Bi-Weekly Digest: What Walking Around the Project Site Might Show
First phase of an assessment of project buildings, plus changes on Fifth Avenue and Dean Street. Area Median Income keeps rising.
This digest offers a way to keep up with my Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Report blog and my other coverage in this newsletter and elsewhere.
Gearing up for my annual Jane’s Walk(s) regarding Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park, offered over the previous two days, I’ve spent more time walking around the very much unfinished project site.
The tours, by the way, again showed how much there is to learn about Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park, especially for newcomers to Brooklyn, such as the real story of the arena’s green roof (to tamp down escaping bass) or the arena design switch from Frank Gehry to Ellerbe Becket to SHoP. I’ll have to publish some more explainers.
My preparation prompted an idea: why not try to assess the architectural impact of the eight (of 16) towers built? No, I’m not trained as a critic, but no one else has tried.
What I originally envisioned as a single article will now be a multi-part series. The first installment addressed the buildings’ entrances. Bottom line: there’s no guiding sensibility. The concepts range from good to flawed, even compromised.
Check out the article for an explanation of the images in the gallery above
Soon I’ll publish the next installment. The bonus photo below captures likely the most intriguing image I could frame: the angles of B4 (top, 18 Sixth Ave.), B2 (right, 461 Dean St.), and a fraction of the Barclays Center.
Other news
Otherwise, as the end-of-May deadline for the project’s affordable housing approaches, the questions mount. Why did Related leave the project? We don’t know yet.
Will Empire State Development enforce the liquidated damages for the 876 affordable housing units due by the end of the month, or renegotiate? Again, we don’t know.
My walks around the project site extended to nearby blocks, including, as I reported, where a longtime church is undergoing transformation and a shopping strip has only partly transformed. See more below.
From this newsletter
April 24: Ranking the Eight Atlantic Yards Towers, By Entrance. Some choices are thoughtful, others baffling, even craven. Placemaking is inconsistent. Part of a more in-depth assessment.
The 18 Sixth Ave entrance, with tiny type for the address and not so prominent type for the building’s name, Brooklyn Crossing, is overshadowed by the Life Time Fitness branding, though it could be worse.
From Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Report
April 23: EB-5 investment packager Nicholas Mastroianni II gave Donald Trump's inaugural committee $500,000. Was it an effort to stave off the "Golden Visa," which could limit EB-5 business or just a continuation of his politics?
Mastroianni is a key Atlantic Yards player, helping form the future joint venture to develop six railyard development sites.
April 25: Empire State Development, the state authority that oversee/shepherds the project, says it didn't approach Related Companies to become the designated developer for the project (despite secondhand evidence it did). Did Related pull out because the state wouldn't re-create the 421-a tax break?
April 26: So, newcomers embracing Prospect Heights (and 595 Dean) especially like McMahon's Public House. That's fine. Some, though, may remember O'Connor's, a real dive that McMahon’s was supposed to inherit. Nostalgia ain’t what it used to be.
April 28: With 2025 Area Median Income (AMI) up 4.3%, more "low-income" households (at 80% of AMI) could earn six figures. New rent ceilings not listed yet. This points to the cost of delay: “affordable housing,” which is calculated from AMI, becomes ever more expensive.
April 29: As event business stays strong, the Barclays Center reports small increase in ticket sales, pointing to a modestly profitable fiscal year. Their net income, however, is less impressive than the gross income they tout.
April 30: The Pacific Park Conservancy, thanks to "Clean" and "Safety" Ambassadors, makes partial improvements but work is still needed on entrance signage and the worn lawn. See, um, the picture.
May 1: Barclays Center releases May 2025 event calendar: seven concerts, four Liberty games, and eleven (unspecified) private events, mostly graduations. Why can’t they list the private events, especially when crowds might be gathering before 8 am?
May 2: The "flavor" of Fifth Avenue near the Barclays Center: not quite homey, but not fully franchised, either. Bars, omakase, plus, for a while, weed.
May 3: Former Temple of Restoration on Dean Street between (Sixth and Carlton avenues), in Redfin’s "hottest" Prospect Heights, set for alteration into eight apartments, likely condos.
