Weekly Digest: Questions Swirl Around Future of (Tsai's) Plaza, Greenland's Role in Larger Project
Meanwhile, Tsai's BSE Global, which owns the Nets, Liberty, and arena company, absorbs the formerly indie Brooklyn Magazine.
This digest offers a way for people to keep up with my Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Report blog, as well as my other coverage in this newsletter and elsewhere.
The future of Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park has a lot of dimensions, and this past week’s coverage touches on them, as we wait for resolutions.
Would Joe Tsai's Slickest Move Be Poaching Ticketmaster Plaza?, I wrote in my newsletter this week regarding the principal owner of BSE Global, which owns the Brooklyn Nets, New York Liberty, arena operating company, and more.
Keeping the branded plaza bolsters Barclays Center operations and revenues. State authorities have more leverage than they admit. Why not map it as parkland and charge a licensing fee?
The “temporary” plaza was implicitly predicated on the common ownership of the arena operator and the project’s master developer, originally Forest City Ratner. That’s no longer valid, but no documents have been updated.
Development questions
Why hasn’t developer Greenland USA paid the Metropolitan Transportion Authority (MTA) its annual $11 million installment for Vanderbilt Yard development rights?
We don’t know for sure, but it probably has to do with the impending emergence of another developer, reportedly Related Companies.
Then, would Greenland develop the last parcel it controls, Site 5, catercorner to the Barclays Center and longtime home of the big-box stores P.C. Richard and the now-closed Modell’s?
Doubtful, though Greenland, perhaps with a partner or via a successor, must get state permission to transfer bulk from the unbuilt tower (B1, aka “Miss Brooklyn”) over the arena plaza.
Arena questions
BSE Global had a big week, some announced, some not.
Tsai’s charitable arm, the Social Justice Fund, sponsored the first of three concerts on Ticketmaster Plaza.
BSE Global has quietly absorbed formerly indie Brooklyn Magazine, and apparently plans to grow something called Brooklyn Media. It probably will be well-executed, with some boosterish blind spots.
Oddly, the Downtown Brookyn Partnership claimed far more public support for the arena than boosters typically calculate.
From this newsletter
July 16: Would Joe Tsai's Slickest Move Be Poaching Ticketmaster Plaza?
It might be, if enabled by New York State officials.
From Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Report
July 15: Downtown Brooklyn Partnership claims (nah) city & state governments have already funded platform over LIRR railyard, claims $686M (!) in arena public support.
What’s truly bizarre about that is that boosters usually try to minimize public investment, but in this case they’re maximizing it, for example counting federal tax breaks.
July 17: Greenland USA paid the MTA for Vanderbilt Yard development rights through June 2023. Now it's a mystery, but their missed payment is within a grace period.
Is all stalled until Related makes its bid to acquire the entities that have the rights to develop those sites (given MTA payments)?
July 18: Would Greenland develop Site 5 or sell development rights after new approvals? Well, they've sold (3.5 of) the last 4 sites. Why not Related, which wants the railyard sites? Alternatively: Brodsky or TFC, which developed other sites.
July 19: Tomorrow: Brooklyn Raga Massive at Barclays Center's Ticketmaster Plaza, presented by Tsai Foundation's Social Justice Fund, first of three summer concerts.
So, is this social justice, charity, savvy community relations, or all of the above? Yes.
July 20: So, once-indie Brooklyn Magazine is now part of Nets owner Tsai's BSE Global, which plans a larger media enterprise to champion/amplify Brooklyn.
BSE Global was recently advertising for a Managing Editor, Brooklyn Media, a “media company that champions the spirit and demeanour [sic] of Brooklyn and amplifies it to the world… reaffirming the connective threads that tie sports, music, fashion and sneakers, and food not just to Brooklyn geographically, but in how they’re embedded into its DNA.”
So it makes sense to use Brooklyn Magazine, already active in those areas, as a jumping off point.