Pacific Park, Brooklyn
Pacific Park is a mixed-use commercial and residential development project by Forest City Ratner that will consist of 17 high-rise buildings, under construction in Prospect Heights, adjacent to Downtown Brooklyn, Park Slope, and Fort Greene in Brooklyn, New York City. The project overlaps part of the Atlantic Terminal Urban Renewal Area, but also extends toward the adjacent brownstone neighborhood. Of the 22-acre (8.9 ha) project, 8.4 acres (3.4 ha) is located over a Long Island Rail Road train yard. A major component of the project is the Barclays Center sports arena, which opened on September 21, 2012. Formerly named Atlantic Yards, the project was renamed by the developer in August 2014 as part of a rebranding.
The development of Pacific Park is overseen by the Empire State Development Corporation.[1][2] As of 2018, four of fifteen planned buildings had opened, but the deadline was delayed by about 10 years from 2025 to 2035.[3] The residential component includes the world's tallest modular apartment building, 461 Dean, opened in November 2016.[2][4]
History[edit]
Context[edit]
Since the mid-20th century, there have been many proposals to develop the area around Flatbush and Atlantic Avenues, known as Times Plaza; however, plans for the area emerged only piecemeal. In the mid-1950s, Brooklyn Dodgers owner Walter O'Malley proposed that the city condemn the site, where he could then have built a new stadium for the ball club to replace Ebbets Field. City officials refused to condemn the property for subsequent sale to O'Malley on the grounds that they did not consider a privately financed baseball park to be an appropriate public purpose as defined under Title I of the Federal housing act of 1949. O'Malley's proposal was dismissed by Robert Moses for creating a Great Wall of traffic. In 1958, O'Malley relocated the Dodgers to Los Angeles. In 1968, Long Island University eyed the site, but was opposed by Mayor John V. Lindsay.
A 1968 New York Times article described a $250 million (over $1.4 billion in March 2006 dollars) plan for the Atlantic Terminal Urban Renewal Area, also known as ATURA. According to the Times, the renewal plan "calls for 2,400 new low- and middle-income housing units to replace 800 dilapidated units, removal of the blighting Fort Greene Meat Market, a 14-acre (6 ha) site for the City University's new Baruch College, two new parks, and community facilities such as day-care centers."[5]
The 1970s also saw plans for ambitious projects in the area, and these mostly resulted in the construction of affordable housing on the north side of Atlantic Avenue. Baruch College also considered moving but was stymied by the City's fiscal crisis.
In the 1980s, a Fort Greene block association and other homeowners sued over an environmental impact statement that failed to consider how rerouted traffic would affect their neighborhood, one block away from the project. Then an economic downturn compounded community opposition. The Times reported that the stock market collapse had deterred office construction. "A lot of people are reassessing their expansion plans," James Stuckey, president of the city's Public Development Corporation, told the Times in 1988.[6]
Elements of the project[edit]
Land use[edit]
The development is sited in Prospect Heights, a gentrifying area[22] where the median price of a residential unit exceeded $1 million in 2019.[23] The bulk of the 22-acre (9 ha) project site was a mixture of public streets, private homes and small businesses. Forest City Ratner controls much of this private property and has benefited from the state's use of eminent domain to acquire and close the streets. The land is owned by New York State, and the developer has a 99-year lease.[24]
The Public Authorities Control Board, which effectively ended the West Side Stadium plan, approved the state financing of the Atlantic Yards plan in December 2006.[25]
Public opinion[edit]
The Community Benefits Agreement[edit]
The edition of October 22, 2005 of The Brooklyn Paper revealed that the Forest City Ratner (FCR) company had paid large sums of money to organizations, offering what they've presented as grassroots neighborhood support for the proposed Pacific Park development. Back on December 20, 2004, six months before the so-called "community benefits agreement" (CBA) was drafted, a non-governmental pact between the developer and community groups, the 501(c)(3) filings of Brooklyn United for Innovative Local Development (BUILD) stated it would receive $5 million from Bruce Ratner's company in exchange for support. BUILD president James Caldwell was paid $125,000 a year, and two other BUILD executives— Mary Louis and Shalawn Langhorne— received $100,000 a year, according to the IRS document. Additionally, the development company has also paid $50,000 to Reverend Herbert Daughtry, another CBA endorser. His organization, Downtown Brooklyn Neighborhood Alliance, was commissioned to help create an inter-generational center as part of the Ratner plan to "retain staff to begin to develop a program to create these facilities."[37] The political arm of BUILD, Community Leadership for Accountable Politics (CLAP), is apparently folding.
A Community Benefit Agreement, that claimed to be modeled on the first of its kind for the Staples Center in Los Angeles, was signed on June 27, 2005 between Forest City Ratner and a consortium of community groups to provide a range of benefits for the community. Many of these community groups were led by long standing and prominent leaders including Bertha Lewis, Executive Director of ACORN, James Caldwell, ED for Brooklyn United for Innovative Local Development and Rev. Herbert Daughtry, pastor of House of the Lord Church. One of the controversies surrounding the CBA is the definition of "community", and many local groups contend that they will not be included. Among the benefits accruing to the community as defined under this legally binding agreement are:
Commentary websites:
40°41′03″N 73°58′38″W / 40.684226°N 73.977234°W