner’s] Atlantic Yards arena project, Sweeting said “It may be time for the city to take another look at it. It’s pretty clear it will not look like originally planned.”
Posted by eric at 9:26 AM
January 26, 2009
IF YOU CAN’T SELL ’EM, RENT ’EM
The Brooklyn Paper
By Mike McLaughlin
Activity in the luxury condo market around the block from Bruce Ratner's controversial Atlantic Yards arena and highrise project paints a bleak picture for the need for more luxury housing in the area:
Sales of luxury apartments in the majestic and phallic Williamsburgh Savings Bank building are so sluggish that the owner will rent the unsold units until the economy improves — the latest proof that the real-estate market has gone to hell in a rent basket.
Brooklyn’s tallest building, once predominantly filled with dental offices and now a 190-unit tower called “One Hanson Place,” earlier this year was proudly boasting of an upper-floor apartment with wraparound views of the New York skyline that cost $6 million, but is now trying to fill the last 19 domiciles with rent ranging from $3,400 to $4,800 per month, according to the Stribling Properties Web site.
NoLandGrab: One of the more curious details of Ratner's struggle to build Atlantic Yards has been the occasional announcement that the proportion of housing and commercial space has once again changed. When there was a boom in the price of office space, the formerly-known-as Miss Brooklyn signature skyscraper was supposed to be an office tower. As the luxury condo market soared, Ratner changed his mind and added condos. Two different plans were approved by the Public Authorities Control Board to help Ratner continue to hedge his bet, underscoring the fact that neither is truly in demand.
Predictably, none of the promised affordable housing that is being used to promote Ratner's project will get built if the arena and office space-slash-luxury condos are stalled.
Posted by lumi at 5:01 AM
January 21, 2009
Speaking of Mythical Places
Develop Don't Destroy posted an item on something we all missed. It appears that the powers that be in New Jersey are concerned that groundbreaking on their Xanadu get started before Bruce Ratner's Shangri-La:
From the January 15th Bergen Record:
Codey questions Xanadu's viability
State Senate President Richard Codey strongly questioned the viability of the struggling [Meadowlands] Xanadu project today, given the repeated delays in its opening as well as the downturn in the national economy.
Former Govs. Jim Florio, left, Richard Codey and Donald DiFrancesco were part of a roundtable discussion on the Meadowlands. "I think it’s a race to see which project is put in the grave first: the Brooklyn [Barclays] arena or Xanadu," Codey said, referring also to the Nets’ long-deferred attempt to move out of the Izod Center...
Posted by lumi at 5:01 AM
January 16, 2009
EDC: City Not a One-Trick Pony
GlobeSt.com
By Paul Bubny
NEW YORK CITY-"We are undeniably in difficult times," Tokumbo Shobowale, COO of the New York City Economic Development Corp., told an Associated Builders and Owners audience on Wednesday. However, he said that in many ways the city is better prepared to withstand the current downturn than it was following 9/11, thanks in large part to a diversifying economy. "We’re no longer a one-trick pony," Shobowale said.
NoLandGrab: Yeah we're, like, a three-trick pony, that is if you're counting boondoggles for sports team owners, or eminent-domain-abusing megaprojects.
The timelines of two major Brooklyn EDC initiatives--revitalizing Coney Island and the Atlantic Yards project--are less clearly defined at the moment. Shobowale said the goal with Coney Island is to turn it into a 12-month tourist destination, but at present there are only a few acres of the arcades and rides that made the area famous. Forward movement on Atlantic Yards hinges on developer Forest City Ratner Cos. lining up financing, he said, pointing out that the renewed commitment of Barclays to the project is an encouraging sign.
NLG: Ugh, Coney Island is now famous for even less than a few acres of arcades and rides, and we can't decide who is more to blame, developer Joseph Sitt or Mayor Bloomberg.
Meanwhile, "Forward movement on Atlantic Yards hinges on" more than financing: Forest City needs to renegotiate its existing debt burden, continue to feed operating losses from the NJ Nets, and deal with legal suits, a sour credit market, etc.
And since when is Atlantic Yards a "major Brooklyn EDC initiative?" The Mayor signed over New York City's role to the Empire State Development Corporation a long, long time ago.
Posted by lumi at 4:55 AM
January 12, 2009
Door slams shut on New York City’s property boom
Taipei Times
AFP, NEW YORK
Bruce Ratner's struggling Atlantic Yards megaproject is the current celebrity spokesmodel for the flagging NYC construction industry and real estate market:
Manhattan has traditionally been a real estate fortress, protected from wider trends simply by the facts that so many people want to be here and space on the island is finite.
Not any longer.
...
Construction, one of the great New York industries, is also stuttering.Reports suggest that at least US$4 billion worth of construction projects have been cancelled or delayed, among them a 16-storey tower and basketball arena project in the Atlantic Yards neighborhood.
“No one wants to take the risk of putting up a new building,” Harbert said.
The picture is similar in the residential market.
NoLandGrab: BTW, the "neighborhood" is "Prospect Heights" — "Atlantic Yards" is the name of the project.
Posted by lumi at 4:49 AM
January 9, 2009
Builder: This ‘Domino’ won’t fall
Th Brooklyn Paper
By Ben Muessig
Bruce Ratner's Atlantic Yards arena and highrise megaproject is now the official totally floundering, ill-conceived, way-too-expensive poster project:
The developer behind Brooklyn’s second biggest construction project says that he’s doing fine — even though his foes are hoping that the softening economy will do to his oversized project what it did to Atlantic Yards.
Posted by lumi at 5:08 AM
January 7, 2009
Markowitz Supports Reopening the Jail and Adding Retail
Gowanus Lounge
Atlantic Yards makes a cameo in GL's report on the Borough President's support for the re-opening of the Brooklyn House of Detention. And yes, the Beep apparently really did say that "Brooklyn families have a right to expect reasonable commuting to visit detained relatives as opposed to the extreme burden of traveling to Rikers Island.”
And we can reassure everyone that Mr. Markowitz has not suggested a Frank Gehry-designed prison at Atlantic Yards should Bruce Ratner cut bait and run, leaving the Beepster twisting in the wind of one of New York’s most historically disastrous failed megaprojects.
NoLandGrab: Stranger things have happened, at least in Springfield, where the Frank Gehry-designed Cultural Center quickly became The Montgomery Burns State Prison (highlights below).
Posted by eric at 1:42 PM
January 6, 2009
Plans for population growth may be off
MetroNY
By Amy Zimmer
In better times, city officials banked on a population boom, but the recession has some urban planners saying the Bloomberg administration may need to reconsider its rosy estimate of a city of 9.1 million people in 2030.
Expectations of a population spike were buoyed by massive construction projects such as the troubled Hudson and Atlantic yards.
“The downturn in the real estate market signals that the city’s population is not likely to increase in the near-term future,” said Tom Angotti of Hunter College’s Center for Community Planning and Development.
Posted by lumi at 4:25 AM
January 5, 2009
Destroying Coney Island to save it
MetroNY
By Neil deMause
After two straight years of “last summer ever!” at Coney, 2009 is starting to feel like the end for real. Astroland itself is in the process of being packed up — possibly for shipment to Australia — leaving only the Cyclone and the smaller Deno’s Wonder Wheel Park as remnants of Coney’s once-great amusement district.
...
Such is what’s become of the city’s 4-year-old plan to “revitalize” Coney Island via a sweeping rezoning plan to bring in housing and “entertainment retail.”
...
[Developer Joseph] Sitt’s money-grubbing has drawn lots of deserved jeers, but Coney has plenty of company as a failed example of Bloomberg development policy: Hudson Yards, Atlantic Yards, Willets Point, all of which promise to end up as empty holes commemorating the popping of the real estate bubble (let’s not even get into Ground Zero). A Jan. 14 meeting by the Municipal Art Society is expected to turn into a last-ditch push for the city to call a timeout on its rezoning and go back to the drawing board. It’s a bit late for “think before you act,” but better late than never.
Yesterday, Gowanus Lounge featured a video of Coney Island's makeshift memorial.
Posted by lumi at 5:46 AM
December 31, 2008
GL’s 2009 Brooklyn Deathwatch: Five Rotting Corpses???
Gowanus Lounge
Here is a list of 5 development development projects that are thought to have one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel. Topping the list of projects is the one that we'd like most to see pushing up daisies: the not-dead-yet Atlantic Yards.
Last year, we went out on a limb and predicted the Gowanus Whole Foods project wouldn’t happen. It hasn’t. Yet. This year there are oh-so-many projects that one can predict will be scaled back or do the Dance of Death. Here are a few to chew on:
- Atlantic Yards. We think there is a good chance most of the project will choke on its own excess, including the arena, because of the credit crunch. Unless, of course, Forest City Ratner succeeds in getting a taxpayer bailout to make it happen. If the arena does happen, we predict a crappy Prudential Center-like structure that would be built at half the cost of Frank Gehry’s work. So, maybe it’s not an entirely dead and rotting corpse, yet, but the thing is already on life support.
Posted by steve at 3:12 PM
December 27, 2008
Downturn Ends Building Boom in New York
New York Times
By Christine Haughney
This article does not mention the proposed Atlantic Yards project, but it provides one context for evaluating claims made by certain developers and State agencies about the project moving forward.
Nearly $5 billion in development projects in New York City have been delayed or canceled because of the economic crisis, an extraordinary body blow to an industry that last year provided 130,000 unionized jobs, according to numbers tracked by a local trade group.
The setbacks for development — perhaps the single greatest economic force in the city over the last two decades — are likely to mean, in the words of one researcher, that the landscape of New York will be virtually unchanged for two years.
“There’s no way to finance a project,” said the researcher, Stephen R. Blank of the Urban Land Institute, a nonprofit group.
Posted by steve at 8:28 AM
December 24, 2008
Construction unions may finance building projects
Crain's NY Business
As Forest City Enterprises deals with cash flow woes and tries to keep plans for the Atlantic Yards megaproject alive, here's something to keep track of:
New York construction unions, anxious to keep their members employed as building in the city slows, are exploring starting a fund to help finance real estate projects.
Ed Malloy, President of the Building and Construction Trades Council, says the unions may put $100 million of pension fund money into a fund that would fund various construction projects. However, he said the unions would seek matching funds from the city and the state to create a fund of $300 million. A proposal will be sent to government officials next year.
“As the days go on you hear about more projects with financial problems and we really want to do something to help,” said Mr. Malloy.
Posted by lumi at 5:03 AM
December 12, 2008
Yes to Dock St project
The Brooklyn Paper comes out in support of the Dock St. project because the public review process forced the developer to propose improvements to the design, something that never happened in the case of Atlantic Yards:
Walentas needs a zoning change to make his Dock Street dream a reality.
That requirement allowed community leaders and elected officials to pick apart the original project, a process that revealed its flaws and prevented it from being built.
Such public review was entirely lacking at Bruce Ratner’s Atlantic Yards, where a cursory environmental impact review found serious flaws, yet because no approval was needed by a local agency or elected official, the flaws were never corrected.
On Dock Street, however, the system worked: A flawed project was rejected, and the developer went back to the drawing board and returned with a better design that includes substantial public benefits.
Posted by lumi at 4:41 AM
December 10, 2008
Empty lot — and empty promises? — at Court St project
The Brooklyn Paper managed to report the big news that work has been halted on the MTA railyards for Bruce Ratner's Atlantic Yards megaproject, toward the end of an article on a Carroll Gardens project that has been suspended for quite a while now:
The developers of a controversial residential project on Court Street have quietly halted construction for at least six months, raising anxiety that the empty lot will haunt the main drag of Carroll Gardens during this increasingly dire economic downturn.
Here's the second-to-last paragraph:
The same can be said for the borough’s main construction project, Atlantic Yards. The Daily News reported last week that construction at the 16-skyscraper, arena, residential and office space project has halted, pending developer Bruce Ratner’s purchase of land from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the conclusion of several pending lawsuits.
NoLandGrab: Satisfied Atlantic Yards opponents can just shut up now.
Posted by lumi at 5:40 AM
December 7, 2008
As city housing agency considers bonds for Albee Square tower, FUREE promises a protest
Atlantic Yards Report
The now-demolished Albee Square Mall site in Downtown Brooklyn is slated to become the CityPoint tower, and the image at right from the CityPoint web site presumably illustrates the target audience.
...
FUREE protestHowever, Families United for Racial and Economic Equality (FUREE), a fierce critic of plans emanating from the Downtown Brooklyn rezoning, has called (below) for members to protest the plan, stating, "The developers who bought the historic Albee Square Mall and evicted all the small businesses there are now asking the City for $400 million for the 60 story luxury tower they want to build."
Actually, it's $400 million in low-interest financing, not a $400 million grant. Such bonds, which can carry an interest rate of some 175 basis points less--e.g., 4.25% vs. 6%--are attractive to borrowers. The federal government, which takes the hit on lost interest, limits each state's allocation.
FUREE argues that the building should include 50% low-income affordable housing. (Atlantic Yards, btw, was initially promoted as 50% affordable, given 20% low-income rentals, and 30% middle- and moderate-income rentals among the 4500 rentals, but the addition of 1930 condos--at least 1730 market-rate--would bring the affordability ratio down.)
Posted by amy at 9:05 AM
November 25, 2008
President's message: Eyes on the horizon
New York Real Estate Journal
by James McCullar, FAIA
However, when institutions such as St. Vincent's Hospital and Columbia University need to modernize through expansion, or new developments such as Hudson Yards and Atlantic Yards transform existing typologies, they often confront resistance from established neighborhoods and civic organizations. New growth is imperative if a city is to remain competitive in the global marketplace; yet those needs must be synthesized with existing contexts and expectations for sustainable communities.
The Wall Street collapse and crisis in global financial markets has unexpectedly brought expectations for unlimited growth to a halt. The New York Building Congress has projected the worst is yet to come in 2010 after projects in the pipeline dry up. However, as Governor Paterson reminded us recently, some of the most significant infrastructure and landmarks in the city, such as Rockefeller Center, was built over periods of economic ups and downs - we must keep our eyes on the horizon.
The silver lining in this cloud will be the opportunity for architects to work together with government, the development community, and civic organizations to plan more thoughtfully for the next cycle of growth, and to rethink projects hastily conceived in the rush of the recent real estate boom. As our workload slows down, we will all have more time to think about the future.
Finding the right balance presents an enormous challenge and demands a creative collaboration often missing in recent new developments where government overrides local concerns. We must be careful not to replicate the errors of our modernist past. Above all we must look back on this period as having created something good that will be remembered by future generations.
Posted by eric at 12:54 PM
Developer Chakrabarti: environmental review process is "workfare" for lawyers and consultants
Atlantic Yards Report
A lot of community groups don't like the environmental review process that, under city, state, and national law, requires elaborate disclosure documents that are burdensome to produce but not necessarily helpful.
And developers don't like them, either.
According to Vishaan Chakrabarti, the Executive Vice President of Design and Planning for the Related Companies:
"Our environmental impact process is completely flawed," he said. "Our regulatory process for a project like Moynihan Station--probably over $15 million has been spent on environmental work that no one will ever read, that is its own kind of workfare program for lawyers and consultants.”
Posted by lumi at 5:10 AM
November 21, 2008
What Decrepit Brooklyn Nabe Gets (In Dreams) This Gleaming Waterfront Park?
Runnin' Scared [Village Voice blog]
Forest City makes a cameo in this brief piece casting doubt on the likelihood of a newly proposed Brooklyn waterfront development coming to fruition.
One of the bright sides of a collapsing economy is that developers -- who normally treat us peons like, well, peons -- are getting their asses kicked. Forest City Enterprises, the home office of Atlantic Yards villain Bruce Ratner, has lost 93 percent of its share value this year. Brooklynites are even starting to reach across neighborhoods to hassle builders. Up your ass like a war of class, richies!
Posted by eric at 1:17 PM
November 20, 2008
The 28 of '08
Busted! New York real estate took a wallop this year—the properties that saw it all and survived to tell us something
NY Observer
What a year, eh? Arab money, Irish money, federal money, no money! This year was the annum when the party stopped and the hangover started, and New Yorkers slept little in between. Both the residential and commercial real estate markets stormed into Jan. 1 of this year happy and bloated, wafted along by hefty credit markets, an indifferent government and a can-do fervor.
And why not? Last year had marked record amounts of investment and apartment and building sales. And the possibilities appeared endless, as lenders poured capital in and buyers yanked it out to satiate markets where $5,000 for a square foot of condo space or $1 billion for an office building felt normal and never-ending.
So long to all that.
As 2008 closes, certain properties stand emblematic of the year’s triumphs and tribulations. Below comes a ranking of the 28 most representative—the towers, sites, stores, developments and complexes that captured a New York City in transition from thrill to chill, and that show the direction of the city property-wise in 2009 and beyond.
...No. 25 of 28: Atlantic Yards
article [Click on the dot in central Brooklyn for the lowdown]
Posted by eric at 9:05 AM
November 16, 2008
Initial results of Imagine Coney to be presented tomorrow
Atlantic Yards Report
After two public meetings and two design meetings last week for the Imagine Coney project, the Municipal Art Society will unveil the design team's initial recommendations on Monday at 6:30 PM at the BAMCafe upstairs at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Reservations are recommended.Initial ideas
While the design team obviously isn't wedded to suggestions from the public, the MAS has provided a list of "top public ideas," some of which are far more realistic than the others.
* Create a Venice, CA-style Muscle Beach
* Brooklyn Nets/Nudie Bar/Gambling (note that these are not linked)
* Hologram Facility/Video Wormhole
* Dig Hole to China
* Reestablish Massive Clock
* Outdoor Stage/Indoor Theater for Public Use
* New Fanciful Architecture
* Best Water Ride Ever
* Robots
* Adult Fun
* New Old Rides
* National Eating Hall of Fame (my idea)
* Transport Rides
* Be in Video Game
* Laser Water Show
* Interspecies Friendship
Posted by amy at 9:31 AM
November 12, 2008
In Coney Island Visions report, new ideas, express dreams, and AY avoidance
Atlantic Yards Report
Observing that the city's truncated Coney Island plan--an apparent accommodation to developer Joe Sitt--"greatly reduces the area set aside for open-air amusements and puts too much faith in 'entertainment retail,'" the Center for an Urban Future yesterday issued a report called Coney Island Visions, asking thinkers from a variety of fields about Coney Island's future.
The effort is a partnership with the Municipal Art Society (MAS), which recently began the Imagine Coney initiative. While the MAS is soliciting advice from everybody, the Center for an Urban Future consulted amusement industry veteran, writers, architects, urban planners, and historians. Most have not been involved in the details of the development debate but were asked to provide a broader picture.
The first person quoted in the report brought up Atlantic Yards is an example of what not to do.
NoLandGrab: More evidence that Atlantic Yards is the poster project for top-down, coercive, community-unfriendly planning and development.
Imagine Coney? Here are three ideas: amusement museum; eating contest Hall of Fame; and street hoops haven
And while we're on the topic of Coney Island, Norman Oder offers three fun ideas for redevelopment of the world-famous amusement destination.
Posted by lumi at 6:02 AM
Will Extell Prove That Diamonds are Forever?
NBCNewYork.com
Extell's Gary Barnett has always been a maverick of sorts in the development world. He was the only rival bidder to Bruce Ratner at Atlantic Yards (even though the cause was hopeless). He bought up most of the insular Diamond District to assemble air rights for a skyscraper to be built smack in the middle of it. He wore a baseball cap to the unveiling of the Hudson Yards bids. A maverick, indeed, but that might be the problem: times have been tough for mavericks of late.
NoLandGrab: In one of the most intersting chapters of the Atlantic Yards saga, the mavericky developer Gary Barnett submitted a rival bid to the MTA for the development rights over the railyard. Despite Barnett's higher bid, the MTA decided to give Ratner another shot and subsequently awarded the rights to... Ratner!
Posted by lumi at 5:40 AM
November 9, 2008
Science Park has winning formula
crain's
Steve Garmhausen
Drug development company NaniRx Therapeutics will soon outgrow its 2,000-square-foot space near Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center. In years past, the company would have been considering a move outside the city.Instead, executives have their eyes on what's likely to become one of New York's hottest neighborhoods for biotechs: the East River Science Park.
The development “is going to allow us to stay in New York City,” says David Cohen, chief executive.
Larger developments, including the $4 billion, 8 million-square-foot Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn and the $15 billion, 26-acre Hudson Yards on the West Side, are drawing more attention than the Science Park. But its Manhattan location and narrow focus are likely to make it a hot spot for small firms that work in the bioscience world. That includes not only biotechs, but law firms and the investment banks that serve them.
article
NoLandGrab: Fascinating - a proposed development that actually has prospective tenants in mind? Isn't it more fun to just say "if we build it they will come...or the government will bail us out?"
Posted by amy at 11:55 AM
November 8, 2008
Downtown Office Growth Continues Despite Recession
Brooklyn Daily Eagle
Dennis Holt reports on the recent NY Times article about businesses moving to Downtown Brooklyn.
The centerpiece of the new Downtown will probably turn out to be the City Point development, where the Albee Square Mall used to be. It will be very large and will be located in the old Downtown Brooklyn business core.The current plan calls for creating about 500,000 square feet of office space. Anchor tenants will probably be acquired before everything is completed. Oddly, the Times’ report did not include this project.
It did mention Atlantic Yards, that somewhat spooked major development, and the potential of significant additional office space along with the sports arena. The point to note with it is that Atlantic Yards will create a second commercial and business center.
It will be both part of an expanded Downtown business center and a new center of its own. How the new center evolves will depend on the progress of the Cultural District and other trends not yet predictable.
Posted by amy at 7:29 AM
November 4, 2008
World According to... Ivanka Trump
Portfolio
By Lloyd Grove
On more than one occasion (1, 2), Ivanka Trump has mentioned that she "earned her stripes working for rival real estate mogul Bruce Ratner," the implication being that she's not just daddy's little girl and that she can totally hold her own with straight-suited politically connected overdevelopers.
Posted by lumi at 5:01 AM
October 25, 2008
LPC Plans Hearing on Proposed Prospect Heights Historic District
Brooklyn Daily Eagle
by Linda Collins
The process for establishing the Prospect Heights Historic District continues.
A public hearing on the proposed Prospect Heights Historic District will be held Tuesday, Oct. 28, before the Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) in Manhattan.
...
The MAS, PHNDC and the hundreds of residents who wrote letters to the commission believe that the neighborhood’s rich historic architecture — with blocks of beautiful Italianate and neo-Grec rowhouses, interspersed with churches, small commercial and apartment buildings — was threatened by the Forest City Ratner’s Atlantic Yards project.
...
The public hearing is set to take place from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. in the conference room, 9th floor, at 1 Centre St. in Manhattan.
Posted by steve at 8:53 AM
October 22, 2008
Brooklyn's Top 50 Most Influential No. 31 - 40
Brownstoner
Several Atlantic Yards B-list celebs landed spots on B-stoner's Brooklyn's most influential list:
32. Joe Chan, Downtown Brooklyn Partnership
34. Michelle de la Uz, Fifth Avenue Committee
38. Bertha Lewis, ACORN
39. Urban Planners: Brad Lander, Pratt Center for Community Development, and Tom Angotti, Hunter College Center for Community Planning and Development
Posted by lumi at 6:14 AM
Condo of the Day: Newswalk Two-Bedroom
Brownstoner
How big a discount is Newswalk getting these days for the Atlantic Yards effect? Based on this two-bedroom apartment it certainly looks cheap.
Posted by lumi at 5:34 AM
October 20, 2008
Sunday in the Park at (New) Domino; the developer (obscurely) opens the door
Atlantic Yards Report
Norman Oder compares and contrasts the New Domino and Atlantic Yards projects.
Yesterday was an opportunity for a wide variety of Williamsburg residents to enjoy an afternoon in a remarkable space--the gritty concrete backyard of the closed Domino Sugar plant, open to the public--as the advertisement indicates--for the first time in a century.
...But who was behind this event? You couldn't tell from the advertisement (above) in the Brooklyn Downtown Star or the Courier-Life chain.
New Domino developers CPC Resources and Isaac Katan were not real open about their role, but the posters and other materials were far less egregious than any of Forest City Ratner's "liar fliers" or fake newspapers.
The New Domino project, unlike Atlantic Yards, will go through the city's Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP). The four acres of open space would be mapped as city parkland, again an improvement over the Atlantic Yards open space, which would be managed by a nonprofit organization.
And, of course, there's no way we could have a "Sunday in the Atlantic Yards open space," since so much depends on superblocks, unless someone closed off Pacific Street between Carlton and Vanderbilt avenues for a block party.
As with Atlantic Yards, however, the project is already delayed beyond its optimistic p.r.
Posted by eric at 10:33 AM
October 15, 2008
Construction industry to take hit from economy
Citywide, nearly 30,000 construction jobs could be lost by 2010 due to the economy, according to a new report. Construction spending will drop 22% to $26.2 billion in the same period.
Crain's NY Business
By Daniel Massey
If you believe this report, you have to assume that Bruce Ratner's Atlantic Yards project is in the eye of the credit crisis storm (emphasis added):
The credit crunch, a slowing economy and growing budget deficits will strip almost 30,000 construction jobs from the city’s workforce by 2010, bringing industry employment to its lowest level in more than 10 years, according to a report released Tuesday by the New York Building Congress.
...
The number of residential units constructed is expected to be nearly halved by 2010 to 18,500 with a falloff in spending of $2.2 billion. Nonresidential construction, including office space, institutional development and sports venues, will fall nearly 30% to $7.1 billion. And government projects—which remain the primary driver of construction activity in the city—will fall more than 15% to $14.4 billion by 2010.
NoLandGrab: BTW, that's 30,000 real jobs, not "Bruce Ratner jobs" (300 jobs over 100 years).
The NY Times, End Seen to New York Building Boom
From Charles Bagli's article on the same report:
The report confirms that construction and real estate activity tends to be a lagging indicator of economic health. Projects that got under way in the last two years are going forward despite a flagging economy. But experts say that new projects are being delayed.
...
The big question, [NY Building Congress President Richard T.] Anderson said, is whether the city and state will continue their commitment to capital spending on subway expansions, schools and other projects, or be forced to slash their budgets as tax revenues from Wall Street and real estate fall sharply.
NoLandGrab: The question is where does Bruce Ratner's controversial megaproject fit in this mess. NY City and State have committed hundreds of millions of dollars in direct subsidies, some below-grade work is underway, but many aspects of this large complicated project have ground to a halt and there isn't any marketplace momentum to get the project started.
Posted by lumi at 5:17 AM
October 9, 2008
On stage, the gentrification of Williamsburg: one actor, compelling characters, and some gaps
Atlantic Yards Report
Norman Oder reviews a one-man show about gentrification:
The prodigiously talented Danny Hoch, he of the one-man, multi-character shows “Jails, Hospitals, and Hip-Hop” and “Some People,” turns to his home neighborhood of Williamsburg in “Taking Over,” a deftly portrayed and thoroughly absorbing--yet at times frustrating--look at gentrification.
It’s admirable that Hoch pushed for free shows in the boroughs, and it’s worth paying good money to see him, a kinetic Jewish guy from Queens who's steeped in hip-hop. More than a mimic, he inhabits an array of characters, both gentrifiers and the gentrified, capturing the details that mark the tense transition from drug-ravaged 'hood to condo paradise, the loss of New York’s soul that got further attention since the first Jane Jacobs panel last year.
Hoch leaves us with some arresting images and the message, at least, to wake up, and to be willing to look your neighbor in the eye. I joined in the enthusiastic applause at the end of the show but hope that, as the show develops, Hoch might flesh it out more, the same way documentary theater artist Anna Deavere Smith deepened the show Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 by adding more ambiguity.
Posted by eric at 5:18 AM
October 8, 2008
Reality Bangs on Bloomberg's Development Door
Four more years may not help as finance crisis compounds uncertainty of big projects
The Real Estate Observer
Mayor Bloomberg is citing the current economic crisis as justification for casting aside the term-limit law, permitting him to run for a third term, but budget challenges could stand in the way of several planned megaprojects.
Reporter Eliot Brown assesses the local-megadevelopment landscape, which includes Bruce Ratner's highly subsidized Atlantic Yards arena and high-rise project in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn.
What another Bloomberg term would mean for approved developments such as the West Side rail yards and Atlantic Yards isn’t clear, but both developments require substantial investments where financing remains tricky. With Atlantic Yards, developer Forest City Ratner has yet to secure financing or to close on the nearly two-year-old deal, and has asked the city for a new infusion of subsidy.
As for development projects still seeking approval or those that need additional funding, the road could indeed be a rocky one, as city revenues over the next four years would take a major hit from a wounded financial sector.
“People would rather cut some long-term projects,” said John Tepper Marlin, former chief economist at the city comptroller’s office, “than cut regular workers, like police and fire and teachers.”
...
Generally, business leaders and fiscal experts credit Mr. Bloomberg with exercising fiscal discipline and express confidence in his ability to guide the city in a recession. Still, the amount of city debt accrued in his administration suggests that that, too, could compound budget problems in a third term. The total amount of city debt and obligations is slated to rise from $59 billion this year to more than $73 billion by 2011, according to city figures, and, should tax revenues fall, debt payments would take up a significantly larger portion of the budget. That, again, leaves less money for the big projects.
Atlantic Yards Report, "Total uncertainty," says Wylde about development projects (but is AY "shaky"?)
Norman Oder considers some of the opinions expressed in the Observer article and yesterday's Brooklyn Papers story, which described the status of the Atlantic Yards project as "shaky":
[T]he funding at issue, I suspect, may be linked less to the arena than the rest of the project. That means that, should legal challenges be resolved and tax-exempt arena bonds be made available, Forest City Ratner will go ahead and build the arena--and then might have leverage to extract subsidies for towers and additional infrastructure.
...
Well, there's certainly more doubt about AY than before, and there are a lot of moving parts and challenges, but that doesn't mean it's shaky or ready for a kill.
NoLandGrab: Though Norman may be quite right, it isn't too early to wonder who will finally pull the plug on Atlantic Yards: the State, which is wrestling with a budget gap in the several-billions of dollars; or Forest City Enterprises, which is covering the NJ Nets's approximately $40-million annual operating loss.
Posted by lumi at 6:13 AM
October 3, 2008
Failed Deals Replace Boom in New York Real Estate
The NY TImes
By Charles V. Bagli
Though this article from yesterday's Times does not mention Bruce Ratner's controversial Atlantic Yards project, it goes a long way in explaining the implications of the credit crisis on the local commercial and residential real estate market, and is a must-read for those who are trying to understand the possible effects on Ratner's megaproject:
Developers are complaining that lenders are now refusing to finance projects that were all but certain months or even weeks ago.
While Ratner is searching for an anchor tenant for Building One (formerly known as "Miss Brooklyn")...
Examples of aborted deals and troubled developments abound. Last Friday, HSBC, the big London-based bank, quietly tore up an agreement to move its American headquarters to 7 World Trade Center after bids for its existing home at 452 Fifth Avenue, between 39th and 40th Streets, came in 30 percent lower than the $600 million it wanted for the property.
A 40-story office tower under construction by SJP Properties at 42nd Street and Eighth Avenue for the past 18 months still does not have a tenant.
Ratner has already expressed some marketplace flexibility by issuing two configurations of Atlantic Yards, one devoting more space to commercial tenants, the other favoring more residential space. But Charles Bagli reports that the credit crisis affects both the commercial and residential properties:
Some developers who are currently erecting condominiums are trying to convert to rentals, while others are looking to sell the projects.
Existing bond-financing is also being affected:
Commercial properties are not the only ones facing problems. On Friday, Standard & Poor’s dropped its rating on the bonds used in Tishman’s $5.4 billion purchase of the Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village apartment complexes in 2006, the biggest real estate deal in modern history. Standard & Poor’s said it cut the rating, in part, because of an estimated 10 percent decline in the properties’ value and the rapid depletion of reserve funds.
The rating reduction shows the growing nervousness of lenders and investors about such deals, which have often involved aggressive — critics say unrealistic — projections of future income.
Posted by lumi at 7:48 AM
September 24, 2008
Planning Commission approves Willets Point plan
Crain's NY Business
by Matthew Sollars
The surprise here is that one of the 12 City Planning Commissioners actually voted against the Bloomberg administration's proposal to redevelop Willets Point, though City Council member Hiram Monseratte saved us the trouble by calling today's vote "a rubber stamp."
The Willets Point plan will now move to the City Council for a vote, where its fate is far from certain. A majority of council members have pledged to vote against the plan if it does not include a higher percentage of affordable housing. They have also objected to the use of eminent domain, something the city has not ruled out if it can’t come to terms with property owners to acquire the land there.
Posted by eric at 4:53 PM
September 22, 2008
Development Watch: Atlantic Terrace Rising
Brownstoner
Another dishonorable mention for Atlantic Yards (is there any other kind these days?) in an update on the progress of the Fifth Avenue Committee's Atlantic Terrace project.
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It's not looking like we're going to see any affordable housing at Atlantic Yards anytime soon (or market rate housing, for that matter), but at least a smaller project across the street at 669 Atlantic Avenue continues to chug along. Next door to the Atlantic Terminal Mall, the 80-unit Atlantic Terrace co-op project now has lots of steel in the ground, noticeable but hardly rapid progress compared to when we checked in last April. Roughly 70 percent of the apartments will be set aside for either low- or moderate-income earners.
NoLandGrab: Astute readers will remember Atlantic Terrace as the project that had to scrap plans for solar panels due to projected looming shadows from Atlantic Yards, recalling the classic "Who Shot Mr. Burns?" episode of The Simpsons (see the third paragraph after the jump).
Posted by eric at 2:38 PM
September 21, 2008
NYC:Brooklyn hoods-Fort Greene
Skyscraper Life's TalB posts a brief history and exhaustive photo tour of Ft. Greene, following up on last week's tour of Downtown Brooklyn:
In the 1990's, the imfamous Bruce Ratner, who is the of FCR, built the Atlanic Ctr Mall, but many Ft Greene residents called it turnning his back on them b/c there was no entrance on Hanson Pl and just one Atlantic Ave only. More recently, he got the air rights over the Altantic Terminal and made it into a mall, which has still yet to be completely filled, to go with the one he already built.
Photo, Tracy Collins.
Posted by amy at 11:30 AM
September 19, 2008
Our ideal ’hood
In the search for the best neighborhoods in NY, Time Out New York featured several Brooklyn neighborhoods as also-rans. Prospect Heights made the cut, despite one looming überdevelopment.
As indicated by the widespread uproar over the Atlantic Yards development, there’s a refreshingly strong sense of community in this teensy Brooklyn nabe. See what all the fuss is about on a walk through the recently proposed Prospect Heights Historic District, a 21-block area filled with beautiful architecture and carefully preserved Italianate and neo-Grecian row houses. Sip Gorilla Coffee at Joyce Bakeshop (646 Vanderbilt Ave between Park and Prospect Pls, 718-623-7470), or hop across the street to Fermented Grapes (651 Vanderbilt Ave between Park and Prospect Pls, 718-230-3216), where the superfriendly staff can help you choose the perfect vino. Then have a postdrinking chow on crispy wood-fired pizza from Franny’s (295 Flatbush Ave between Prospect Pl and St. Marks Ave, 718-230-0221), touted for making one of the best pies in the city—and deservedly so.— Amy Plitt
Posted by lumi at 5:30 AM
September 18, 2008
Financial crisis likely to slow NYC real estate
Associated Press, via amNY
By Amy Westfeldt
The Wall Street crisis that hit the heart of the city's financial district should slow construction of its biggest commercial real estate projects, including the World Trade Center and Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn, real estate experts said Wednesday.
"Basically, people are afraid," said Tom Geurts, a professor at New York University's Schack Institute of Real Estate. "Although a project could be profitable, they are afraid to put their money in it because they don't know what is going to happen."
...
At the multibillion-dollar Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn, developer Bruce Ratner long ago decided to postpone building a planned office tower until a major company agrees to move into the building.
MetroNY, Wall St. crisis spreads to real estate projects
A slow recover would drive down sales, increase vacancy rates, and possibly delay large-scale redevelopment projects, such as Manhattan's far West Side and Downtown Brooklyn.
NoLandGrab: We presume that "large-scale redevelopment projects" includes Atlantic Yards in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn which keeps being lumped in with the Downtown Brooklyn redevelopment by developer Bruce Ratner and NY City officials.
Posted by lumi at 6:30 AM
September 17, 2008
An anchor tenant for Building 1? The search just got tougher
Atlantic Yards Report
The Lehman Brothers meltdown can't be good news for backers of Atlantic Yards, especially since Forest City Ratner is searching for an anchor tenant to begin construction of Building 1, the one office tower planned for now.
From a New York Times article, headlined City and State Brace for Greater Demands on Diminishing Resources:
With the prospect of Lehman’s space going on the market, the likely result will be a drop in rents at some of the city’s premier buildings and fewer new towers going up, said real estate executives, urban planners and government officials. Those that are built will probably be smaller, they said.
Look what the cat draggged in
As chance would have it, the BBC is reporting that Barclays Bank plans to purchase the Lehman Bros. headquarters for $1.5 billion. Yup, that's the same Barclays Bank that signed a $400 million naming-rights deal for the new arena to be built at Bruce Ratner's controversial Atlantic Yards complex. The deal to purchase the building and other Lehman assets would make Barclays the third largest investment bank in the world.
Posted by lumi at 5:30 AM
September 13, 2008
Polytechnic alumni file suit to rescind NYU consolidation deal
Atlantic Yards Report
Some two months after the State Board of Regents in late June approved New York University's no-money-down absorption of Brooklyn's Polytechnic University, a group of seven dissident alumni have filed suit (PDF) in Albany to rescind the decision, arguing the Regents’ allowed the affiliation in violation of a 2005 Polytechnic board decision to remain independent.NYU’s consolidation effort--the school is now known as Polytechnic Institute of NYU--not only adds engineering to the university’s portfolio but provides a beachhead in Brooklyn, providing perhaps one-quarter of the real estate NYU needs to expand. The lawsuit, filed against both the Poly board and the Board of Regents, charges that the university's board failed to obtain an appraisal to establish the value of its real estate, air rights and other assets, a breach of its fiduciary duty.
State report lingers
Indeed, a report issued May 20 by State Sen. Kenneth LaValle, the chairman of the State Senate Committee on Higher Education, raised some serious questions about the deal, stating that in three instances the board did not act with the duty of care and/or loyalty required by a fiduciary, notably negotiations conducted in secret, the exclusion of dissident board members from working committees, and the failure to update a three-year-old appraisal of the university's valuable property in Downtown Brooklyn's MetroTech Center. (LaValle, oddly enough, released the report without an accompanying press release or comment.)
Posted by amy at 9:59 AM
September 12, 2008
A NEW Woman
Story Corps
Sherry Castro came to our Lower Manhattan StoryBooth through NEW Nontraditional Employment for Women, one of our many partner organizations in the city. Founded in 1978, Nontraditional Employment for Women is a nonprofit organization that trains women for skilled jobs in construction and other blue-collar industries. Most of the female hardhats at work today in New York City are NEW graduates.
Sherry has worn many (hard)hats in her field of construction. After graduating from NEW, she has worked as an operating engineer, welder, metal fabricator, and mechanic on developments and infrastructures throughout the city. Some of these sites include the foundation at the new Yankee Stadium, the Van Courtland Park reservoir, the Grand Concourse (a boulevard in the Bronx), an underpass on 161st Street, and the widening of a runway at JFK Airport.
For the past month, Sherry has been working as an oiler and operating engineer on the foundation for the new Brooklyn Nets stadium at the Atlantic Yards, a $4 billion mixed-use development project. As an oiler, Sherry greases the machines and performs maintenance and oil changes on them. As an operating engineer, she operates Earth-moving machines to drive piles (a type of deep foundation) for excavation. This means digging up to 50 feet into the ground and pulling boulders as big as cars out of Brooklyn soil!
Posted by lumi at 4:51 AM
August 27, 2008
Developers' Hazard: Legal Hardball
The New York Times
by David W. Dunlap
A recent dip into the archives of The New York Times unearthed an article on the effects of litigation on development in New York City, and interestingly, it features quotes from both Atlantic Yards (and then-Atlantic Center) developer Bruce Ratner and new Empire State Development Corporation CEO (and then-Boston development official) Marisa Lago.
Lawsuits are no longer last resorts. They are an integral part of the process. Litigation has altered the 42d Street redevelopment in Manhattan and the building of Atlantic Center in downtown Brooklyn; it has derailed other projects entirely, like Westway and Columbus Center, the previous proposal for the Coliseum site.
''It is almost impossible to finance a project when it's in litigation,'' said Bruce C. Ratner, president of Forest City Ratner Companies, which inherited Atlantic Center after the legal buffeting. ''Even if there's a remote chance that the plaintiffs will win, the banks are not going to lend the quantities of money required.''
NoLandGrab: Keep in mind that Bruce was saying this in 1996, when the economy was robust and the unforeseen global lending crisis was 11 years away.
There are cities, however, where land-use litigation is not commonplace. ''The ethos of suing on every project just hasn't occurred in Boston,'' said Marisa Lago, director of the Boston Redevelopment Authority and former general counsel of the New York Economic Development Corporation.
NLG: "Suing on every project" wouldn't be necessary if developers and economic-development officials would propose better-conceived projects, involve affected communities from the get-go, and eschew the use of eminent domain.
Posted by eric at 3:24 PM
August 22, 2008
Gehry Out as Architect of Theater in Brooklyn
The New York Times
by Robin Pogrebin
Sure, we were hoping to see something other than "Theater" in that headline, but this is an interesting story nonetheless.
The architect Frank Gehry will no longer be a part of the project to build a permanent home for the Theater for a New Audience in the BAM Cultural District in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, the theater’s founder said Thursday. But the announcement came as a surprise to Mr. Gehry, who said he wasn’t told of the change.
Mr. Gehry had collaborated with Hugh Hardy on the theater building’s initial design. Now Mr. Hardy will be the sole architect on the project, according to the theater.
There seems to be a little confusion, however, as to whether Mr. Gehry bailed, or was pushed out.
“Frank Gehry has said to us, ‘I’m sorry that I have to withdraw, but I’m a great fan of Hugh’s, and Theater for a New Audience is going to have a terrific theater.’ ”
But reached by phone on Thursday, Mr. Gehry said his exclusion from the project was news to him. “I didn’t even know they were starting over again,” he said. “I suppose they didn’t need two of us.”
“He’s quite adequate for the job without me,” Mr. Gehry added, referring to Mr. Hardy. “I would guess there are financial reasons for this.”
In response to the architect’s comments, the theater provided The New York Times with a copy of its correspondence with Mr. Gehry’s assistant, in which the architect was said to have approved the language in the theater’s statement. “Frank told me he was too busy and was unable to continue with the project and that he had to withdraw,” Mr. Horowitz said in a telephone interview. “We respected his wishes.”
Posted by eric at 10:24 AM
Forest City Closes $167M Financing for Build
GlobeSt.com
by Natalie Dolce
The headline seems a little truncated, but GlobeSt serves up a detailed report on the financing of Forest City's 80 DeKalb, including this quote from President and CEO Chuck Ratner regarding loan maturities:
"We continue to manage our maturities effectively, recycling capital from our portfolio where prudent to apply to other strategic uses," Ratner says in a prepared statement. "Financing continues to be available for well-conceived and well-sponsored projects and properties in solid markets with good demographics, both in our portfolio and in our development pipeline."
NoLandGrab: No doubt Brooklyn is a solid market with good demographics, but when it comes to Atlantic Yards, "well-conceived" does not apply.
Posted by eric at 9:52 AM
August 18, 2008
Powerful Harlem Church Is Also a Powerful Harlem Developer
The New York Times
by Timothy Williams
Forest City Ratner makes a cameo appearance in a NY Times story on the significant effect that the Abyssinian Development Corporation, the real estate off-shoot of Harlem's Abyssinian Baptist Church, is having on that neighborhood.
The corporation’s largest project to date has been Harlem Center, an $85 million retail and office complex on 125th Street it developed with Forest City Ratner. Businesses there include Marshall’s, Staples, H & M and a Washington Mutual bank.
NoLandGrab: Judging from that partial list of Harlem Center tenants, it's no surprise that some critics say that Abyssinian "has virtually ignored small businesses in favor of chain stores that have damaged the small-town character of Harlem." When you team up with national-chain proliferator Forest City, that outcome is pretty much inevitable.
Posted by eric at 11:16 AM
August 17, 2008
Not THAT Michael White
Noticing New York talks about the new federal courthouse on Cadman Plaza East and Tillary Street:
An article in the Brooklyn Eagle describes the plans for the courthouse as “star-crossed” and goes into a bribery scandal involving the general contractor. It reminds us that “A proposal to build it in the Atlantic Center, over the LIRR station, was rejected by federal judges who made it privately clear that this was too far away from the center of things in Downtown Brooklyn.” Tell that to Bruce Ratner the next time he misrepresents Atlantic Yards (which he wants to build more han 4 times as tall!) as being “in Downtown Brooklyn!” (See: Federal Courthouse Project Hits A Snag; New Contractor Sought by Dennis Holt, 03-05-2004)That same Brooklyn Eagle article tells us “One of Sen. Patrick Moynihan’s last acts was to attend the 2000 ribbon-cutting ceremony for the new building. Though physically frail, he gave a stirring speech on the value of public works, a sentiment rarely heard these days, and declared that this building would be memorable.” As many know, I am strongly advocating that we fittingly remember Daniel Patrick Moynihan by putting our resources into Moynihan Station, a “public work” like the courthouse rather than diverting them into Atlantic Yards. Atlantic Yards is not only NOT a “public work,” it represents something Moynihan fought against in his time. It was Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan who, in 1986, sponsored the insightful law that bans the use of tax-exempt bonds to finance sports stadiums and arenas which Bruce Ratner now seeks to circumvent.
Posted by amy at 11:00 AM
August 15, 2008
It came from the Blogosphere...
The Pressure Zone, stories 24 - 28: the whirlwind
NY Sun reporter Abe Reisman, who covers crime and emergencies for the paper and reported yesterday's story on the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty's honoring of Bruce Ratner, posted a run down of his recent bylines:
"Developer Bruce Ratner Is Honored at Gala" (not technically part of crime / emergency beat, but i did it in addition to all that)
NoLandGrab: "not technically part of crime / emergency beat," but damned close.
Nets Daily, Mayoral Candidates Praise Ratner
Mr NYC, War Over Willets Point
Every year or two an epic battle between developers and citizens erupts in New York City. There was the battle over the West Side Stadium in 2005 (which was killed) and then there was fight over the Atlantic Yards development project in Brooklyn (which wasn't killed) in 2006-2007. Now, in 2008, Willets Point in Queens is the new front is this perennial struggle.
NLG: But AY hasn't not been killed yet, either.
QUEENS CRAP, Monserrate Announces Legislation to Restrict Eminent Domain
Queens Crapper posts the press release from Councilman Hiram Monserrate outlining the eminent domain legislation he announced yesterday.
Posted by eric at 10:02 AM
August 14, 2008
Councilman Proposes Law Restricting Eminent Domain
NY1
Just one day after crowds of supporters and opponents packed a public hearing on the rezoning of Willets Point, one local leader today will announce legislation challenging one of the biggest concerns surrounding the proposal – the possible use of eminent domain.
The city has said it would only be used as a last resort, but City Councilman Hiram Monserrate plans to announce legislation that would force the city to justify any usage of eminent domain.
He wants a definition of when exactly the city can declare a neighborhood economically blighted, as well as guarantees that any displaced business owners would be properly compensated. Monserrate is also introducing a resolution calling on state legislators to follow the city's lead.
NoLandGrab: City legislation would not affect eminent domain abuse in the footprints of Atlantic Yards or the Columbia University expansion. These properties are to be taken by the State of NY.
Posted by eric at 10:53 AM
A Confrontation Over the Future of Willets Point
The New York Times
by Fernanda Santos
Supporters and foes of the Bloomberg administration’s plan to turn gritty Willets Point in Queens into a $3 billion development of stores, offices and apartments faced off Wednesday in a confrontation that grew emotional and raucous at times.
...The hearing combined public testimony on Willets Point and two other rezoning projects, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and at south Hunters Point, along the East River in Queens. Opponents of the Lower East Side and Willets Point plans protested outside the auditorium where the hearing was held through most of the day. Councilman Hiram Monserrate led two dozen opponents of the Willets Point proposal two blocks east, to a spot in Washington Square Park, to confront city officials holding a news conference there.
The opponents interrupted the news conference, which was organized by the city’s Economic Development Corporation, and drowned out advocates for the proposal, chanting “Justice for Willets Point!” and “Save Willets Point!”
The police told the city economic development officials that they could not remove the protesters, saying they had a right to be there, even if they were being disruptive.
NoLandGrab: The EDC couldn't force the removal of the protesters from Washington Square Park, but it remains to be seen whether or not they'll be able to remove them from Willets Point. One thing we're pretty sure about, though, is that this eminent domain-fueled war will see many, many battles before it ends.
Posted by eric at 9:08 AM
August 12, 2008
City Council members blast Willets Pt. plan
Crain's NY Business
by Daniel Massey
A day before a City Planning Commission hearing on the Bloomberg administration’s plan to remake Willets Point, a majority of City Council members sent a sharply-worded letter to the planning commissioner opposing the project.
In the letter to Commissioner Amanda Burden, 30 council members say they are in “absolute opposition” to the current proposal to redevelop Willets Point, citing concerns over eminent domain, affordable housing, displaced workers and traffic.
“Unfortunately, this is a product of a flawed process that has continuously ignored the requests of the community in pursuit of a top-down planning process that sets a dangerous precedent for large-scale development projects citywide,” the council members wrote in the letter.
...The signature drive was organized by the affordable housing group NY Acorn and is the second time in the last four months it has organized a majority of council members to write to a city official opposing Willets Point. Twenty-nine council members sent a similar letter to Deputy Mayor Robert Lieber in April.
This time, the council members say they will not support the plan unless eminent domain is taken off the table in negotiations with landowners; half of the 5,500 housing units are guaranteed to be affordable; a comprehensive relocation and compensation plan for small business owners and employees is put in place; and a community benefits agreement that includes traffic mitigation is implemented.
The city has said it will use eminent domain only as a last resort; its plan calls for 20% of the housing units to be affordable; it is working with LaGuardia Community College on a program to train the approximately 1,700 workers who will be displaced by the development; and it will require the developer to put $5 million into a traffic mitigation fund.
NoLandGrab: We applaud the efforts and actions of the Councilmembers who've taken a stand against eminent domain abuse, but we're compelled to point out a couple of things.
First, the "dangerous precedent for large-scale development projects citywide" has already been set by Atlantic Yards. In fact, had the Atlantic Yards plot never been hatched by Forest City Ratner, it's likely that the Willets Point plan, however heinous it may be, wouldn't have encountered such significant — and well organized — resistance.
Second, we have to admit we're curious about ACORN's role. Sure, their interest in the affordable housing makes sense, but based on their track record with Atlantic Yards, we have a hard time believing that they give a hoot about the use of eminent domain. Left to ACORN, that would surely be a bargaining chip happily traded for a richer mix of affordable units.
Lastly, we won't belabor the silliness of the city claiming that eminent domain will only be used "as a last resort." It was already put into use long ago as a negotiating bludgeon. We'll focus instead on the $5 million traffic mitigation fund. Shouldn't the mitigation of traffic be a pre-development requirement? The time to fix traffic problems is before they materialize.
Posted by eric at 4:35 PM
Why Not Add Atlantic Yards to the Agenda?
Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn
DDDB reacts to the City Planning Commission's nonsensical decision to cram three controversial rezoning hearings into one day and one auditorium with a suggestion:
While they're at it, since Atlantic Yards never went through ULURP—thus avoiding a public planning hearing in front of the planning commission or any planning body—perhaps they can add Ratner's project to the agenda.
NoLandGrab: Do you think the repeated scheduling of public hearings on controversial eminent domain-reliant development projects and rezonings in August (Atlantic Yards DEIS public hearing, August 23, 2006; Columbia University expansion ULURP hearing, August 15, 2007; Willets Point redevelopment, tomorrow) is just a coincidence? Or might they be timed to many people's summer vacations? Either way, the triple-billing is a creative new twist.
Posted by eric at 11:48 AM
August 7, 2008
Brooklyn Office Vacancy, Asking Rents Increase
The NY Observer
By Tom Acitelli
During the past few years, as the demand for Class A office space in Brooklyn has risen and fallen, Atlantic Yards developer Bruce Ratner has regularly reconformed the project according to the market.
It's hard to figure what to make of the news, reported yesterday by the NY Observer, that vacancies are up — but rents are, too:
[A] The report (PDF), from investment-sales firm Marcus & Millichap, forecasts a year-end vacancy rate of 10.5 percent, up from the 10.4 percent at the end of the second quarter on June 30.
As many as 2,000 office-based jobs in Brooklyn are expected to be eliminated this year, according to the report, mirroring the trend in Manhattan.
Meanwhile, the average asking rent for Brooklyn office space has increased in 2008. It was $27.58 a square foot by the end of the second quarter, up 5.1 percent annualy and 4.9 percent since January.
Posted by lumi at 5:41 AM
August 3, 2008
Urban Environmentalist NYC: R & E Brooklyn
Gowanus Lounge provides an interview with R & E Brooklyn owners Rolf Grimsted and Emily Fisher:
Q: If you got together with other small business owners in your community what would the hot topics be?Rolf: My number one topic is ways to retrofit and green the existing housing stock. I also have an idea about using tax incentives for building green. If the 421-a tax incentive and 421-b incentives were used for green building, the city would encourage new green building and the greening of existing homes, and we’d reduce our city’s energy consumption.
Emily: The ongoing boom in new development is a big topic, including the discussions on what’s going to happen to the Atlantic Yards site and how can that development potentially benefit our community and businesses?
Posted by amy at 11:01 AM
July 31, 2008
Relief is sought as building costs soar
MetroNY
by Amy Zimmer
The New York Building Congress, of which Forest City Ratner is a member, released a report stating that New York is "one of the most expensive places to build in America."
The report looks suspiciously like a plea for the City to cater to developers as it includes such remedies as rezoning “idle or derelict industrial land.” This sounds uncomfortably like the scheme used by the State for the proposed Atlantic Yards project, where a working railyard and surrounding neighborhood were labeled as "blighted" to allow a land grab by Forest City Ratner.
The report mentions specific projects that the construction industry would like to go forward:
Already such big projects as the Javits Convention Center and the Fulton Street Transit Center have been scaled back because cost estimates far exceeded original estimates. The construction industry is concerned considering other big projects on the drawing board — the Second Avenue Subway, World Trade Center, Moynihan Station and Atlantic Yards.
Posted by steve at 5:56 AM
July 27, 2008
Myrtle Ave. condo/supermarket project stalls, leaving just an empty space
NY Daily News
JOTHAM SEDERSTROM
The Myrtle Ave. project's crumbling comes as the shaky economy has sent shivers through the real estate industry and put other large city projects in jeopardy. In Brooklyn, the controversial Atlantic Yards and Coney Island projects have faced delays and reductions in size.Catsimatidis' project is facing the same fate.
"The economy soured, and he can't get municipal bonds to get the affordable housing," said Councilwoman Letitia James (WFP-Prospect Heights), an early supporter of Catsimatidis' project because of the affordable housing.
Posted by amy at 11:05 AM
July 26, 2008
Church vs. Commerce: Parishioners Try to Take the Brooklyn Flea Down
Racked has a full report from a very heated meeting about the Brooklyn Flea in Fort Greene. The only thing that seemed to bring the room together was an enthusiastic condemnation of Ratner's penchant for big box stores:
State Senator Velmanette Montgomery really stole the show, though, and got folks excited. "I fought against the stadium here," Montgomery said. "This is different. What is suffering in this city and state right now is small business. I'd rather support small businesses than Ratner," she said, and the whole room erupted in applause. "We have lost so many of our small businesses because we don't have the foot traffic...I want buses to stop and spend some money!" More cheering. "These big boxes are running us over!" The room went wild. Everyone can agree about that, right?
Posted by amy at 12:37 PM
July 24, 2008
Looking back at the unanticipated impacts of the Downtown Brooklyn rezoning
Today, Atlantic Yards Report crosses Flatbush to assess a recently released report about the real impacts of the Downtown Brooklyn rezoning.
It’s well-known that the 2004 Downtown Brooklyn rezoning resulted in some very different outcomes than expected, given that the hot residential real estate market, coupled with changes in the back-office needs of large companies in Manhattan, made it far more lucrative to build luxury housing (and hotels) than the office space (and jobs) that the rezoning was intended to foster.
A new report, Downtown Brooklyn’s Detour: The Unanticipated Impacts of Rezoning and Development on Residents and Businesses, prepared by the Pratt Center for Community Development for FUREE (Families United for Racial and Economic Equality), points out how much has changed in four years, raising concerns about the displacement of lower-income retail and residential tenants. It doesn’t suggest particular strategies, however. (Solutions aren’t simple; perhaps that’ll be another report.)
The report does remind us that an EIS (environmental impact statement) is hardly infallible, as we’ve also learned in the case of Atlantic Yards, where the EIS anticipated a ten-year project buildout that seems deeply divorced from reality.
Posted by lumi at 4:31 AM
July 23, 2008
Weiner Likes (Some) Mega-Development in Slow Economy
The Real Estate [NY Observer]
by Eliot Brown and Azi Paybarah
Representative Anthony Weiner, a mayoral hopeful, gave his support for a string of large development projects in the city today, saying they're important in a time of economic uncertainty.
"New York needs to continue to grow–I'm a pro-development guy," he said, speaking at a Crain's breakfast. "If you look at downtown, you look at West Side, you look at Penn Station, you look at Ratner, you look at these things–I think that you're going to see that I'm going to be advocating. I want them to be successful, particularly in this time of slow economic growth."
Then, hitting on his favorite theme, Mr. Weiner said the middle-class does not always see a clear, tangible benefit from the projects, adding, "It does create challenges that we have to solve."
NoLandGrab: In these tough economic times, there's nothing more important than shoveling scarce tax dollars at a basketball arena. Is it any wonder that middle-class New Yorkers — and upper- and working-class NYers, too — are having trouble seeing "a clear, tangible benefit" in that?
Posted by eric at 11:08 AM
July 20, 2008
Double Edge to Brooklyn’s Success
NY Times
PATRICK McGEEHAN
Brooklyn Brewery's Steve Hindy reaps what he helped sow: rising prices from the rezoning laws and out of scale projects he championed were a death knell to small, local businesses, including his...
Mr. Hindy said the company could expand its local production to more than 40,000 barrels a year, and more than double its current payroll of 35 people, if it found a space that was large enough. But that quest has left Mr. Hindy feeling unappreciated by city officials.He was a champion of the rezoning of Williamsburg and Greenpoint that Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg pushed through in 2005. But now he contends that the changes went too far by allowing a variety of nonindustrial uses of land in areas that are labeled industrial business zones.
...
“Once you name your company Brooklyn Brewery, you kind of take away the threat of moving to New Jersey,” Mr. Hindy said.
article
NoLandGrab: We venture to bet that more than one person would appreciate the irony of "New Jersey Brewery."
Gumby Fresh adds a sympathetic yet critical missive to the discourse, concluding in this thought:
But here's the killer line. "Some landlords are holding onto industrial property with the hope that it will be rezoned for residential buildings." So all Hindy's support has done is dump a windfall in the hands of condo developers with no interest in helping Hindy get what he wants. There's an easy moral to this story. The old lady and the snake.
Posted by amy at 11:46 AM
July 16, 2008
I.R.S. Could Crimp Bloomberg's Big Plans
NY Observer
by Eliot Brown
The Observer's lead real estate reporter takes an in-depth look at New York City's furious efforts to preserve tax-exempt financing for its favorite son, Bruce Ratner.
As the Bloomberg administration scrambles to get its development projects in the ground amid a slowing economy and a waning political term, two major planned initiatives the city has championed face a formidable hurdle: the Internal Revenue Service.
For the financing plan for the Atlantic Yards housing and sports arena complex in Brooklyn, and for one being considered for the planned middle-income-housing mega-complex at Hunter’s Point South in Queens, the city would need a favorable ruling from the I.R.S. or face substantially higher costs for both projects. Negative rulings from the federal agency could result in tens of millions of dollars in added costs, putting up new obstacles to major developments that have already seen ambitions scaled back.
For both projects, the city wants to use tax-exempt financing, a method that lowers costs substantially—perhaps more than 15 percent—with the bulk of the savings coming out of federal tax revenues.
And, at least in the case of Atlantic Yards, the I.R.S. is rather wary, as it has called the financing method a “loophole” that it has ordered closed.
NoLandGrab: We haven't rooted this hard for the IRS since "The Untouchables."
Posted by eric at 11:18 AM
July 15, 2008
Developer Cuts Back on Plans for Tower to House Baseball’s Cable Network
The New York Times
by Charles Bagli
A 21-story office building planned in East Harlem for Major League Baseball is shrinking.
The tower’s developer, Vornado Realty Trust, had planned to begin construction in April on what would be the home for professional baseball’s newly created cable network, which is scheduled to make its debut in January with 50 million subscribers.
But, according to real estate executives and city officials, Vornado’s inability to finance the $435 million project, known as Harlem Park, has delayed construction and is doing what critics who had complained about the tower’s size could not: reduce its height by about a third. That is in part because the developer seems to have had problems signing up other tenants for the building.
Vornado is now considering a revised plan for a 14-story building at 125th Street and Park Avenue and renegotiating its lease with Major League Baseball, the executives and officials said.
...It is the latest example of the difficulty developers have had in trying to borrow money for projects amid the national debt crisis, even projects that only a few months ago seemed to be on the fast track. After completing the excavation for his Beekman Tower project downtown, the developer Bruce Ratner had to stop work for three months while his company went from bank to bank putting together the construction financing.
NoLandGrab: Judging from the most recent developments in the financial and real estate markets, securing financing, especially for mega-projects, is going to get harder before it gets easier.
Posted by eric at 11:09 AM
HOLD 'EM ACCOUNTABLE: DEVELOPER FILING PROPOSED
A City Council bill would require those who use public subsidies to spell out a project's public impact.
CityLimits.org
by Lauren Victory
With controversy erupting around practically every major new development in New York City – the new Yankee Stadium, Ground Zero and Brooklyn's Atlantic Yards, to name a few – concerned citizens have been looking toward the public review and approval process for a stronger voice. The help they seek may have arrived recently, in the form of the introduction of City Council Bill 801, titled Community Impact Reports.
Aimed at those seeking economic development benefits such as direct project subsidies, low-interest financing, tax benefits, tax-exempt financing, and tax-exempt bonds and grants, the bill would require the developer of each project to submit a comprehensive report to City Council outlining the intended social and economic effects of the project on the surrounding communities. Organizations in contract with the city for the purpose of providing social services, or those that create affordable housing units exclusively, are exempt from the requirement.
“We need to have a way to monitor the benefits that are given to developers,” said Councilman Thomas White Jr., a Queens Democrat who chairs Council's Economic Development Committee. Around the city, such benefits are legion: In fiscal year 2006, the New York City Industrial Development Agency alone granted at least $700 million in tax breaks to individual firms.
Councilman Albert Vann, in consultation with Councilmembers White, Bill de Blasio, Letitia James and others, created the bill to "help us to understand how city funds are being used in communities, to help them directly," according to Vann’s legislative director, Dottie Conway. Introduced June 29, the bill is now being further shaped by feedback and is not yet scheduled for a hearing or a vote.
NoLandGrab: Critics question how effective this legislation might actually be, and some see it as just another spin on City- and State-mandated environmental reviews, which are produced by the developer and always seem to arrive at the same, ain't-this-great outcome.
Posted by eric at 9:39 AM
July 14, 2008
Landmarks May Stem Atlantic Yards Area Development
The NY Sun
The city's Landmarks Preservation Commission is holding a hearing tomorrow to "calendar" a proposed historic district for the Prospect Heights neighborhood, the first significant step needed for the area to receive the protected historic district status.
While none of the footprint of the current Atlantic Yards project would be affected by the proposed designation, it would create a surrounding area that could hinder further expansion.
...
The Municipal Arts Society, the group organizing the legal opposition to the Atlantic Yards project, the opposition group Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn, and the Prospect Heights Neighborhood Development Council are applauding the city's move for historic designation.
Atlantic Yards Report, Missing the point on the Prospect Heights landmarking & AY
Norman Oder thinks that The NY Sun conflated the stance of serveral community groups:
Those most supporting the landmarking process are not major opponents of Atlantic Yards; the Municipal Art Society, for example, wants to "mend it, not end it," via the BrooklynSpeaks coalition. Given the scope of the proposed district, the headline would better have read: Landmarks May Stem Prospect Heights Overdevelopment.
Posted by lumi at 4:35 AM
July 4, 2008
Learning From the WTC Rebuilding Fiasco
Culture of Congestion [NY Sun blog]
By Sanford Ikeda
Congratulations Mayor Bloomberg, you are now holding a straight flush of mismanaged overdevelopment:
As if all the havoc visited upon almost every single one of New York's recent public-private mega-projects — WTC, Hudson Yards, Moynihan Station, Atlantic Yards — hasn't been enough to caution the mayor. Mr. Bloomberg continues to push ahead with a major-redevelopment of Willets Point, Queens.
Posted by lumi at 4:24 AM
June 30, 2008
Popular Fulton Mall plans expansion
NY Daily News
In this article about plans for the Fulton Mall, reporter Allison Colter has rebranded the Atlantic Terminal Mall as "the Atlantic Yards complex."
Target is said to be considering taking space as an anchor tenant - even though it already has a megastore further along Flatbush Ave., in the Atlantic Yards complex.
NoLandGrab: Even Ratner's branding efforts haven't taken it that far.
Posted by lumi at 3:59 AM
June 26, 2008
Karl Fischer bunker beds
Restless
Bruce Ratner rates a (dis)honorable mention in a blog post about ubiquitous NYC architect Karl Fischer, complete with a humorous rendering of a Gehry-less Atlantic Yards (click image to enlarge).
Real estate magnate Bruce Ratner's problem is that he thinks too big. If he had quietly bought a block at a time and hired Karl Fischer, Atlantic Yards would be done by now (right). Instead, it's every other block of Williamsburg that gets an arbitrary eyesore from the napkin doodles of The Master.
NoLandGrab: Thanks, but we think we'll get our Prospect Heights fried chicken at Bob Law's Seafood Café.
Posted by eric at 3:23 PM
June 25, 2008
Bronx Groups Demand a Voice in a Landmark’s Revival
The New York Times
by Terry Pristin
We're not sure exactly what tangible benefits will accrue to members of the Kingsbridge Armory Redevelopment Alliance in the Bronx, but we're reasonably confident that they have lots of rallies and blockparties in their future.
Now community organizers in the area, one of the city’s poorest neighborhoods, are seeking a private contract with the Related Companies, the developer chosen by the city in April to transform the Kingsbridge Armory into a shopping mall with 575,000 square feet of retail space, including a department store, a multiscreen movie theater and restaurants.
...In recent years, a growing number of private pacts, known as community benefits agreements, or C.B.A.’s, have smoothed the way for developments around the country, including Related’s Grand Avenue project in downtown Los Angeles.
But only a few such agreements have been forged in New York. In 2005, the Bloomberg administration publicly applauded a private agreement between housing advocates and Forest City Ratner, the developer of Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn, but now it no longer supports the concept.
“When you do a C.B.A., the decision may be made in a vacuum, and that’s what we’re looking to avoid,” Seth W. Pinsky, president of the city’s Economic Development Corporation, said in an interview last week. “We’re not opposed to benefits for the community, and we’re not opposed to community involvement. But we just think it should be part of the larger process.”
NoLandGrab: "The larger process?" How about any process? It's apparent that the Bloomberg Administration now recognizes that Atlantic Yards is the blueprint for how not to do large development projects in NYC.
Posted by eric at 9:20 AM
June 23, 2008
Glass and Darkness: Harbingers of Things to Come for Brooklyn and Its Prospect Park?
Brooklyn Ron
Congratulations Bruce Ratner! After spending millions on pr, your "Atlantic Yards" project is offically a "household phrase."
This planned development has not become a household phrase, like Atlantic Yards, but it has serious implications for the park, the surrounding neighborhood of Prospect Lefferts Gardens and for Brooklyn.
Read the rest of the post to learn more about the high-rise controversy brewing on the southeast side of Prospect Park, and Saturday's protest.
Posted by lumi at 4:11 AM
June 17, 2008
Musical Chairs in Emerging BAM “Cultural District”
Gothamist
Congratulations Bruce Ratner, Atlantic Yards is now the poster project for developments that don't go forward as originally planned.
In 2004, Mayor Bloomberg agreed to set aside property in Fort Greene for the construction of a $48.5 million, 299-seat classical theater (above) designed by Frank Gehry and Hugh Hardy for Theater for a New Audience. The itinerant company has not had a permanent home since it started in 1979; the glassy new building would be built on city-owned land in Fort Greene opposite the Brooklyn Academy of Music, in a planned BAM “Cultural District.”
Well, as Atlantic Yards developer Bruce Ratner might privately admit, stuff happens: In 2006, the proposed site of the not-yet-built theater was moved to a lot across the street, on the corner of Ashland Place and Lafayette Avenue. Now the Sun reports that the theater will shuffle down the block so the city can use the site for affordable housing.
...It was also revealed yesterday that the planned public library designed by Enrique Norten that was to have risen next to BAM has been aborted due to lack of funds. Instead, Two Trees Management is finalizing a deal to buy the land from the city for $20 million and build a mixed-used facility designed by the same architect.
NoLandGrab: Heck, who needs another public library when having to forego tax-free bonds might cut into the profits of the Yankees, Mets and Nets?
Posted by eric at 9:39 PM
June 15, 2008
"Shoot Hoops Not Guns" restaurant doesn't make it to arena opening
Atlantic Yards Report
The High Stakes Cheese Steaks restaurant on Flatbush Avenue near Bergen Street, which opened in December 2006, replacing the Silver Spoon diner, has closed. The restaurant business is always a gamble--one in four restaurants fail in their first year, and three of five in three years, according to Business Week.The restaurant's "Shoot Hoops Not Guns" sign, though it may seem a reference to a teen basketball program, was put up, an owner told the New York Post, in a 12/22/06 article optimistically headlined A WINNING $HOT: BROOKLYN EATERY TO BE COURTSIDE, because "he wants his business associated with the arena." That sign was either lost or removed fairly early in the restaurant's lifespan.
The Brooklyn Paper quoted landlord Michael Pintchik as observing that such a narrow menu was difficult to pull off. That, and the fact that the arena wasn't going to open in a year--nor in three. Those were long odds.
Posted by amy at 11:51 AM
June 13, 2008
New York's Morning Handout Newspapers Cover Government Handouts
Both amNY and Metro are covering the story of increased subsidies for large projects, including the proposed Atlantic Yards Project.
Both papers carried similar versions of this story:
State assembly questions public funds for Yankee Stadium
State lawmakers and fiscal watchdog groups cried foul Thursday over the Yankees' bid for another $350 million in public financing for their new stadium, saying it could soak up funds needed for parks and transportation.
Three state Assembly members from New York City called for a public hearing to examine a proposal to provide public support for one the richest franchises in sports.
"These sports teams are private companies that appear addicted to keeping their hands in the government cookie jar," said Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries of Brooklyn.
Jeffries and Assemblymen Ruben Diaz Jr. and Jose Peralta asked for a hearing on the use of public funds for the Yankees that they said were negotiated "in secret and without the control of elected officials" while other community projects are desperate for funding.
These two additional items appeared in amNY:
The first is this opinion piece by Ellis Henican: When did NYC turn into Gimme City?
Gimme, gimme, gimme
That's all we're hearing these days. Gimme more of your money for taxes, fares and fees.
The Yankees demand another $350 million in tax-free city financing or they won't finish their new stadium.
Finally, there is this item (found only in the print edition) that includes the issue of additional subsidies for the Yankee Stadium — the same kind that Bruce Ratner will be looking for [click to enlarge]:
Posted by steve at 6:00 AM
June 12, 2008
Can Ft Greene Maintain its Cool?
The Real Fort Greene
by Carlton Banks
The Ft. Greene and Clinton Hill blog finds a ray of sunlight in the stalling of Atlantic Yards, and offers a prescription for keeping the neighborhood "cool" (and they ain't talkin' about the recent heatwave).
How can a neighborhood maintain it’s “cool” in a time of rapid gentrification/”mallification”? This post references my earlier “Has Ft. Greene Gotten Too Cool” post. I’ve been reading the Vanishing NY blog and I’m a little worried. As the prospects for Atlantic Yards dim I’m trying to keep hope alive. It’s not too late to save Ft. Greene from the “mallification of NYC”!
Posted by eric at 3:21 PM
As Cranes Fall and People Die
Economic Development for Whom?
CounterPunch.org
by Judith Levine
In an essay decrying the conventional wisdom that in a construction boom, accidents will happen, Brooklyn author Judith Levine fingers a ubiquitous bogeyman.
Developers—like Forest City Ratner, preparing for Brooklyn Atlantic Yards—demolish affordable housing to build “sub-market-rate” housing, which is unaffordable to most New Yorkers. Meanwhile, the City announces that budget cuts will force 15% rent rises in public housing and the closing of community centers and programs.
...Perhaps City Hall has always been a wholly owned subsidiary of the equivalent of Forest City Ratner. Perhaps there’s never been a time when New Yorkers didn’t wake up to the sound of jackhammers, when life here was not noisy, crowded, and chaotic. When workers did not fall to their deaths from skyscrapers and cranes.
But the question is always the same: who benefits?
The job of public officials is to ensure that the answer is the public—not just developers, but the rest of us.
NoLandGrab: Well, we know Bruce Ratner and his cronies benefit. The check for everyone else is in the mail.
Posted by eric at 2:33 PM
M&T Boss Wilmers Named New York State Economic Czar
Artvoice
By John McMahon
Bruce Ratner's controversial Atlantic Yards is mentioned in a list of stalled projects in NYC in an analysis of NY Governor Paterson's appointment of Robert G. Wilmers, "chairman of M&T Bank and prominent anti-union activist," to run the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC), the sponsoring agency for Atlantic Yards.
The failure of the Spitzer plan may be something of a red herring given the current economic climate and the state’s inability to fund many of the projects on ESDC’s docket.
A New York Times article last month outlined numerous stalled development projects in New York City and stated that “…the governor has sent conflicting messages, preaching fiscal austerity while suggesting that the state can move forward on a host of costly projects, including the Second Avenue subway, the extension of the No. 7 line, the $14 billion redevelopment of the West Side railyards, the $14 billion Penn Station project and the $4 billion Atlantic Yards basketball arena and residential complex in Brooklyn.” The article goes on to describe growing friction between New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the governor over the direction of the agency.
So why did Paterson do it? The Wilmers appointment comes on the heels of the governor’s controversial (and seemingly ill-fated) plan to put a cap on the amount of taxes a school district can impose. Is Governor Paterson veering to the right or is he just punting?
Posted by lumi at 4:29 AM
June 11, 2008
Square Feet: Squeezing Big-Box Retailing Into Small City Spaces
The New York Times
by Terry Pristin
Blumenfeld [Development Group] is developing East River Plaza with Forest City Ratner, which was also the partner of The New York Times Company in its headquarters building on Eighth Avenue.
Home Depot has been part of the East River Plaza project for about a decade. Two years ago, the retailer signed a 30-year lease for 110,000 square feet of space. But like many national retailers, Home Depot is trimming its expansion plans as a result of the weak economy, and the company is talking to two warehouse clubs — Costco and BJ’s — about subletting its space, Mr. Blumenfeld said. A Home Depot spokeswoman said the company is “re-evaluating” the site.
As it happens, Costco had counted on becoming one of the anchor stores at East River Plaza, but instead the developers cut a deal with Target in 2006, leading Jeffrey H. Brotman, Costco’s chairman, to complain publicly about being shunted aside.
NoLandGrab: OK, this story provides us with a perfect opportunity to do an Atlantic Yards hypocrisy check.
Forest City Ratner Companies (FCRC) had a deal with Costco to be one of two anchor tenants at East River Plaza. But when Target expressed interest in 2006, FCRC booted Costco for the bullseye-logoed retailer, which happens to be the main tenant of FCR's Atlantic Terminal mall.
Then in March of this year, Home Depot, the other anchor tenant, announced that it was rethinking its commitment, due to the double-whammy of a slowing economy and the global credit crunch. But Costco-kicker-outter FCRC got all legal on Home Depot; FCRC VP Loren Riegelhaupt told Crain's NY Business, "we have a lease with them, and we expect them to live up to that.” Yup, they're all about honoring commitments.
Speaking of honoring commitments, Forest City Ratner lobbyist Richard Lipsky is best known for heading the Neighborhood Retail Alliance, which purports to fight "the danger presented by big box stores. These stores... pose a dire threat to all of the city’s neighborhood businesses and the communities they serve." Lipsky also represents West Harlem businessman Nick Sprayregen, whose properties face the threat of eminent domain for Columbia University's expansion plan. But Lipsky apparently loves money more than he hates eminent domain, since he's happy to do Bruce Ratner's bidding on Atlantic Yards.
Posted by eric at 5:23 PM
June 6, 2008
M & T Bank Chief Named Development Agency Head
NY Sun
by Peter Kiefer
Robert Wilmers, chairman and CEO of Buffalo-based M&T Bank Corp., has been appointed by Governor Paterson as the new head of the Empire State Development Corporation.
Mr. Wilmers has his work cut out for him at the development agency. He will be assuming the chairmanship under a governor who wasn't elected and who may be out of office in two and a half years. The state is also facing a smaller pool of public capital and private investment for costly development projects, a number of which have been either been stalled or scrapped altogether.
The agency recently scrapped plans for a $1.8 billion expansion of the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center and has been unable to breathe life into plans for renovating Pennsylvania Station and for the construction of an Atlantic Yards basketball arena and residential complex in Brooklyn.
...The chairman of the Assembly's Committee on Corporations, Authorities and Commissions, Richard Brodsky, said the appointment was secondary to what he says is a necessary restructuring of the agency.
"I don't think it matters much who it is, but whether he is willing to come in and immediately restructure from the ground up what is a dysfunctional organization," he said.
Posted by eric at 9:50 AM
June 5, 2008
Gov. Paterson names new chief of ESDC
Robert Wilmers (on the right) will replace recently resigned Dan Gundersen and Patrick Foye; he will search for two individuals to run downstate and upstate ESDC divisions.
AP via Crain's NY Business
After some difficulty finding someone to take the job, it looks like the public corporation spearheading Bruce Ratner's controversial Atlantic Yards plan will finally have a new chief.
Gov. David Paterson on Thursday appointed Robert Wilmers as head of the Empire State Development Corporation. Mr. Wilmers will be the sole head of the agency and, in a shift, he will be based in Buffalo.
Chairman and chief executive of M&T Bank Corp., Mr. Wilmers has been critical of Albany dating back to the Pataki administration, chastising the state government for regularly spending at twice the inflation rate.
He replaces replace Dan Gundersen and Patrick Foye, both appointed by former governor Eliot Spitzer to run economic development upstate and in New York City, respectively. Mr. Gunderson stepped down Thursday, two months after the departure of Mr. Foye.
Mr. Wilmers will participate in a search for two individuals to run downstate and upstate ESDC divisions, both of whom will report to him.
..."Whoever takes the job has to be ready to make fundamental change," said Assemblyman Richard Brodsky, a Westchester Democrat critical of economic development during the Pataki administration. "The programs have become enormous giveaways to powerful interests unrelated to any public benefit."
NoLandGrab: Not surprisingly, H. Carl McCall did not get the job.
Posted by eric at 10:36 PM
June 3, 2008
Elected officials sign development pledge, but the question is money
Atlantic Yards Report
On Saturday, the highlight of the Peoples’ Accountable Development Summit--part of the Fifth Avenue Committee’s South Brooklyn Accountable Development Initiative--was a pledge from elected officials to uphold a list of Accountable Development Principles, listed at right.
Those signing the pledge included City Council Members Letitia James and David Yassky, Rep. Yvette Clarke, Assemblymen Hakeem Jeffries and Jim Brennan, State Senators Velmanette Montgomery and Eric Adams, and City Council candidate (and 52nd A.D. Democratic District Leader) JoAnne Simon. Rep. Nydia Velazquez and Borough President Marty Markowitz sent representatives to sign the pledge. The principles are honorable; while some, such as the goal of accountable process, do not require more money, others do depend on a commitment of funds.
The main component is a redefinition of affordable housing, calling for making units "truly affordable to people in the neighborhood"--a dig at projects like Atlantic Yards, which contains a significant slice of subsidized units--2250 of 4500 planned rentals, plus 200 of 1930 onsite condos--but which are not necessarily affordable to average Brooklynites. While there's a 50/50 pledge regarding the AY rentals, when that pledge was announced, it applied to the project as a whole; now it would be 38%. Note that "truly affordable" is not defined.
Posted by eric at 10:12 AM
June 1, 2008
Sunday Comix - Courtesy of the People's Accountable Development Summit
The Fifth Avenue Committee's "People's Accountable Development Summit" took place yesterday at P.S. 282 in Park Slope.
Included in a folder provided to every attendee, was a comic book titled "Our Community Our Future - A Guide to Accountable Development Principles" (right).
There is one page dedicated to the problems associated with the proposed Atlantic Development. (Click on the below image for a larger version.)
Posted by steve at 8:59 AM
May 31, 2008
The (relative) silence about the long-delayed Ingersoll Community Center and the breadth of blogs
Atlantic Yards Report
When, earlier this month, I covered (for the Brooklyn Downtown Star) the annual convention of FUREE (Families United for Racial and Economic Equality), which advocates for low-income women of color, many in the housing projects of Fort Greene, I was surprised to learn that the Ingersoll Community Center, under construction for more than six years, still isn't open, in stark contrast to the steadily rising condos nearby. The New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA), whose web site says not-so-clearly that the center has been "rebuilt," now promises it will open in the fall.(Photo from New York Daily News.)
...
Given the paucity of press coverage of Brooklyn in general, I've said publicly that I'm less disturbed by the disproportionate number of bloggers--some good, some not--in Brownstone Brooklyn than by the fact that the Brooklyn bureaus of the city's dailies each have only a handful of people.
article
NoLandGrab: For full video coverage of the FUREE rally, Episode 1 of Freddy's Brooklyn Roundhouse's coverage of the
FUREE convention will air on BCAT at 8pm Tuesday, June 3rd and in Manhattan Thursday, June 5th, at 8:30pm on MNN. You can also view it on YouTube now.
Posted by amy at 9:29 AM
May 30, 2008
Pol sour on Domino Sugar plant proposal
The Brooklyn Paper
by Ben Muessig
Another example of how there's one set of rules for Bruce Ratner, and another set of rules for everyone else.
A local lawmaker has opened a new front against the proposed Domino Sugar mega-project, demanding that the developers behind the glassy waterfront high-rises open their books so that he can independently assess the project’s finances.
Assemblyman Joe Lentol (D–Williamsburg) told The Brooklyn Paper that he can not support the $1.2-billion, 2,200-unit project until the developer justifies the need for two 30-story and two 40-story towers.
“If we’re going to have a project of that magnitude, I really want to see the facts and the figures that require them to build that high and that dense,” Lentol said.
...But Lentol — who supported the much-larger Atlantic Yards project in low-rise Prospect Heights, despite its less-generous affordable housing component — won’t back Domino until he can eye the dollars.
“If they want us to continue to give them the benefit of the doubt, they need to make the financials transparent,” said Amy Cleary, a spokeswoman for Lentol. “They keep saying, ‘We’re making very little money,’ but they’re not showing us that.”
NoLandGrab: Yeah, make those financials transparent. Just the way Bruce Ratner has, Joe.
Posted by eric at 1:40 PM
May 29, 2008
State Races To Attract an Economic Tsar
At Least Eight Decline To Take Development Post
The NY Sun
By Jacob Gershman
Hey, how about an ad on Craig's List?
Governor Paterson is struggling to lure a top-tier talent to take over the state's most important economic development agency, as pressure is building on him to settle for a candidate from within his political circle.
A growing list of heavyweights in the business and real estate world has turned down the offer to become the sole chairman of the Empire State Development Corp., which has been left in a state of limbo since Mr. Paterson assumed office more than two months ago.
...The erstwhile prospects privately offered the administration a variety of reasons for not wanting the job. Some were unwilling to accept a public-sector salary or had business dealings that would be disrupted by their departure. Others are said to have been wary of the intense public scrutiny that accompanies such a high-level government position.
...Compounding the concerns is the state's financial turmoil, which means a smaller pool of public capital and private investment in costly development projects. The development agency is already mired in setbacks. It recently scrapped plans for a $1,8 billion expansion of the Javits Center and has been unable to breathe life into plans for renovating Penn Station and for the construction of an Atlantic Yards basketball arena and residential complex in Brooklyn.
NoLandGrab: Could it be that prospective "development czars" aren't jazzed about overseeing the dismantling of the ill-conceived Atlantic Yards project?
Posted by eric at 8:56 AM
May 27, 2008
Tax breaks, even redesign to lure NYC corporate tenants
AP via Newsday
by Amy Westfeldt
This article discusses how far government will go to subsidize large developments. The proposed Atlantic Yards development isn't mentioned, but it's hard not to think about it when it is also an example of development that would not happen except for massive subsidies.
Across the city, big development projects are slowing down or falling apart because of uncertain financing, making an anchor tenant's commitment a potential make-or-break factor, experts say.
Posted by steve at 5:40 AM
May 23, 2008
Bay Ridge’s Atlantic Yards?
The Brooklyn Paper
by Ben Muessig
Congratulations Bruce Ratner, Atlantic Yards is now the poster project for stalled over-a-railyard development!
A developer’s controversial plan to build a Home Depot above a railyard on the border of Sunset Park and Bay Ridge has been abandoned until the economy rebounds.
...Kohen’s development joins a number of higher-profile projects that have stalled in the aftermath of the sub-prime mortgage crisis.
Bruce Ratner has struggled to save his ailing Atlantic Yards project near Downtown Brooklyn. The cost of the basketball arena has more than doubled to $950 million, an anchor tenant has not come forward for the iconic Miss Brooklyn tower, and the developer now says only one of his original 16 skyscrapers remains in the once $4-billion plan.
And this week, developer and mayoral candidate John Catsimatidis announced that he had eliminated affordable units in his 660-unit project on Myrtle Avenue in Fort Greene because of the credit crisis.
Posted by eric at 2:28 PM
May 22, 2008
At MAS, AY as an example of a neighborhood planning struggle
Atlantic Yards Report
When it comes to discussions of “David vs. Goliath,” the subject of a Municipal Art Society (MAS) Planning Center Forum on May 14, Atlantic Yards is an inevitable subject, though--as I’ll note below--the politics of AY means that more than one set of parties might consider themselves “Davids.”
The panel addressed the issue of “neighborhood planning in the face of large-scale development,” and planner/architect Stuart Pertz, in his introduction, noted that some projects are inherently large, and only work if built on a large scale. “Unfortunately, it often gets out of hand,” he said, suggesting that “Goliath in development has extraordinary leverage, using powerful lawyers, contractors, planners, and unions.” Then again, he said, “there are many Davids.”
A fair amount of the discussion revolved around the Atlantic Yards-alternative UNITY Plan.
Architect Marshall Brown (right), a developer of the UNITY plan for the Metropolitian Transportation Authority’s Vanderbilt Yard (and beyond), said, with perhaps some retrospective bravado, “Four years ago we realized we needed to have something in place for the probable occurrence of Forest City Ratner’s plans running aground.” He suggested that Atlantic Yards exemplified a “willful ignorance of limits,” including the physical limit of an eight-acre railyard, the legal limit of eminent domain, the democratic limit of ULURP (the city’s Uniform Land Use Review Procedure, bypassed in this case for a fast-track state review), and “finally, the all too evident limit of the talents of a single architect.”
He noted that he wasn’t dissing Frank Gehry, just pointing out--as have others, and even Gehry himself--that megaprojects require multiple architects.
Brown suggested that questions of sustainability and the “looming environmental apocalypse” meant that the Bloomberg administration should prioritize quality ahead of quantity: “I’d say it’s a city of limits.”
Lawyer Candace Carponter (right), a co-chair of the Council of Brooklyn Neighborhoods (CBN), described how the coalition, formed to respond to the Atlantic Yards environmental review, moved from officially agnostic to ultimately oppositional, joining a lawsuit challenging the review, and becoming a supporter of the UNITY plan. She suggested that the combination of a new governor, “detrimental economics,” and the Newark option for the Nets might provide an opening for the UNITY plan--though of course, that remains to be seen.
Posted by eric at 10:45 AM
May 21, 2008
Top development official to quit
AP, via Albany Times Union
By Amy Westfeldt
Avi Schick, the state's leading development official who oversaw projects from Brooklyn's Atlantic Yards to ground zero, said Tuesday he'll leave his post at the agency in September for the private sector.
This article also ran on CNNMoney.com.
Posted by lumi at 4:40 AM
Jeff Strabone — Bringing New Blood to Cobble Hill’s Leadership
Takes Helm at Cobble Hill Association
Brooklyn Daily Eagle
By Amy Crawford
Congratulations Bruce Ratner, your controversial Atlantic Yards plan is now the poster project for "iffy" development.
Jeff Strabone, the new president of the Cobble Hill Association, compares the controversy over the Brooklyn Bridge Park development plan to that surrounding the Ratner project:
“I don’t want Brooklyn Bridge Park to become another Atlantic Yards,” Strabone said. “With Atlantic Yards there are so many things that turned out to be iffy, that turned out to be not what people thought they were. It’s not clear to me who will hold title to the parkland once the park is built.”
NoLandGrab: What we don't get is why Brooklyn Bridge Park has to be "self-sustaining," while Atlantic Yards is on track to suck up billions in direct and indirect subsidies.
Posted by lumi at 4:28 AM
May 20, 2008
Calif. parks, NYC neighborhood on most-endangered sites list
USA Today
by Jayne Clark
No, Prospect Heights didn't make the National Trust's 2008 list of America's 11 Most Endangered Historic Places, but the Lower East Side did. Why? The threat of overdevelopment.
The entire California State Parks system, New York's Lower East Side, and a Topeka, Kan., elementary school that help foment the Civil Rights Movement are on the 2008 list of "America's 11 Most Endangered Historic Places," issued today by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
...The 2008 list includes a number of neighborhoods, including the New York's Lower East Side, where buildings that figure significantly into the country's immigration history are in danger of yielding to development. They include former tenements, which the trust says, "had an impact on more Americans than any other form of urban housing."
NoLandGrab: Tenements once may "have had an impact on more Americans than any other form of urban housing," but their effect has been rapidly surpassed by that of the luxury condo.
Visit PreservationNation.org for the full list of endangered sites.
Posted by eric at 1:42 PM
How build big in NYC? Not via the AY example, panelists suggest
Atlantic Yards Report
Norman Oder files an in-depth report on last night's "Can NYC Build BIG Anymore" panel discussion, and offers plenty of reasons why opponents of Atlantic Yards won't miss Empire State Development Corporation President Avi Schick when he leaves at the end of the summer.
What are the right ways to build big projects in a growing city? Although panelists who spoke Monday night didn’t make the point explicitly, the answers they offered--public planning, realistic timetables, public ownership, infrastructure first, and media skepticism toward overhyped renderings--generally point to the opposite of the process behind Atlantic Yards.
The panel, titled Can NYC Build BIG Anymore?, was sponsored by Democratic Leadership for the 21st Century and held at Iguana Restaurant in Midtown. Notably, the acting head of the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC) also offered a hearty defense of Atlantic Yards, adopting some of developer Forest City Ratner's talking points.
The question, panelists agreed, was not “can” but “how.” “One of the problems we have to confront is that people want to build big too fast,” observed Avi Schick, acting president of the ESDC, which approved and is overseeing Atlantic Yards. “Sometimes they bit off a little too much when they tried to push an entire plan forward at once.”
Posted by eric at 9:09 AM
Development Agency Is Losing Its President
The NY Times
By Charles V. Bagli
Bruce Ratner's best friend at the Empire State Development Corporation will be stepping down in September.
Avi Schick, president of the state’s economic development agency, which is in the midst of a political overhaul, will step down in September.
...
After Mr. Spitzer was elected governor, Mr. Schick moved to the Empire State Development Corporation, becoming its president. He was responsible for the state’s role in rebuilding Lower Manhattan, as well as Governors Island, and the Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn, Columbia University’s expansion plan for Manhattanville and the Brooklyn Bridge project.
Posted by lumi at 5:14 AM
May 15, 2008
JPMorgan sees Bear's Midtown NY site saving $3 bln
Reuters
In an article about JP Morgan's savings on real estate after the acquisition of Bear Stearns, Bruce Ratner's controversial Atlantic Yards project is cited as an example of the effects of the commercial real estate downturn:
New York City's real estate market is slowing as financial companies lay off tens of thousands of workers and developers find bank loans harder to get and more costly. The withering credit has already delayed mega-projects including Brooklyn's Atlantic Yards and Midtown Manhattan's Hudson Yards.
Posted by lumi at 5:33 AM
May 14, 2008
The 100 Most Powerful People in New York Real Estate
Bloomberg, Trump, Ratner, De Niro, the Guy Behind Craigslist! They’re All Among Our 100 Most Powerful People in New York Real Estate
NY Observer
It's noteworthy that the three highest-ranked developers on the Observer's list — #1 Jerry Speyer, #3 Stephen Ross, and #8 Bruce Ratner — are all having a heap of trouble closing their marquee deals: Hudson Yards, Moynihan Station/Madison Square Garden and Atlantic Yards, respectively.
Power. Webster’s Dictionary defines power as … No, no, no, never mind that: Power in New York City real estate means money—its acquisition, spending and creation—especially now, as the market enters a tremulous sunset after several bright, shiny years.
Our list of the 100 Most Powerful People in New York Real Estate was assembled with this finance-centric criterion at the forefront. The list, especially higher up, contains those who animate the deals and the trends. They are the deciders and the money providers. They make the real estate world the rest of us live in; or cover, as the case may be.
...#8 Bruce Ratner
Chairman of Forest City Ratner Companies
The leader of what is perhaps New York’s most high-profile development, the controversy magnet Atlantic Yards, Bruce Ratner is one of the most active developers in the city, often pursuing large, publicly administered projects. He’s recently taken a liking to famous architects, ensuring that his developments leave a notable impression on the skyline.
NoLandGrab: Bruce Ratner only #8 while Amanda Burden is #5? Anyone familiar with the phony 8% Atlantic Yards "scaleback" knows that when Bruce Ratner says "scaleback," Amanda Burden asks "how much?"
Posted by eric at 10:40 AM
May 12, 2008
AYR briefly on BCAT tonight
Atlantic Yards Report
For those of you who can't get enough of Atlantic Yards Report, you can see Norman Oder tonight on BCAT:
I will make a very brief appearance on BCAT's Brooklyn Review show tonight, in the second segment mentioned below. (Online clips will be available later.) The blurb:
Brooklyn Review (Brooklyn's Only News Magazine)
Premiere: Monday, May 12 at at 9pm (Time Warner 56/Cablevision 69)
Encore Presentations: Thursday, May 15 at 1pm & 9pm; Friday, May 16 at 3pm & 11pmOn this episode, Brooklyn Review’s team of reporters explores tension between the African American and Jewish communities in Crown Heights; looks at the role real estate and watchdog blogs are playing in Brooklyn development; visits a Bensonhurst high school where students are examining the ethics of war through live interviews with survivors; checks out the Sakura Matsuri cherry blossom festival at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden; and samples the borough’s tastiest foods at the Chamber of Commerce’s annual Brooklyn Eats event.
Posted by eric at 12:20 PM
May 10, 2008
Last call at Mooney’s
The Brooklyn Paper
Mooney’s pub has lost its fight to stay in its Flatbush Avenue home and will close for good by the end of June.
...
Now that Mooney’s has been priced out, and there’s a wrecking ball destined to demolish Freddy’s on Dean Street to make way for Atlantic Yards, it’s getting tougher and tougher to find a decent boozing environment.
article
NoLandGrab: That's okay, we can all hang out in the public space on the arena's green roof, or in the urban room. Oh, wait...guess not.
Posted by amy at 12:42 PM
May 9, 2008
A Tale of Two Cities, Only One With Sewers
The New York Times
by Susan Dominus
When Gordhandas Soni, the owner of an Indian food company, agreed to relocate his warehouse and factory to Willets Point, Queens, back in 1990, it never occurred to him to ask about some of the more basic amenities — the sewage system, for example. “You never ask, ‘You have sewers here?’ ” said Mr. Soni, whose business is called House of Spices. “In America, right here, in the heart of New York City? No! It never occurred to me to ask. It would be silly to ask.”
...Now Mr. Soni has banded together with 11 other businesses in Willets Point, filing a suit charging that the city has neglected to repair potholes and provide basic services like sewers and snow plowing, in an effort to devalue the property and ease the path to redevelopment.
Put in the sewers, and fix the potholes, he and his allies contend, and Willets Point will redevelop itself. The city, in reply, concedes that might be true — but because the area is on a flood plain, the city couldn’t provide sewers without removing the businesses, creating an unfortunate but intractable chicken-and-egg situation.
...Even if the city could make him whole, Mr. Soni wonders, why shouldn’t he get some additional compensation for the inconvenience of losing his property? As he put it, why should the city “take away from the small guy like me and give to a billion dollar company just so he can make another billion dollars?”
...Although it’s never easy for American manufacturers to compete with their counterparts in India — especially when it comes to something like an Indian food product — Mr. Soni says that he would be thrilled with his prospects were it not for this major uncertainty hanging over his head, and the threat that the city could invoke eminent domain to take the property.
“I always thought India would be my competition, that India would run me out of business,” he said, watching a machine fill jars with a dark, rich tamarind paste. “I didn’t think it would be New York City.”
Posted by eric at 12:45 PM
May 8, 2008
As Residents Gear Up for Fight, Economy Slows Projects
NewYorksSixth.com
Jersey City blog New York's Sixth draws some parallels between Atlantic Yards and development battles in that city's Powerhouse District.
While residents of the Powerhouse District are lawyering up to fend off the Toll Brother's development, preservation efforts across the river are getting some added help from the economic downtown. Sort of.
One victim of the recent economy downtown might very well be the ailing Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn. That redevelopment plan lead by Forest City Ratner called for constructing massive towers in a mixed use development centered around a new basketball arena. Area residents fought the plan in court, delaying construction on the project during the real estate boom. Now the economy is collapsing, credit is drying up, and the project may never be fully realized.
...As the lawsuits began tipping in Forest City Ratner's favor, the developer seized on the opportunities to begin leveling properties owned by the company, ostensibly in preparation for construction. However, Ratner's early demolition may actually be a scorched earth tactic in the war between new development and preservationists.
NoLandGrab: The blogger, and the commenters, warn that opponents of large developments, by delaying projects via lawsuits, have helped (no pun intended) pave the way for the creation of parking lots that blight the landscape. However, if courts granted the injunctions against unnecessary demolitions sought by project opponents, the landscape would still be populated by many perfectly usable buildings, rather than developer-created empty lots.
Posted by eric at 9:25 PM
Second Development-Related Rally in May Expects Hundreds
Brownstoner.com
by Sarah Ryley
Brooklyn is expected to see its second massive development-related rally this month on May 17, when hundreds are expected to march to Albee Square protesting the "lack of community involvement in upcoming development plans," according to a press release from Families United for Racial and Economic Equality (FUREE). Last Saturday, hundreds of Brooklynites clashed in a protest and counter-protest over Atlantic Yards. This rally addresses a myriad of other, less publicized effects of Downtown Brooklyn's development boom that have perhaps been overshadowed (pun intended) by the massive arena and high-rise project, or at least its opponents' more forceful media efforts.
Posted by eric at 6:48 PM
Defying an Uncertain Market
The Cooperator
By Raanan Geberer
Build it, and they will come:
All over the country, one hears about “the real estate bubble bursting,” but that metaphor doesn’t seem to have reached New York yet.
Whether looking at online or print listings, one sees hundreds of pages of new condos for sale in Williamsburg, Harlem, Tribeca, Bushwick, Prospect Heights and other areas. Prices can range from about $270,000 to tens of millions of dollars, and the names associated with new projects in the city read like a who’s who of real estate investment and development. Developers with projects on-deck for occupancy this year and 2009 include Gary Barnett (Extell), Richard Meier, Mario Percedo, Steven Ross (Related), Jeff Levine (Douglaston Development), Ron Moelis (L&M Equities), Toll Brothers, Veronica Hackett (The Clarett Group), Bruce Ratner (Forest City Ratner), Joe Moinan (the Moinan Group), Ed Minskoff (Minskoff Equities), The Albanese Organization, The Sheldrake Organization, LCOR, SJP Properties, Alchemy Properties, Boymelgreen, Don Capoccia (BFC Partners) and ARC Development.
“It’s not like anyone has stopped [building],” says Frank Percesepe, vice president of residential sales for The Corcoran Group in Brooklyn, and some companies have multiple projects in the works, or recently completed and ready for buyers.
Posted by lumi at 5:37 AM
May 3, 2008
Feasting On Harlem
Black Star News
Michael Henry Adams
By now you’ve heard about how the river-to-river rezoning was approved by the City Council--- 47-to-2. Members Avella and Charles Barron, were the heroes of the day. So were a fiery group 50 Harlemites. Young, old, Black, White, Latino, straight, gay---- they angrily and loudly jeered as a pre-selected cheering section applauded the sealing of Harlem’s fate.Doing her best to sound like Angela Davis, Council Member Inez Dickens, tried to spin the dirty deed as fulfillment of her promise to deliver jobs and greater opportunity to her district. Robert Jackson, stung to be lustily dismissed by the protesters as “an Uncle Tom sell-out, ” demanded that a visibly shaken Speaker, Christine Quinn, “ clear the balcony!” Routinely, the media have highlighted how crucial their support was. Without it, the zoning would have failed.
What’s gone unreported mostly, is how, as with people, area-wide, this issue is related to every other similar issue. For all the talk of compromises and new “affordable housing,” as outlined by Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Planning Commissioner Amanda Burden, the city government’s zoning policies, amount to little more than social engineering, meant to benefit the rich and resettle the poor.
Whether at Atlantic Yards, on the Lower East Side or the Hunt’s Point waterfront, such displacement is immoral. Paris without Parisians, Chinatown without Chinese, New Orleans or Harlem without Blacks, both culturally and economically are absurd and unsustainable. Whenever it happens, wherever it occurs, the concept that people with more money better deserve to live where you or I live, is nothing short of a kind of terrorism of the establishment.
Posted by amy at 10:14 AM
May 2, 2008
Thompson says other developers might join AY; “I’m not sure what that project is any longer”
Atlantic Yards Report
Norman Oder attended a panel discussion at the New School’s Center for New York City Affairs and found that Atlantic Yards came up quite often.
Atlantic Yards was the most contentious element of a panel discussion Wednesday at the New School’s Center for New York City Affairs titled Maintaining Momentum: Can New York’s Ambitious Development Agenda Survive an Economic Downturn?
Moderator Greg David, editor of Crain’s New York Business, and City Comptroller (and mayoral candidate) William Thompson urged that the project proceed, while Julia Vitullo-Martin of the Manhattan Institute (who called the project "corporate socialism") and Brad Lander of the Pratt Center for Community Development endorsed a rethink, albeit for somewhat different reasons.
Still, Thompson acknowledged, “I’m not sure what that project is any longer” and even dangled the hint that it might be revived by bringing in additional developers, as the city comes to the belated realization that single-developer projects pose certain dangers. He also agreed that most projects should go through ULURP, the city’s Uniform Land Use Review Procedure, rather than state review.
In other words, Thompson gave AY critics and opponents an opportunity for a “told-you-so,” to quote the New York Times’s recent coverage, just as David pressed his own “told-you-so,” nearly taunting Lander for opposing a project that has steadily survived court challenges.
Later in the discussion, Thompson includes Atlantic Yards in his discussion of development issues with David:
He said the market was affecting projects. “The greatest example is Atlantic Yards. You are going to see a rethinking of that in one form or another, only because that project--a project that I supported--I’m not sure what that project is any longer. That is a problem. It has morphed and changed, gone through ups and downs. Right now, the financing side of that--they’re not going to be able to move forward right now. I still think that--it was a good idea two years ago, it will be a good idea in five years and in ten years.”
Of course, he was ignoring the fact that the good idea was premised on a certain timetable and a certain amount of public funding.
“It may be a slightly different project," he continued, "and we may need to bring additional developers--and that’s one of the things I think you’ll see also, it’s no longer relying on one developer on megaprojects, you will look at multiple developers in different stages, so it all doesn’t fall on one person’s shoulders.”
(The alternative UNITY plan is premised on dividing the railyards into parcels for multiple developers.)
David asked “the fundamental, immediate question”: would Thompson proceed with the arena, as Bruce Ratner intends?
Yes, Thompson said.
(Keep in mind that, in 2001, his campaign received $22,500 from five people associated with developer Bruce Ratner. Still, as readers point out, there are other reasons for him to support the project, just as there are other reasons to be critical of Thompson.)
Afterwards, Oder from asks for clarification from Thompson :
I caught up with Thompson afterward. Given that the project was approved under the assumption that the benefits would arrive in ten years, rather than two or three decades, I asked whether he thought it deserved a new review, as some in Brooklyn contend.
“The first thing, we’d like to define it and fully understand it,” he replied. “What is the project going to be over the next two, three, five, ten years? I think that’s the course that we’d like to do. People would like to go back and re-trigger things and look at it again--I don’t know that we should do that.”
So what’s the process to define it, I asked.
“Government has an obligation,” he said "to fully make sure” what the short- and long-term goals of the project are and make them public.
That, I pointed out, might be complicated by the news I’d reported that morning that the developer had the city’s permission to build a much smaller Phase 1 than previously anticipated, and over 12 years.
Yesterday, Bruce Ratner said in a statement denying rumors about talks with New Jersey investors, "We are focused on breaking ground on the Barclays Center in Brooklyn later this year and building all of Atlantic Yards, nothing else."
Expect him to be asked to define what "all of Atlantic Yards" actually means.
Posted by steve at 6:36 AM
April 29, 2008
Development Watch: Atlantic Terrace
Brownstoner.com
Here's one development near the Vanderbilt Railyard, featuring a lot of affordable housing, that's actually going forward as scheduled.
While the future of affordable housing at Atlantic Yards is unclear, there's been some progress on Atlantic Terrace, the mixed-income development a stone's throw from the AY footprint. There was a ceremonial groundbreaking for the project back (rendered at right) in October, and workers have dug the big hole that'll eventually get filled with 80 co-ops, 50 percent of which will be affordable to low-income families and 20 percent of which will be affordable moderate-income earners. Last year there were stories in the Observer and Post about how plans for solar panels on the building's roof had to be scrapped because the looming shadows of AY high-rises would interfere with harnessing sunshine. Perhaps dark days for AY help that design facet see the light of day.
Posted by eric at 12:34 PM
NYC building boom won't peak for 2-3 yrs -panel
The Guardian
By Joan Gralla
New York City's building boom will not top out until 2010 or 2011 despite the ailing economy because so many billion-dollar public and private projects are under way, a panel said on Monday.
Wall Street is the sun around which the city's economy revolves, but private developers and public agencies have planned $51 billion of projects over the next four years, according to the blue-ribbon panel's report for New York state's Metropolitan Transportation Authority.
With contractors and skilled workmen in short supply and the prices of steel, concrete, copper and other materials spiraling higher, the state agency convened the panel to find ways to cut costs to avoid having to delay or reduce projects.
...
So far, Brooklyn's Atlantic Yards development, which includes a new basketball stadium for the Nets, is the only project that has said it probably will take longer to finish than first thought because of the sagging economy.
Posted by lumi at 5:01 AM
L.A.'s Grand Avenue project snags on loans
LA Times
By Cara Mia DiMassa
The other Frank Gehry-designed megaproject is also stalling out:
The developer of the Grand Avenue project in downtown Los Angeles said Monday that completion of the $3-billion redevelopment effort will be delayed until 2012 because of difficulty in obtaining construction loans amid the real estate downturn.
The Frank Gehry-designed high-rise project is seen as a linchpin in downtown's revitalization, and the delay is the latest sign that the loft and condo craze in the city center is cooling off.
...
Grand Avenue is one of several mega-developments around the nation that are in trouble because of the credit crunch. In Seattle, developers recently shelved plans for a $7-billion development downtown, citing the poor economy. Huge projects in Las Vegas, Phoenix and New York have also been scaled back or delayed, including part of the Gehry-designed Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn and a $14-billion development of the area around Penn Station.
Posted by lumi at 4:56 AM
April 28, 2008
Real Estate Slump Hits New York
Gotham Gazette
By Steven Josselson
Congratulations Bruce Ratner, your Atlantic Yards scheme is now the poster-project for the local real estate slowdown:
In recent years, few issues have divided residents of Downtown Brooklyn more than the $4 billion, 22-acre Atlantic Yards project being developed by New Jersey Nets' owner Bruce Ratner. Ratner's company Forest City Ratner is in a deal with the city and state to develop a high-rise commercial office tower, affordable housing units and a basketball stadium, the Barclays Center, in the heart of Downtown Brooklyn in just a few years.
Local community groups and residents, concerned that such a large-scale development in a partially residential area could harm their quality of life and change the neighborhood's character forever, have been attempting to stop the project in its tracks through litigation, seeking to influence public opinion and pressure decision-makers in City Hall and Albany to reconsider the project's risks.
While these concerted efforts have proven unsuccessful, integral components of the development have now been put on hold for an indeterminate period of time -- not because of public outrage, but rather due to increasing construction costs, a slowing economy sliding toward a recession and a tightening credit market.
To different degrees, the very same economic challenges facing Atlantic Yards are impacting real estate projects both big and small throughout the five boroughs.
NoLandGrab: Though Daily News columnist Errol Louis derides those of us who spend our free time pointing out anything that locates Atlantic Yards in "Downtown Brooklyn," as developer Bruce Ratner would have you believe, instead of "Prospect Heights," where it is actually located, we can't seem to stop. It's a no-brainer and thus, just about our speed.
Seriously, the tip-off to the author should have been the description of the neighborhood as a "partially residential area."
Posted by lumi at 4:36 AM
City forcing its will upon Coney Island
MetroNY
By Neil deMause
NY City revised the plan for Coney Island in the hopes of “getting something done,” which is a good thing, right?
Worse yet, focusing on “getting things done” doesn’t even always get things done. Too often, it’s meant putting all the city’s eggs in one basket — witness Bruce Ratner’s maybe-on-hiatus Atlantic Yards project, where the city’s hopes for a sweeping remaking of the Brooklyn railyards could instead end up leading to 20 years of empty lots. It’s important to remember that historically, there are plenty of districts that developed because the city didn’t get things done — say, SoHo, which was colonized by artists after Robert Moses’ Lower Manhattan Expressway scheme collapsed — achieving more gradual, organic change. Sometimes, slow and steady wins the race.
Posted by lumi at 4:20 AM
April 27, 2008
Putting the "Community" back into CBA
After Atlantic Yards developer Bruce Ratner took the first steps towards perverting the concept of the "Community Benefits Agreement" (CBA), things have gone from bad to worse in NYC. Now a group from the Bronx is hoping to negotiate a real CBA with Related Companies for the Kingbridge Armory project.
From The Eminent Domain:
Now KARA [Kingbrige Armory Redevelopment Alliance] is doing something extremely gutsy: It is trying to wrest the whole concept of a community benefits agreement back from the jaws of elected officials who have perverted it beyond recognition, so much so that New Yorkers who pay attention to development simply assume that a CBA is one step removed from a shakedown. (Check out the comments on blogs and news sites if you’d like to think that’s not true.) And you can’t exactly fault that perception, given “CBAs” like the Yankee Stadium deal that basically gives Bronx officials a pile of money they can spend in any way they want, plus an ample supply of free sports equipment.
The question now is: how is KARA going to change the script here?
...
But the situation highlights a glaring reality: New York City is suffering from its lack of a citywide framework for how economic development projects like this happen. All over the city we’re seeing citizens wage campaigns to make development more responsive to its host communities — in West Harlem, Willets Point, downtown Brooklyn, Coney Island, and those are only the big ones — but they each fight their own lonely battles, often pitted against their own elected officials.
Posted by lumi at 6:33 AM
April 26, 2008
Brooklyn Bridge Park goes forward
The Brooklyn Paper
By Mike McLaughlin
Brooklyn Bridge Park cleared another hurdle this week, as the State Supreme Court ruled against opponents of the open space and luxury housing development, unanimously upholding the state’s inclusion of private housing inside the park’s footprint.The Brooklyn Bridge Park Defense Fund had filed the lawsuit to force the state to revise its plans for the 85-acre parkland and commercial development along the DUMBO and Brooklyn Heights waterfront by eliminating the controversial condominiums and hotel slated for the park.
...
The Defense Fund also argued that the development’s Environmental Impact Statement — a document that examines the effect of the project on everything from air quality to traffic flows — was flawed because it underestimated the impact of traffic from the proposed Atlantic Yards mega-project just over a mile away.
...
The court also concluded that the effects of Atlantic Yards-related traffic was sufficiently studied.
Posted by amy at 10:50 AM
April 18, 2008
"HOT HOT HOT"
Not to dampen a landlord's prospects to make a buck, but this listing from Prudential Douglas Elliman needs a little clarification (and a new photo after someone takes ten minutes to move the stuff to the other side of the room):
Vanderbilt Avenue
Prospect Heights
cross street: Dean StreetStyle: Commercial
Rent:$4,700 per monthCommercial space in HOT HOT HOT Prospect Heights! Highly visible CORNER LOCATION on Vanderbilt Avenue, near the upcoming development in Atlantic Yards.
NoLandGrab: This property is across the street from Phase 2 of Bruce Ratner's controversial Atlantic Yards project. PHASE 2 HAS NO OFFICIAL TIMETABLE for construction, making "upcoming" accurate, like, in a geological timeframe.
Much of the property in Phase 2 is being flattened by Bruce Ratner and is sure to be plagued by demolition blight for years to come, which would definitely make nearly anything that moves into the corner space "highly visible" and a welcome improvement to the neighborhood.
Posted by lumi at 5:36 AM
In Harlem and Coney Island, major compromises before zoning approval
Atlantic Yards Report
Yesterday the New York Times reported that the Bloomberg administration has revised its redevelopment plan for Coney Island to get current landowners and elected officials onboard.
On Wednesday, the Times reported that Harlem's three City Council members had agreed to a compromise plan that would lower the height of new buildings allowed under a rezoning, increased the amount of affordable housing, and provide some help to displaced businesses.
Fair deals? I can't be sure. (The Brooklyn Paper praised the Coney compromise.) But it's notable that the political process--the need to get a rezoning through City Council--forced changes, in both cases much larger compromises than, say, the 6-8% scaleback proffered (and overplayed by the New York Times) before the Atlantic Yards project received state approval.
Norman Oder imagines what if... link
Posted by lumi at 5:05 AM
Defining ULURP
The Brooklyn Paper's cautiously positive editorial on the new plans for Coney Island includes this noteworthy definition of NYC's Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP):
...the city’s rigorous land-use review process — where the public, elected officials and bona-fide city planners could hack away at it until it was honed to perfection.
It’s this very public-review process that the borough’s other mega-project, Atlantic Yards, was allowed to skirt — to that project’s, and the public’s, great disservice.
Posted by lumi at 4:59 AM
April 14, 2008
The Prospect Heights Historic District nudges forward
Atlantic Yards Report
The City's Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) held a public meeting last Wednesday in Prospect Heights (the neighborhood in which the proposed Atlantic Yards is located), as part of the process to establish a Prospect Heights Historic District.
Norman Oder covered the meeting, which was called by the Prospect Heights Neighborhood Development Council (PHNDC). The threat of Atlantic Yards influenced some of the discussion that meeting attendees had with Kate Daly, the LPC’s executive director.
Some residents wondered, essentially, why now. “You didn’t stop Ratner,” one said. “You didn’t stop the [Richard Meier] glass building on Grand Army Plaza.”
“It’s not to stop development,” Daly replied. “It’s to preserve a sense of place.”
...Later, the issue recurred, when an audience member said, “I don’t see anything in this process that helps protect” against a development like Atlantic Yards.
An audience member responded that, as of now, someone could knock down five contiguous buildings and construct something quite out of scale.
Still, some were concerned that the process couldn’t protect, for example, against shadows caused by giant buildings on the border of the district, buildings that sounded a lot like Atlantic Yard.
“We’re not able to stop development outside the boundaries,” Daly acknowledged. “But this would be a tremendous accomplishment.”
Posted by steve at 8:27 AM
New Bloomberg Job Rumor Is Followed by a Denial
The New York Times
By Fernanda Santos
The Times probes rumors about Mayor Bloomberg trying for a third term (which would require changes to term-limit rules). Political consultant George Arzt mentions one possible advantage to Bloomberg of a third term:
The prospect of a third term would give Mr. Bloomberg more control over his legacy, Mr. Arzt said. It could allow him to recover from recent setbacks like the defeat of the congestion pricing plan in Albany and delays in projects like the Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn because of the economic downturn.
NoLandGrab: The real setback for Bloomberg over Atlantic Yards began when he ceded control of the project to the state, along with any input into sensible design for the lumbering, over-subsidized project.
Posted by steve at 5:59 AM
April 10, 2008
PRESS RELEASE: Willets Point Industry and Realty Association Filing Lawsuit in U.S. Federal District Court against Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg & City of New York
NEW YORK — The Willets Point Industry and Realty Association (WPIRA), a group of the 10 largest business and land owners in Willets Point, Queens, are today filing a lawsuit against the City of New York seeking a court order requiring the City to provide basic vital infrastructure including repairs to streets and storm sewers, installation of sanitary sewers, street lights, street signs and other services that WPIRA maintains the City has withheld for over 40 years. The suit also requests unspecified damages for past neglect. The suit was filed in U.S. Federal District Court, in the Eastern District of New York. WPIRA will hold a rally and press conference at New York City Hall at 11 A.M. today.
The suit is filed against Michael Bloomberg, as Mayor of the City of New York, Emily Lloyd, as Commissioner of the New York City Department of Environmental Protection, Janette Sadik-Khan as Commissioner of the New York City Department of Transportation and John Doherty as Commissioner of the New York City Department of Sanitation.
At the heart of the complaint is the alleged purposeful refusal of New York City to provide these basic services and an allegation that the City intended to depress property values. This would pave the way for NYC to condemn Willets Point, evicting its businesses and deliver this choice piece of real estate to the hands of private developers. In addition to the lawsuit, members of WPIRA fear this development plan will follow the current trend of stalled or failed developments throughout the City.
WPIRA says that The City of New York is proposing to rezone Willets Point, condemn it and evict the existing businesses through the use of eminent domain and replace them with 1.7 million feet of retail space, 500,000 square feet of office space, a hotel, 5,500 residential housing units and a convention center in the neighborhood that is currently zoned for heavy industry. To make this proposal a reality, the City must first acquire the 60 acres of privately owned land at Willets Point. The suit alleges that the City of New York has planned to rezone and redevelop for many years and has been waging a campaign of intentional neglect to create and perpetuate an eyesore for the eventual justification of the use of Eminent Domain.
“The city’s negligent, reckless and willful refusal to provide this infrastructure creates not only an offensive nuisance but it also creates hazards that threaten the health, safety and livelihood of those who work in Willets Point,” said Michael Gerrard, Attorney for WPIRA. The suit claims the City’s failure to address the deplorable conditions of the Willets Point infrastructure has caused extensive and predictable damage to the businesses. This damage includes depressed property values, difficulty recruiting and retaining employees, difficulty obtaining credit, higher interest rates for business loans, diminished business revenues, equipment and property damage, higher delivery costs and business interruption costs. Additionally, the looming threat of Eminent Domain and resulting loss of jobs has taken a toll on morale in all area businesses.
According to WPIRA, Willets Point employs an estimated 3,000 highly skilled workers in ironworking, construction, solid waste management, sewer parts, auto repair and service, and the manufacture of bakery and food ingredients that includes the largest distributor of Indian foods in the US. Yet the city continues to misrepresent the area as a haven for crime comprised mostly of junkyards and chop shops. The area’s workforce is mostly blue-collar and for almost 80 years has provided a valuable opportunity for local residents to start up their own businesses and live the American dream. Willets Point businesses provide billions of dollars of economic activity and millions of dollars of tax revenue to the City of New York.
The members of WPIRA believe that the area would be revitalized if the City spent a fraction of the capital required for redevelopment and invested in infrastructure for the area. The New York City Economic Development Corporation (EDC) conducted a study of the area in 1991 that suggested exactly that. “If the City provided the infrastructure and services that we are entitled to and in fact, are paying for, the area would be revitalized,” said Dan Feinstein, President of Feinstein Iron Works, Inc., one of the Plaintiffs. According to WPIRA, the estimated cost of redeveloping the area is upwards of three billion dollars. That estimate is expected to skyrocket given the credit crisis and increasing construction costs. “Our schools and emergency first responders are facing more budget cuts and the Mayor wants to hand a blank check of New York City’s hard earned taxpayers dollars to a private developer?” said Feinstein. “That is outrageous, unacceptable and we’re not going to stand for it.”
WPIRA members point out that the project’s price tag is just one of the many obstacles the EDC faces as the City moves forward to prepare to certify the ULURP (Uniform Land Use Review Procedure) to rezone Willets Point. The City issued an RFP in November 2004 but has not released results of their environmental impact analysis of the area in question nor has it presented a detailed plan for the redevelopment of the area and/or identified a developer. These usually precede the ULURP process so that the City Council can maintain control over the final outcome. WPIRA charges EDC wants a free hand to negotiate with a developer, unencumbered by the City Council.
“Despite the numerous and obvious obstacles, it appears that the EDC believes it doesn’t have to follow any rules and it can muscle its way through the City Council and the ULURP; and the Union and Housing advocates can be appeased by promises that future administrations will have to fulfill,” said Thomas Mina, Vice President of T. Mina Supply Inc., one of the Plaintiffs. “We have received feedback from City Council members and seen the false statements in the news by the EDC that prove our fear that the EDC is attempting to portray us as uncooperative and “money hungry” so they can justify the use of eminent domain at the end of the ULURP process,” said Mina.
“The EDC is not being truthful with the City Council, the businesses at Willets Point or the public. If the City wanted to deal openly and fairly, they would have released the results of property appraisals that were completed last year by Cushman and Wakefield,” said Anthony Fodera, President of Fodera Foods Inc., one of the Plaintiffs. Not one of the 10 business and land owners of WPIRA have been provided with viable options for relocation of their businesses, despite numerous public statements to the contrary by the EDC and Queens Borough President Helen M. Marshall.
The WPIRA points out the EDC’s abysmal track record of completing re-development projects and abusive threats of Eminent Domain. “The EDC has yet to prove that it can coordinate between the community and developers to bring a project to successful completion,” said Anthony Fodera. “Just look at Municipal Lot 1 project in Flushing, Queens. That project has been stalled for years due to the developer’s inability to fulfill the community benefits package it once promised. Why should we think the EDC can do any better in Willets Point?”
The Willets Point Industry and Realty Association (WPIRA)
The Willets Point Industry and Realty Association (WPIRA) is dedicated to the development, improvement and growth of the Willets Point area by the businesses that reside there, and not by development schemes in which eminent domain is used to forcibly evict and raze those businesses. The WPIRA consists of the following businesses: A. Fodera & Son, Inc., Bono Sawdust Supply Co., Inc., Crown Container Co., Inc., Feinstein Iron Works, Inc., House of Spices (India), Inc., Parts Authority, Inc., QC Iron Works Inc., Sambucci Bros. Inc, T. Mina Supply, Inc., Tully Environmental, Inc., Tully Construction Co., Inc. www.WPIRA.com
Posted by eric at 3:50 PM
Building a better economic outlook
NY Daily News
by Errol Louis
The Daily News columnist praises ESDC honcho Avi Schick and Rebuild! president Darnell Canada for their efforts to keep economic growth on track.
As New York slides into an economic rough patch, hopes for a speedy and robust recovery will lie with the unsung heroes who keep the machinery of growth humming in good times and bad.
I'm talking about people like Avi Schick, acting CEO of the Empire State Development Corp., the state's main economic development agency. Schick is battling to keep complex, high-profile mega-projects alive around the city, including the rebuilding of Ground Zero, the Atlantic Yards development in Brooklyn, the creation of a new midtown train terminal to replace Penn Station and Columbia University's expansion into west Harlem.
Each of these big projects has been slowed or halted of late, for reasons ranging from political squabbling to a credit crunch as investment banks battered by the slowing economy tighten up on loans to developers.
NoLandGrab: This column is a departure for Louis — he passes up the opportunity to blame Atlantic Yards' delays on opponents, instead citing the "souring economy."
Posted by eric at 11:26 AM
April 9, 2008
Willets Point protesters sue to block $3B city plan
Protesters say the city hasn't t provided sewers, sidewalks, paved roads or storm drains for the last 40 years. New development is like throwing out the baby before changing the bathwater.
Crain's NY Business
by Hilary Potkewitz
Willets Point property owners have filed a federal eminent domain suit against New York City in an effort to keep their businesses from falling prey to "redevelopment."
A group of businesses facing eviction by the city from their homes in Willets Point, Queens filed a federal lawsuit against the City of New York and several public officials Wednesday. It is the companies’ latest effort to forestall plans for a city-backed $3 billion mixed-use project on their land.
The case, filed in the Eastern District federal court, seeks to force the city to provide sanitary sewers, sidewalks, paved roads and storm drains in a commercial area that has had none for more than 40 years. The suit also seeks unspecified damages, charging city officials with a “waging a campaign of intentional neglect to create and perpetuate an eyesore for eventual justification of the use of eminent domain,” according to the filing.
The businesses say they’ve been thrown out with the bathwater.
“The city has intentionally driven down the value of these properties by withholding services,” says Michael Gerrard, a partner in the environmental law practice at Arnold & Porter, which is representing the business owners. “It is impermissible for the city to try and take advantage of that [lack of services] to acquire properties at fire-sale prices.”
NoLandGrab: While a spokesperson for the City's Economic Development Corporation called the area "blighted and seriously contaminated," she didn't comment on the City's failure to provide the neighborhood with sewers, sidewalks, paved roads or storm drains for the past 40 years. But now that fancy new Citi Field is set to open across the street next April, the area's problems need to be addressed — through eminent domain, if necessary (but only, of course, as a last resort).
Posted by eric at 5:09 PM
April 7, 2008
Hidden law could undo Willets Point rezone plans
Queens Times Ledger
By Stephen Stirling
Even though a recent discovery in the City Charter has nothing to do with Atlantic Yards, many NoLandGrab readers following other development controversies around the city may find this to be very interesting:
While pouring through the City Charter recently in an effort to find a way to ward off a rezoning of the area around Harlem's 125th Street, first year CUNY law school students Giselle Schuetz and Kathleen Meyers, along with two others at Vote People, a legal services group, came across a 110-year-old clause that has given hope to those opposed to the Manhattan rezoning.
The clause, outlined in Section 200 of the City Charter, states that if a petition is signed by more than 20 percent of the landowners in and directly adjacent to a proposed rezoning area approved by the City Planning Commission, the City Council would need a 75 percent majority to approve the measure rather than a simple majority.
This discovery could have implications for property owners in Willets Point who are fighting eminent domain:
Schuetz's and Meyers's discovery has also piqued the interest of business owners at Willets Point, who are currently fighting the city's plan to remake the 60-acre swath of land into a sprawling mixed-use development with more than 1 million square feet of office and retail space and 5,500 housing units.
When word of the century-old clause reached members of the Willets Point Industry and Real Estate Association, a group of 11 property owners united against the city's plan and lawyers for the group immediately began pouring over the language of the City Charter.
"Everybody's looking at it," said Rick Wynn, general counsel for Tully Construction Co., one of the largest businesses in Willets Point. "It's certainly interesting from our point of view - let's put it that way."
NoLandGrab: Since Bruce Ratner's controversial Atlantic Yards is the result of a NY State takeover, which supercedes all local zoning, and the NY City Council never had an official vote on the plan, this discovery doesn't apply here.
More locally, however, this could affect the Toll Brothers project along the Gowanus. Toll Brothers is seeking a special rezoning through the City's Uniform Land Use Review Procedure, even while future rezoning plans are being contemplated for the rest of the Gowanus basin.
Posted by lumi at 4:57 AM
April 6, 2008
On Wednesday, a landmarking meeting for Prospect Heights
Atlantic Yards Report
From the Prospect Heights Neighborhood Development Council (PHNDC): Following PHNDC's request to the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission for an evaluation of a Prospect Heights Historic District, LPC will present its proposed boundaries for the district at a community forum on Wednesday, April 9 beginning at 7:00 PM. The forum will be held at P.S. 9, 80 Underhill Avenue (between St. Marks Avenue and Bergen Street). Representatives from LPC will also answer questions from residents and business owners.
Note that the Ward Bakery, under demolition, and the rest of the Atlantic Yards footprint are not included in the boundaries.
Posted by steve at 8:50 AM
April 2, 2008
ATLANTIC CURRENT
BROOKLYN BREAKS OUT IN A BIG WAY
New York Post
by Max Gross
While Atlantic Yards may be stalling, development along Atlantic Avenue is not.
Back in 1968, a brownstone off Atlantic Avenue could be procured for about $40,000 - and in some cases, for significantly less. (One of Wood's neighbors bought a brownstone four years earlier for $14,000.) Then, the avenue consisted mostly of empty parking lots, gas stations and antique dealers.
The area began changing gradually over the past 20 years, but gentrification has truly picked up recently (even with the uncertainty and controversy surrounding Atlantic Yards).
"It's changed a lot just in the last three years," says Rachel Horlick, who moved to the Smith last month after spending the previous three years on nearby Dean Street. "There's boutique clothing stores, coffee places, ice-cream shops."
Posted by eric at 11:56 AM
April 1, 2008
Shadows on the Hudson
Among the tottering cranes, panicky condo marketers, and derailed megadevelopments, envisioning tomorrow’s boom today.
New York Magazine
By Justin Davidson
Real estate is supposed to be real, but these days it’s the province of fabulists. Boom-time dreams for Coney Island, Pier 40, and a new Madison Square Garden got bad news last week. After years of spinning fantasies of a Brooklyn Oz designed by that purveyor of fairy-tale architecture, Frank Gehry, Bruce Ratner has finally admitted that his Atlantic Yards ambitions have vaporized—or, in builders’ parlance, that the credit crunch “may hold up” most of the project. But fantasies have consequences: The condemned buildings will keep coming down, and the basketball arena will go up, leaving that part of Brooklyn ravaged, not improved. Now the parcel might be sold off and developed piecemeal, one mediocre tower at a time.
Ratner has called off his party, but elsewhere the city still plows ahead. Unfinished towers sprinkle debris on passersby, producing tomorrow’s glut of vacant penthouse pleasure domes.
Posted by lumi at 7:01 PM
Over $20 Billion New York Development May Be Canceled Due To Weak Economy
All Headline News
By Vittorio Hernandez
A rewrite of this weekend's NY Daily News story:
As the Big Apple's economy seemingly turn from bad to worse, over $20 billion worth of development projects are at risk of being canceled. A number of the projects were designed by renowned architects.
Among the ambitious projects now with dubious futures are the Atlantic Yards towers in Brooklyn designed by Frank Gehry and the Manhattan Moynihan rail center in midtown. The developer of Atlantic Yards, Bruce Ratner, said the $4 billion project may be delayed because of funding problems.
Posted by lumi at 6:56 PM
March 31, 2008
More than $20B in developments dead or at risk of never seeing light of day
NY Daily News
by Jonathan Lemire
The boom is going bust.
More than $20 billion worth of high-profile developments across the city - many designed by world-renowned architects and touted by top officials - are dead or at risk of never getting off the drawing board.
The crumbling economy has forced developers to scale back their grand visions and has endangered projects that range from architectural marvels like Frank Gehry's Atlantic Yards towers in Brooklyn to crucial pieces of the city's infrastructure, like Manhattan's Moynihan rail hub in midtown.
"It really was an amazing run for cities and particularly for New York," said Elliott Sclar, an urban planning professor at Columbia University. "But it appears that itmay be over now.
...Some urban planners say projects like Moynihan Station, Atlantic Yards and another mega-proposal to redevelop Willets Point, Queens, are struggling to get off the ground because plans have grown too bloated.
"All of these projects have been driven by a form of planning called fiscal planning, where the city is not concerned with the physical structure of spaces but only maximizing real estate values or tax revenues," Sclar said. "That's not the right way to promote healthy development."
Posted by eric at 9:58 PM
Sunday in NYC: Avella denounces overdevelopment; Luxury Living showcase draws throng
Atlantic Yards Report
Norman Oder attended the kick-off event for Tony Avella's mayoral campaign, and then took a gander at the condomania playing a central role in the Queens councilman's platform.
Longshot mayoral candidate Tony Avella, a maverick City Council Member from Northeast Queens, officially launched his candidacy yesterday afternoon at a City Hall press conference. Seeking to distinguish himself from the highly-scripted typical politicians, Avella declared that he hadn't written a speech but instead would speak about three main issues.
Indeed, two of Avella's issues barely registered with the crowd of supporters behind him: lowered taxes and a revamped education system. Rather, they applauded heartily when he condemned overdevelopment, asserting that the real estate industry has too much power and "the city has done very little to preserve quality of life."
"Overdevelopment," he said, "is destroying the character of every community. That absolutely must stop."
...After leaving Avella's press conference, where some supporters carried signs asserting "The revolution starts... now!", it took just three stops uptown along the #6 subway line to visit the New York Observer's Luxury Living: New York Condo Showcase at the Puck Building at Lafayette and Houston streets.
Compared to the crowd at City Hall, this group was less gritty and better-dressed. There was a bar, musical entertainment, and other festive accoutrements. And all these projects, and their buyers, gain benefits from the belatedly-reformed 421-a tax break, which has fueled development all over the city, including the Queens districts that constitute Avella's base.
Posted by eric at 3:37 PM
The Community Boards face cuts, but the system needs a boost
Atlantic Yards Report
It was a relatively small article on page 5 of the City section of the New York Times, sandwiched in between pieces on the closing of a beloved laundry in Cobble Hill and after-school life at a coffee/tea/spice shop in Park Slope, but it touched on a very important issue: New Yorkers have way too few resources to pursue democracy at the neighborhood level. What it didn't explain is why the Community Board (CB) system needs reform, and may well become an issue in the next mayoral race.
The article, headlined Not Quite Passing the Hat, but Already Feeling the Pain, concerns cuts of 5%-8% at the CBs, which may not sound like much, but cut into already limited resources.
...City Council Member Gale Brewer, who represents the Upper West Side, lamented that CBs often don't have the resources to be proactive, to say "This alternative works." The Atlas is an attempt to change that, to show what community planners have been doing.
Support from the Borough President and others, Brewer said, can be key to empowering the CBs. Most don't have the staff to keep up with all the changes in their community and put all documents online. "Maybe Craig Hammerman"--District Manager of Brooklyn CB 6, which has an extensive web site--"because he's a nut," Brewer said affectionately, but few others manage similarly.
NoLandGrab: Brooklyn CB 6 — largely thanks to the tireless Hammerman — has long advocated for a much greater community role in the Atlantic Yards project.
Posted by eric at 3:28 PM
March 28, 2008
Home Depot may back out of Harlem site
Home Depot said it is rethinking its long-anticipated East River Plaza location, even though it has already signed a lease.
Crain's NY Business
by Elisabeth Butler Cordova
We're starting to think that there's a permanent rain cloud hovering over Atlantic Yards and East River Plaza developer Forest City Ratner's MetroTech headquarters.
Real estate sources say that The Home Depot Inc. is close to abandoning its long-anticipated store at the East River Plaza in Harlem, a major new retail development from Forest City Ratner and Blumenfeld Development group.
Home Depot confirmed that it is rethinking the location, even though it has already signed a lease.
...“We have a lease with them, and we expect them to live up to that,” says Loren Riegelhaupt, vice president of government and public affairs at Forest City Ratner Cos., which partnered with Blumenfeld Development Group to create the project.
NoLandGrab: Does Forest City's Mr. Riegelhaupt mean "we expect them to live up to that" in the same way that Forest City Ratner is failing miserably in living up to its Atlantic Yards promises of 10,000 new permanent jobs, 2,250 units of affordable housing and $5.6 billion in new tax revenues, with all the construction wrapped up in 10 years? Just wondering.
Posted by eric at 3:11 PM
Yard Work
The Brian Lehrer Show
WNYC Radio
A 17-minute segment from yesterday's Brian Lehrer Show, featuring Crain's New York editor Greg David and WNYC's Matthew Schuerman comparing and contrasting the Yards Atlantic and Hudson.
Posted by eric at 10:51 AM
March 27, 2008
News analysis: The Times gives the ESDC a bye
Atlantic Yards Report
When will The New York Times learn?
A New York Times News Analysis today of the West Side Yards deal, headlined For Railyards, the Hard Part Is Still Ahead, leaves out some important Atlantic Yards context.
Posted by eric at 1:39 PM
March 26, 2008
Tishman Speyer wins Hudson Yards bid
Tishman bid $1.004 billion for rights to the plot, $112 million higher than the offer from The Durst Organization and Vornado Realty Trust.
Crain's NY Business
by Theresa Agovino
In a reversal of its own sullied tradition, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority today awarded the Hudson Rail Yards to the highest bidder, real estate developer Tishman Speyer.
Tishman Speyer edged out three other development teams to win the fierce competition to develop the Hudson Rail Yards, the 26-acre site on Manhattan’s far West side that is envisioned as an extension of midtown’s business district.
Tishman Speyer bid $1.004 billion for the rights to the plot, where it plans to build 10 million square feet of office space and 3 million square feet of housing while leaving 13 acres of open space. Its offer was $112 million higher than a competing offer from a joint venture of The Durst Organization and Vornado Realty Trust. That group had lined up Condé Naste Publications as a tenant and its proposed 6.4 million square feet of residential space was the most offered by any developer.
It is expected to cost $1.5 billion to build a platform over the train tracks so construction can begin.
NoLandGrab: How is this railyard deal different from Bruce Ratner's railyard deal? Let's see: high bidder chosen rather than low bidder; $1 billion in midst of failing real estate market vs. $100 million in midst of real estate bubble; city rezoning vs. state override; no eminent domain vs. eminent domain abuse.... Need we go on?
More coverage:
City Room (The New York Times), M.T.A. Votes to Sell West Side Land Rights to Tishman Speyer
The project still faces several prospective hurdles. The $1,004,000,000 deal requires the completion of an agreement over the next 14 days specifying terms and conditions of the deal, and the signing of a formal contract. The slowing economy has prompted some developers, like Bruce C. Ratner, to consider delay the schedule for major developments like the Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn. And a portion of the rail yards of the Far West Side that would be controlled by Tishman still must undergo a rezoning process that could take up to 18 months.
Curbed.com, Yardsmania: It's Official!, Yardsmania: OK, So Now What?
The Real Estate, Tishman Speyer Win Not Quite Official
AP, via The International Herald Tribune, Developer Tishman Speyer to build skyscrapers, apartments on New York City waterfront
Posted by eric at 2:25 PM
March 25, 2008
Comparing Coney Island
Atlantic Yards Report
The Coney contrast: no eminent domain, "constant public input"
As Atlantic Yards has become the poster child for bad public process and inadequate urban planning, it's worth watching the city's posture toward other major development projects.
And the city is treading carefully in Coney Island, where a rezoning plan would avoid use of eminent domain, even though the major landowner in the amusement area, Thor Equities' Joe Sitt, so far has very different plans for his property and has not yet agreed to a suggested swap of city land to the west.
The standalone arena makes the Coney option look stronger
Ok, it's not on the city's radar screen, given other ambitious plans for Coney Island, but Forest City Ratner's intention to proceed with an Atlantic Yards arena and wait--perhaps for a very long while--before building office space and housing suddenly removed some major objections to the once front-burner plan to put an arena in Coney Island.
And the city's intention to press for express train service would remove another objection. That's not to say an arena is likely, but the discussion deserves a second look.
Posted by lumi at 4:22 AM
March 24, 2008
Voices: Brace for a new glut of office space
MetroNY
By Neil DeMause
Well, that was quick. In the one week since Bear Stearns suffered its total existence failure, stories of developers bailing on office-tower projects came fast and furious: First J.P. Morgan Chase rethinking its building on the former Deutsche Bank building site, then Bruce Ratner admitting his Frank Gehry-designed “Miss Brooklyn” skyscraper would be delayed indefinitely (though he insists he’s going ahead with the accompanying Nets basketball arena). Meanwhile, two major Manhattan developers had their stocks downgraded amid fears of a coming office glut.
It’s certainly a far cry from four years ago, when then-deputy mayor Dan Doctoroff announced plans for a staggering 28 million square feet of new office buildings — that’s seven World Trade Center towers — as part of a “Hudson Yards” development centered on a West Side stadium for the Jets and the Olympics. Today, it’s clear there will be no Midtown West — at most maybe it’ll be Chelsea North, if the housing market doesn’t collapse next.
Why should you care, unless you’re a developer?
...
These sorts of deals are sold as “public-private partnerships” — taxpayers prime the pump for developers. The problem is they shift the risk to taxpayers, who when the economy goes south are left holding the bag.
Posted by lumi at 4:26 AM
March 20, 2008
Planner Burden on balanced growth, community consultation, and "esthetic democracy" (in Brooklyn)
Atlantic Yards Report
Norman Oder parses a two-year-old CUNY-TV interview with City Planning Commission Chairperson Amanda Burden in an attempt to understand how she looks at rezonings. This passage tells us just about all we need to know.
Burden: That's the thing. Any rezoning, to get it passed or done, has got to pass community boards and elected officials. So we have to build consensus. And the only way you can do that is by really showing people visually what they're going to get, and bringing in the stakeholders and getting them to feel invested in the plan. For instance, in Greenpoint and Williamsburg, here you had two miles of waterfront, it was fenced off, inacessible, derelict for decades. So to really get the community to not only understand the zoning that we were proposing, but to buy into that, we took the committee for open space of the community board there around to all waterfront parks in the city, and they chose the benches and the lights and the paving and the railing that's going to be on their waterfront. So this is really a plan that is created by the community. Otherwise we would have never have gotten it passed.
NoLandGrab: Oh, goody, the Community Board committee members appointed by the Borough President and Council Members get to pick the trim, while developers turn brownstones and warehouses into 30-story luxury condos. We love consensus!
The irony though, is that such meaningless input would be a welcome upgrade to the absence of a community role in shaping Atlantic Yards.
Posted by eric at 10:06 AM
March 17, 2008
Merger or consolidation? NYU’s absorption of Brooklyn’s Polytech is about engineering--and land
Atlantic Yards PolyTech NYU Report
Norman Oder takes a detour from the Atlantic Yards beat to analyze the purchase of PolyTech by NYU, which has all the trappings of a major real estate deal.
They’ve called it a merger, an affiliation, a joining of two institutions. But the planned--and nearly consummated--deal between Polytechnic University, a small engineering school at Brooklyn’s MetroTech that draws mainly on local students, and New York University (NYU), the ever-growing, Greenwich Village-based university with international reach, looks like a consolidation.
Given that NYU would ultimately absorb Poly with no money down, but, among other benefits, offer a loan based on Poly’s real estate--a provision barely discussed publicly--it also has elements of a leveraged buyout.
What does it have to do with Atlantic Yards and MetroTech developer Bruce Ratner?
Poly has signed a letter of intent regarding its air rights with developer Forest City Ratner, its MetroTech neighbor, but has not begun new buildings.
The deal is a source of contention at Poly, while a blip on the radar screen at NYU
Who wins?
Whether the revenue from Poly's air rights would support the engineering school remains unclear. Should it do so, the deal looks better for Poly. If not, the larger school, which has faced little internal controversy over the consolidation decision, may have achieved an ever better deal. But the consolidation is about more than revenue, so, assuming it goes forward, it may take years to assess the true value of the deal.
Posted by lumi at 4:50 AM
March 10, 2008
Six months later, where's Phase One redesign
Atlantic Yards Report
Norman Oder reports on the latest obfuscations emanating from MetroTech:
Delays on the Atlantic Yards project apparently flummoxed New York Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff, who last September anticipated a redesign of the arena block in the fall.
And delays in another Forest City Ratner project, Beekman Tower, led Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver last week to query the company about the timetable for a promised school, leading to a non-answer from the developer.
...As the Observer reported, Silver recently sent a letter to Forest City Ratner expressing concern "that construction has apparently slowed at your new Beekman Tower site since you generously agreed to incorporate a new K – 8th grade public school into the base of that new building. As you know, the school is scheduled to open in September 2009.... A number of constituents and community leaders have contacted my office in recent weeks with inquiries regarding the progress of the Beekman Tower building."
He asked the developer for its "most up to date schedule for construction of the Beekman Tower and when you anticipate that the new school will be able to open."
FCR spokesman Loren Riegelhaupt gave the Observer a response: "We are very sensitive to the school overcrowding issues currently facing Lower Manhattan as it was the Speaker who originally raised the issue and it was at his insistence that we included the school in our project. We are continuing to work very closely with the Speaker and appreciate all of his efforts in helping to move the project forward as quickly as possible."
NoLandGrab: Translation: "It was the Speaker's idea to include a school in the project, not ours, so don't blame us if it doesn't get built."
Posted by eric at 11:49 AM
Influence peddlers cash in big time on Manhattan's West Side properties
NY Daily News
By Brian Kates
Politically wired influence peddlers pocketed more than $5 million from 2004 to last year from developers pushing plans to build a midtown metropolis on the borough's last major swath of available real estate.
The article focuses on Midtown Manhattan's Madison Square Garden, Hudson Railyards and Moynihan Station projects; however, Bruce Ratner's Brooklyn lobbying largesse receives a dishonorable mention:
All those projects are on the drawing board at the same time. They involve extensive land-use review, zoning changes and approvals from multiple city, state and federal agencies — and they all need billions more to meet expected costs.
That spells a bonanza for lobbyists.
...
Fried Frank, the law firm that lobbied for Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn and the new Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, was paid $339,190 to pull strings with the Planning Commission.
Posted by lumi at 5:06 AM
March 5, 2008
Bergen Tile is "just the spot," to be replaced by... ?
Atlantic Yards Report
It's just a matter of time before the retail frontages on Flatbush Avenue change significantly, right? The owners of the building housing Bergen Tile at the southeast corner of Dean Street and Flatbush Avenue are advertising the space for rent as "directly across the street from the new Nets arena at Atlantic Yards." (The building was sold in 2006, according to ACRIS.)
Now that's the plan, though, in a best-case scenario, the arena likely wouldn't open for three years. Still, as the brochure attached to the listing posted by Ripco Realty (yes, that's their name) shows, there are nearly 600 new condo units coming in the area, on top of the 6860 units--actually 6430, and almost certainly fewer, given the changes planned for Miss Brooklyn--planned at Atlantic Yards. The housing could take decades.
Note that the site outline in red suggests that the Bergen Tile building extends all the way from Flatbush Avenue well opposite Building 3, near the corner of Sixth Avenue.
Actually, the triangular plot doesn't go nearly that far.
Posted by lumi at 6:37 AM
March 4, 2008
DBP's Joe Chan: projects improve thanks to compromise
Atlantic Yards Report
Norman Oder summarizes the Crain's NY Business interview with Joe Chan, the man who is charged with keeping the Downtown Brooklyn redevelopment on track (including Bruce Ratner's controversial Atlantic Yards project in Prospect Heights).
Posted by lumi at 4:59 AM
March 3, 2008
Unease Erodes Ambition in Real Estate
The NY Sun
By Peter Kiefer
Atlantic Yards is on the list of multi-billion-dollar projects that could be in trouble as the storm clouds thicken in the NYC real estate market:
Last week, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority said the price tag for the completion of the first leg of the Second Avenue subway line had ballooned to $4.35 billion from $3.8 billion. Critics are questioning whether Lower Manhattan transportation projects such as the Fulton Street Transit Center and the Santiago Calatrava-designed PATH Station are worth their soaring price tags, and the projects' elaborate designs are being pared down.
The planned redevelopment of Penn Station has a budget shortfall of at least $1 billion. A public spat erupted between city and state officials over Governor Spitzer's plan to scrap the expansion of the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center after cost estimates more than doubled to $5 billion, and last week one of the five original bidders in the proposed development of the Hudson Rail Yards project on Manhattan's West Side — Brookfield Properties — dropped out. A shortage of federal housing subsidies and ongoing litigation from resident groups is threatening Bruce Ratner's $4 billion Atlantic Yards project near downtown Brooklyn. The list of public and private projects on hold seems to grow on a weekly basis.
Posted by lumi at 5:06 AM
February 29, 2008
Editorial: Get Moynihan Station back on track
NY Newsday believes that during the economic downturn, there's one project that deserves saving and it's not Bruce Ratner's highly controversial Atlantic Yards:
Because of the down-trending economy and disagreement among principals, many of the city's ambitions seem to be crumbling: the Javits Convention Center expansion, Atlantic Yards, Hudson Yards. If there is one that deserves saving, it's Moynihan Station. State and city officials need to put their shoulders into this project and push.
Posted by lumi at 4:22 AM
February 28, 2008
The UNITY plan expands, and will be up for discussion
Atlantic Yards Report
The UNITY plan for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's Vanderbilt Yard was unveiled in September, the project web site was re-launched in mid-January, and there's a public meeting Saturday, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., to update people and seek further input on UNITY.
The discussion will broaden to more of the Atlantic Yards footprint rather than just the 8.5-acre Vanderbilt Yard.
...What's clear is that two very different visions have emerged. While the UNITY plan would add significant residential density (1500 units over eight acres would be 187.5 units/acre, compared to 6430 units over 22 acres, or 292 units/acre), it would concentrate the tallest buildings at the east end of the site, near Vanderbilt Avenue.
It would place a park at the congested intersection of Atlantic and Flatbush avenues, while Forest City Ratner's plan would have an Urban Room, which will serve as a subway entrance and an entrance to the arena and arena block buildings, while housing an atrium, retail, and Nets ticket windows.
NoLandGrab: Click here for more info regarding Saturday's workshop.
Posted by eric at 9:35 AM
February 23, 2008
Plan to Rebuild Penn Station Area May Be Close to Failure
The New York Times
by Charles V. Bagli
The sweeping $14 billion proposal to transform Pennsylvania Station and the district around it is in danger of collapse because of the softening economy, shortfalls in government financing, political inertia and daunting logistical problems, government officials and real estate executives involved in the project said this week.
...Some government officials and real estate executives are concerned that a slowing economy and the current state of the credit markets, where there is little money available for large real estate deals, could cause problems for both the sale of the railyards and the Moynihan project.
NoLandGrab: And what about New York City's other railyard deal?
Posted by eric at 3:27 PM