That is Michael Powell’s assessment of the Brooklyn developer in his column in today’s Times, noting that Mr. Ratner is involved in at least two corruption scandals involving state politicians. Read More
After years and years and years of delays, debates, lawsuits and left turns, things have been moving along at a favorable clip at Atlantic Yards—at least compared to past history.
Since the Barclays Center broke ground two years ago, construction has continued pretty much unabated, a few rodents notwithstanding. Meanwhile, Bruce Ratner is behind on his plans for new apartment towers, but he is also shaking things up with the idea of making them prefabricated.
It is then a little surprising to learn that the firm responsible for the facade of the new arena has abruptly shut its doors, and the completion of the Barclays Center could hang in the balance. Read More
Last week, The Observer looked at Bruce Ratner’s plans for a prefabricated Atlantic Yards project—whether he was serious about the project and whether he could achieve the steep 20 percent savings he claimed for the modular building process. A number of real estate professionals were skeptical on both counts, but they all pointed to the developers out-sized investment in prefab technology as an indicator of his seriousness. Now we know just how much of an investment that has been. Read More
For nine years now, Bruce Ratner has talked of transforming Brooklyn with his Atlantic Yards project. Bringing professional sports back to the borough, creating a new skyline, “a neighborhood practically from scratch,” as architect Frank Gehry once described it. There would be union jobs and affordable housing for all to enjoy.
As of now, only basketball and a handful of those jobs are guaranteed, all of which took three times as long as originally planned. Mr. Ratner and his partners like to blame the economy and the holdouts who sued to save their property, but the fact remains, they are running well behind schedule, possibly even in violation of previous commitments made to the state when the project was approved.
To catch up, Forest City Ratner has come up with a novel solution for myriad problems with his project: modular construction. More than transforming Brooklyn, Mr. Ratner may transform the way the entire city, even the world, builds. At least that is his hope.
“It’s taken us a while to get there on the architecture,” Mr. Ratner told The Observer last month on the day he unveiled his new plans for a modular approach at Atlantic Yards. “We did a lot of work to make sure it was something appropriate, in fitting in with the arena and a good reflection on Brooklyn, the city and our country.”
He is not alone in his optimism, either. Read More
We were inside the West Ballroom at The Hilton New York, on the hunt for available seats when a large and friendly man sitting dead center in the front row waved us over and asked us to sit with him.
That friendly man was Bruce Ratner, head of Forest City Ratner Companies, who had no idea that he had just invited two reporters from The Commercial Observer to join him. Read More
Brooklyn may be home to a swelling creative class, but all that brain power—or at least that of Jay-Z, Bruce Ratner and Mikhail Prokhorov—could do no better than “the Brooklyn Nets” when it comes to naming the team, which moves to the borough next season. The Observer was really pulling for the Brooklyn Queens Expressways or the BroBos, but our dreams were rejected like a Kris Humphreys lay-up. Read More
One year from now, Jay-Z will be performing in his hometown Brooklyn. That’s the good news. The rapper’s love of basketball has led to his owning a small stake in the former New Jersey Nets, which from now on will be the Brooklyn Nets. (We would have really preferred it if owner/Russian billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov had actually named the team after his girlfriends.)
The group will find its new home at the soon-to-be-built Barclays Center on Flatbush and Atlantic Ave., as part of Bruce Ratner’s Atlantic Yards Project that’s been going so well. Jay himself announced the official name in a “brief and anticlimactic” ceremony in New Jersey today. Read More
Here comes the next round in the city’s most intractable debate over the further development of Atlantic Yards, as it appears that exactly one week ago, Forest City Ratner filed its first building application for a residential tower on the corner of Dean Street and Flatbush Avenue. Read More
Late last month, a “rat tsunami” descended on Brooklyn, kicking up rodents on the streets surrounding the Atlantic Yards project. Neighbors in Prospect Heights and Fort Greene complained that construction of the Barclays Centre was sending rats into the neighborhood. Though a Forest City Ratner spokesman at the time suggested to The Observer that the problem was not conclusively worse than anywhere else in the city, the developer has now seen fit to pony up for some industrial strength garbage cans for neighbors as well as a tougher pest plan. Read More
The Brooklyn Academy of Music and Forest City Ratner just announced a partnership to host a handful of large-scale events at the Barclays Center beginning after the Nets inaugural season there in 2012-2013. In an interview with The Times, Bruce Ratner gave an interesting explanation for the BAM/Barclays hook-up: Read More
