Bruce Ratner went on Bloomberg yesterday to discuss the state of the local economy and progress at Atlantic Yards. During the interview, he said he expects to break ground on the first apartment tower at the site by December or January.
That is pushing Ratner’s promise made last fall to have the tower Read More
It took almost as long for Bruce Ratner to get his Atlantic Yards project through the huge community fight as a movie about that fight to get made. The Battle for Brooklyn will have its debut this summer, opening on June 3 at Brooklyn Heights Cinema as part of the Brooklyn Film Festival with a Read More
Atlantic Yards has its problems. Bruce Ratner’s arena-cum-condos megaproject has involved insider deals and eminent domain, Russian oligarchs and Chinese visas, bratty Brooklynites and disgraced lobbyists. The news, revealed in today’s Times, that Ratner is trying to save on construction costs by using prefab building technology is far from the biggest story to Read More
Much has been made of the fact that Frank Gehry’s spetacular apartment tower at 8 Spruce Street boasts hundreds of different facade panels to create its unusual rippling exterior. Less known is that all those curves in the building now known as New York by Gehry also create more than 200 different apartment layouts Read More
The Atlantic Yards play opened last night in Brooklyn, but the real drama is onsite at the corner of Flatbush and Atlantic. A ballet of steel beams is dancing as the arena-that-almost-wasn’t gets underway. No more digging, no more demolishing–it’s all up from here for the SHoP-designed Barclays Center, the future Read More
Could anyone have hoped to make an interesting play out of Atlantic Yards? On the one hand, it seems to have all the drama and excitement necessary: heroes and villains, race and class issues, a beautiful Brooklyn setting. On the other hand: internminable lawsuits and ULURP.
Fort Greene-based theater company The Civilians appears to have Read More
In The Observer‘s profile of Atlantic Yards watchdog Norman Oder, the master blogger laments how the mainstream media has ignored his biggest expose to date: plans by the state and developer Forest City Ratner to essentially sell green cards to Chinese investors in exchange for backing the arena-cum-condos project on the edge of brownstone Read More
Post Real Estate columnist Steve Cuozzo likes to act like he’s no architecture critic.
You don’t need a degree in architecture to hate the triangular mugging ground of “environmentally conscious landscaping, intimate seating areas” and a goofy, planted-roof subway entrance — a “flexible open space” more conducive to hosting a Crips-Bloods scrimmage than the intended Read More
The Real Estate Desk has closely followed the career of developer Gary Barnett since he first arrived on the city’s streets in the ’90s. Well, returned to the city’s streets from Belgium, where he had been dealing diamonds. The Lower East Side-born, Monsey-bred, Queens-residing man keeps a relatively low profile, especially considering his big Read More
Forest City Ratner has unveiled a new public plaza for its Brooklyn arena. Nevermind that in a few years there will be a huge office building sitting on top of it.
