Parking today, healthcare tomorrow. (Photo courtesy Property Shark.)

From the BAM Cultural District to Williamsburg, Brooklyn is undergoing a hotel boom. And pretty soon, all of those workers—or at least, the unionized ones—will have a new place to go for check-ups.

The New York Hotel Trades Council & Hotel Association of New York City, the city's leading hotel workers' union, and its Employee Benefit Funds just picked up a $19 million parking lot at 620 Fulton Street in downtown Brooklyn, on an irregularly-shaped lot bounded by Fulton Street, Ashland Place and St. Felix Street.

The site will soon be home to a new health, pharmacy and dental facility for the union's workers and their family members, which "will cost approximately $90 million to complete," Hotel Trades Council political director Josh Gold told The Observer, "and, like our state of the art facility in Harlem, will include first floor retail to generate income for the funds."

The new healthcare center will sit just one block east of a new 30-story hotel development at 95 Rockwell Place, in the Brooklyn Academy of Music Cultural District, to be developed by the Gotham Organization and DT Salazar.

...but what of the Hotel Trades Council's old downtown Brooklyn health center? (Photo via Property Shark.)

The Hotel and Trades Council has had a number of victories in Manhattan recently. Rezonings in North Tribeca, the Fur District north of the Meatpacking District and Hudson Square have all included provisions that mandate City Council approval for hotels, widely seen as a way of pressuring developers into making sure the new lodgings are union-run, and the union is pushing hard for a similar provision in Midtown East.

But though many of its workers likely hail from the borough of Kings, the council has seen less success in Brooklyn. Toll Brothers and Starwood have not committed to using union labor at the hotel planned for Brooklyn Bridge Park, and Brooklyn is already home to a number of limited-service hotels that don't use union labor, the cheapo McSams scattered across the borough being the most prominent.

The sale does leave us with one question, though, for which Mr. Gold did not provide any illumination: what does the council intend to do with its existing health center at 68-80 Schermerhorn Street, in a ritzier part of downtown Brooklyn near Brooklyn Heights? Currently housing a three-story prewar structure, the old health center has over 50,000 square feet of residential or commercial development rights.

Given the apartment buildings that have cropped up around it, we wouldn't be surprised if the old health center meets the same fate as its neighbors. And if it does, we hope they'll keep the façade, which adds some character that the booming neighborhood is otherwise lacking.

Happening, or over-hyped?

To hear politicians like City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, or council members Steve Levin and Letitia James tell it, Downtown Brooklyn is a critical hub of New York City's blossoming tech industry. A vertex in the so-called "Tech Triangle," along with Dumbo and the Brooklyn Navy Yard, the area has been (or will soon be) blessed with $100,000 in study money, a new bus line, a master plan, grant programs, a new urban engineering school and an untold number of press releases.

Now it's just missing one thing: the tech tenants. Besides MakerBot Industries, a 3D printing firm that recently took over a whole floor at Forest City Ratner's 1 MetroTech, and Aereo, a hi-tech service to access lo-tech over-the-air TV that took up shop at 470 Vanderbilt Avenue (which straddles the border between Fort Greene and Clinton Hill), the area has few of the start-ups that the litter Manhattan neighborhoods like Union Square, the Flatiron District and Chelsea. Never mind the larger established firms like Google and Microsoft.

So is all the hoopla simply wishful thinking? A little spillover from Dumbo or the Navy Yard rather than a nascent tech triangle?

What the neighborhood does have, as commercial real estate broker Chris Havens of aptsandlofts.com told The Observer, are the "first-wave creatives"—small design firms, architects and artists—that precede the more traditionally tech-oriented start-ups and blue chips.

It just might take a while for tech companies to follow. Not least of all because Downtown Brooklyn, despite all that hype, isn't an ideal place to host them. At least not yet.

Mr. Havens cited a number of hurdles to tech in the 'hood—from a lack of communications infrastructure ("there are still plenty of buildings on copper and DSL" instead of high-speed fiber connections like FiOS, Mr. Havens said) to residential conversions that are depleting the supply of commercial space. And Downtown Brooklyn also lacks a key amenity that tech companies lust after: big, old buildings.

Downtown Brooklyn never had the massive number of lofts and commercial buildings of, for example, Midtown South, but it did have a healthy stock of old industrial buildings that could have been repurposed for today's tech tenants. Unfortunately, many of those buildings fell prey to various urban renewal schemes during the post-war decades.

"To urban planners," Brownstoner wrote of the urban renewal scheme that yielded the likes of Cadman Plaza, "the whole area was a commercial slum, with no redeeming features." Hundreds of buildings were razed to make way for what today is a barren, wind-swept plaza largely devoid of people, intended, in the words of Robert Moses, to be "to Brooklyn what the great cathedral and opera plazas are to European cities."

Cadman Plaza never quite became Brooklyn's Place de l'Opéra, but that didn't stop the urban renewal machine. A few schemes later came MetroTech Center, which NYU-Poly president George Bugliarello intended to be Brooklyn's answer to Silicon Valley, but which instead "became transmuted into yet another corporate office scheme," as Susan Fainstein wrote in 1992, competing with Jersey City for back-office tenants.

Mr. Havens also cited Downtown Brooklyn landlords' lack of sophistication as a barrier to tech growth. "These firms would rather go into a four-story elevator building" than class-A space at MetroTech, for example, but landlords often don't have the expertise or responsiveness to deal with the needs of demanding tech tenants. "The DIY owners are not always able to deal with the DIY tenants."

Nonetheless, he claims that the migration of tech firms to Downtown Brooklyn is "inevitable."

"They don't necessarily want to go there," said Mr. Havens, who worked as director of leasing at Two Trees while they were building Dumbo into the tech hub that it is today.

But there's nowhere else in Brooklyn to go. Dumbo only has 1.3 million square feet of office space, the size of some Manhattan skyscrapers, and it's nearly full. Williamsburg is so hot that the minuscule amount of office space there is renting for $40-50 per square foot a year.

"The market is going to force it," Mr. Havens said of Downtown Brooklyn's tech turn. "In 2002, people didn't want to go to Dumbo, either. But it's going to happen, because it has to."

Update: The Downtown Brooklyn Partnership sent over a list of additional tech companies with office space in Downtown Brooklyn, including Broadcastr, which has 1,200 square feet at 325 Gold Street, and Q-Sensei at the Brooklyner, a mostly residential building at 111 Lawrence Street.

Willoughby Plaza was one of the very first asphalt strips formerly dedicated to cars that was closed to vehicles, taken over and transformed into a space for pedestrians, helping to inaugurate the city’s popular if occasionally controversial NYC Plaza Program. Before Times Square and the Broadway Boulevard, before the new Grand Army Plaza or Fordham Plaza, before Janette Sadik-Khan even became DOT commissioner, there was Willoughby Plaza.

And now it is permanent, a thoughtfully designed, well-integrated piece of the streetscape rather than a bastardized piece of roadbed dressed up as well as DOT and the local business groups could manage. This is the dream for all 50 (and counting) of the city's new temporary plazas, and 16 finished spaces are already in the works. But standing in the freezing cold with Commissioner Sadik-Khan and Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz trading barbs, one wonders how many more plazas might be in store for the city.

"It's a pleasure when the commissioner and I can be on the same side of a project," the Beep said, a veiled reference to his disputes with DOT over the Prospect Park West protected bike lane, among others.

Past disputes aside, both agreed this was not only a boon for pedestrians but also shopkeepers and landlords.

"You saw the frenzy of new interest from retail stores and restaurants like Shake Shack and Panera Bread, and it's just a wonderful sign of the energy that's coming to the downtown streetscape," Commissioner Sadik-Khan said. "It doesn't take an economics degree to understand just how much pedestrian space can contribute to the bottom line of local businesses."

"This is a new landmark for Brooklyn," she added.

Congresswoman Nydia Velazquez, who helped secure federal funds to pay for the project, concurred. "This has already become a destination for people walking and biking over the Brooklyn Bridge from Manhattan, and this new plaza will bring more people here to stay," she said.

After the ribbon cutting speeches—which lasted all of seven minutes, no doubt due to the frozen ears everyone was suffering from—Design and Construction Commissioner David Burney pointed out to The Observer that this is about much more than pedestrians, but involved a full overhaul of sewer and utility pipes and lines under the street. "It's an infrastructure improvement as much as anything, and this is just the cosmetic side of it," Mr. Burney said, gesturing around the plaza, which had new planting beds and christmas lighting strung from the trees but was otherwise little more than a very large and generous 14,000-square-foot sidewalk.

Inside Shake Shack after the event, Commissioner Sadik-Khan spent a few minutes discussing the future of the plaza program with The Observer. First off, why had it taken so long for this plaza to go from temporary to permanent? Five years is actually the average time for city capital projects to get approved and built, Ms. Sadik-Khan explained, once all the various agencies and approvals, contracts and designs are factored in.

She stressed that lots of community outreach, something she has emphasized with every one of these projects, as adding time, but time worth taking. Contrary to popular belief, the plazas are only installed after a community group or local business improvement district requests them.

"It depends on what the construction season looks like, but pretty soon, these are going to be popping up all over town," Ms. Sadik-Khan said.

Various surveys, reports and community board votes have shown widespread support for most of these plazas. Still, some politicians have vowed to reverse the mayor and his street reshapers once he leaves City Hall. Is this program established enough to continue once Ms. Sadik-Khan and her cohort is gone?

"This is set in stone," Ms. Sadik-Khan said, pointing out the window. "And all across town, the public is setting it in stone. If you look at the demand, at the applications that are in the door, there's just no end in site to the number of communities that want more pedestrian space and more space to meet and sit down and create a more livable community."

And it was not just local residents pushing for these new plazas. "You have to understand, the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership, working on behalf of the business community down here, has been pushing for this for years," Ms. Sadik-Khan said. "And we're seeing the same push all across the city. Businesses get it. They get that additional foot traffic is better for business."

"It's not only a safety project, it's not only a livability project, it's an economic development project," Ms. Sadik-Khan added. "So it's really a triple-bottom-line win for communities all across the city."

V is for vegetables, not victory, in 2013. (TRD)

John Catsimatidis sat down with The Real Deal to talk about just how great Downtown Brooklyn is (who knew?!) and while that topic dominates the discussion, the real estate rag couldn't help but bring up next year's mayoral elections. After all, the grocery store magnate and billionaire developer has been bandied about as a possible Republican candidate in the race to replace Mayor Michael Bloomberg. While he may no longer be interested in that job, he's not sure the woman widely considered the most-pro-business candidate in the pack of potential Bloomberg successors is ready for it either.

You announced your candidacy for Mayor in 2009, but eventually endorsed Mayor Bloomberg. Do you have any interest in the position this time around?
They’re trying to get me to do it again, but I don’t need it. I don’t have an ego. I just want to do the right thing for the city. I said I’d rather find somebody qualified to run. In the last 12 years, [Mayor Bloomberg’s] leadership has led to billions and billions of dollars of investment by Europeans and by the international community. We need somebody that’s going to provide confidence to the international business community to keep supporting New York City. We are looking at people; we are talking to people, but we haven’t made any decisions.

What do you make of Christine Quinn as a candidate?
I’ve met with Christine. She’s a very lovely lady, but she has to prove that she’s capable of being tough enough to be mayor.

Hey, at least he called her lovely. Then again, maybe an ambivalent endorsement from Mr. Catsimatidis is just what the City Council speaker needs. Snide remarks from a conservative supermarket mogul could help her in her quest to shore up her business support without seeming too pro-business and losing points with her liberal base.

Brooklyn seniors get a free boat ride courtesy of the commission on aging. (www.nysenate.gov)

Sure, it lacks the slow pace of life and comfortable weather of Miami or Scottsdale, but at least Brooklyn has plenty of places to play shuffleboard? Marty Markowitz makes a not-altogether-unpersuasive argument that downtown Brooklyn is a good place to retire, The Brooklyn Paper reports.

Mr. Markowitz is proposing that developers get tax breaks for building housing for elderly residents, who will no doubt be delighted to live so close to the new Barclays arena and the area's burgeoning bar scene.

“A lot of older people want to stay in Brooklyn because of the stimulating environment, but no longer need a brownstone or a five-bedroom house,” the 67-year-old borough president told The Brooklyn Paper. “We have to find ways to keep seniors living here, rather than having them move to New Jersey, or North Carolina, or Florida.”

Brooklyn—even the less-than-desirable cluster of discount stores and somewhat pell-mell condo towers—must be better than New Jersey, right?

The Brooklyn Paper helpfully points out that living in downtown Brooklyn, while it might be expensive for someone on a fixed income, means easy access to cultural institutions, public transportation and hospitals. And Downtown Brooklyn Partnership spokesman Shane Kavanagh points out that the neighborhood's pedestrian crossings with countdown clocks and abundant sidewalk seating are popular with elderly residents. No word on the borough's bridge and bingo scenes, however.

And then there's the nearly priceless benefit of being able to interfere in their children's and grandchildren's lives on a regular basis, rather than just once or twice a year.

kvelsey@observer.com

Dreams of our fathers: an early rendering from when Downtown Brooklyn was rezoned, less than a year ago.

Earlier this week, we profiled Tucker Reed, the recently enthroned director of the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership. He is responsible for the continued redevelopment (some, maybe many, would call it gentrification) of the area, and he has some big plans in the works, like better connectivity and bringing in more tech firms.

It is also up to Mr. Reed to shepherd development in the area, and it looks like he will have his hands full in the coming years. The skyline has been utterly transformed along Flatbush Avenue in recent years as six new apartment towers rose during the last building boom: the Toren, the Brooklyner, the Oro, Avalon Fort Greene, the DKLB, and Forte (to say nothing of the smaller projects littering nearby neighborhoods).

But reading Brownstoner this past week, we were reminded of just how many more of these skyscraping towers are in the works, how much more the neighborhood is bound to change, maybe even a few times over.

The biggest news last Friday was that the Oro 2 is finally getting off the ground. It will climb to 35 stories with 208 apartments. The same day, it was revealed John Catsimitidis was starting work on the second of four buildings along Myrtle Street, near Fort Greene Park, another 15-story job like the one he completed last year just next door.

Add to this 29 Flatbush Avenue, where construction is well under way. There is the building near BAM that Two Trees is working on. City Point phase 2, which will have three towers in total, is set to begin—hence the eviction of the DeKalb Marketplace. There is The Hub, movie mogul Doug Steiner’s 52-story, 720-unit tower. It probably won't be underway any time soon, but the site for 85 Flatbush is on the market, so there's another. Are we forgetting anything? If so, leave a message in the comments, and we’ll add it, along with any new projects that crop up in the coming months.

Indubitably, this is an area on the rise.

The sun rises over Downtown Brooklyn. (DBP)

At the ready. (Andrew Hill/OSC)

When Tucker Reed finally stepped up to the lectern inside the new BAM Fisher Building on a Thursday morning at the end of July, the crowd could barely handle any more news about just how stupendous Downtown Brooklyn was, is and will be.

Karen Brooks Hopkins, entering her fourth decade at BAM, welcomed the crowd into the brightly lit practice space on the third floor of the two-month-old red brick theater, tucked in behind BAM’s original performance hall. This would be the linchpin of the latest, greatest cultural district in the city. Marty Markowitz, Brooklyn borough president and cheerleader-in-chief for 11 years now, warmed up the crowd with his typical act. "Everywhere you look, things are looking up in Downtown Brooklyn," he barked. This was, is, will be the center of the universe.

Next came State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli, whose grandmother grew up on Albany Street in Crown Heights. He had made sure to wear his Brooklyn lapel pin, a gift Mr. Markowitz bestows on everyone he meets. Though he was a Long Island guy, Mr. DiNapoli was an adopted son of this former outer borough, at least for the day, for the good news he was bringing: economic growth in Downtown Brooklyn had outpaced the rest of the city over the past decade, according to a new report prepared by the comptroller’s office. This was, is, will be an economic powerhouse.

On the same streets where Jay-Z had once slung crack (and would soon be headlining the Barclays Center he ostensibly helped build), legitimate businesses had replaced illicit ones, and they were thriving. Thousands of new residents had moved in, filling the striking and unspectacular condo-turned-rental-in-the-downturn towers along Flatbush Avenue. National brands including H&M, Sephora, Target and Shake Shack were replacing the pawn shops and cellphone outlets on the Fulton Mall.

It’s not your bubbe’s Brooklyn anymore. It’s Tucker Reed’s.

Having just turned 32, Mr. Reed has been making a name for himself since the middle of the last decade, when he launched the DUMBO Business Improvement District (BID). The event at BAM was his big coming out. Since January, Mr. Reed has run the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership, a BID of BIDs, overseeing the MetroTech office park, Fulton Mall and the Court-Livingston-Schermerhorn corridor, an L-shaped spine of older office buildings, mostly filled with government agencies and legal firms. It is the city’s third-largest business district, after Midtown and Lower Manhattan, but it is still trying to define its identity after decades of fitful, relentless redefinition and rebirth.

On this day, Mr. Reed was the man with the plan. After a little over six months on the job, he had developed a strategic framework for Downtown Brooklyn, the first major vision statement since the Bloomberg administration’s rezoning of 22 blocks along Flatbush Avenue in 2004. The partnership, with its $6 million annual budget, was created in part to oversee the development on the horizon

“Just look out this window and you can see the changes to the built environment,” he said, gesturing through the floor-to-ceiling glass. “If the first phase of the partnership was focused on facilitating the execution of public-private projects, the next phase will be on synthesizing these disparate investments into a Downtown Brooklyn mosaic.” (He has a soft spot for management speak.)

Mr. Reed smiled his broad, boyish grin, his handsome blue eyes glinting. He wore a navy suit that barely contained his impressive bulk, still in good shape a decade after his time as a defensive end ended with two torn ACLs. Under this was a white shirt, pink houndstooth tie and a crimson pocket square with blue trim. Put together, dressed to impress.

It is hard to believe that three years earlier, Mr. Reed, with his quick smile and charming character, was instead donning a flak jacket and fatigues every day to go to work. It was not the streets of Brooklyn but Baghdad he was rebuilding as an adviser for the State Department. He had traded in a war zone for lofts and brownstones. Still, the job was basically the same, except for the IEDs.

Tucker Reed grew up in Newtown, Conn., trading on both his physical and mental intelligence. When not practicing his blitz on a tackling dummy, he was practicing for the coming season’s play. Junior year, he played Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof.

Newtown is a town of about 25,000 just outside of Danbury, where Mr. Reed spent most of his time growing up except for regular trips down to Manhattan to catch a Giants game or go to the theater or a museum. It was a journey his 94-year-old grandfather made seven days a week until about six months ago, traveling to the Illustration House, a small Chelsea gallery that he ran for the past four decades with Mr. Reed’s uncle. It was through him, and a Brooklyn-bred grandmother “who never left the city too far behind” that Mr. Reed gained much of his appreciation for New York and for the arts.

“It makes for a richer life a more well-rounded experience,” Mr. Reed said. “I never deluded myself beyond the karaoke floor that I’d have a future in the arts or entertainment, but it certainly informs a bunch of the fun work I get to do now with cultural organizations.”

Mr. Reed was raised by his mother, a fact he credits with stoking his self-reliant spirit. The family lived what he calls a modest, working-class life, which drove Mr. Reed to overachieve in his pursuits but also to want to give back. “You like to think that if you are a good person, and you are trying to do the right thing, that there are people out there to help, and for government to help as well,” he said. “That wasn’t always my experience, so I’d like to think that I have a responsibility to improve people’s lives.”

He decided to attend nearby Wesleyan, which, in addition to all the artsy kids from afar there to start electronica bands and celebrate Zonker Harris Day, attracts a number of locals looking for a good school (which is not to say that Mr. Reed shied away from the more-than-occasional drink, as a former member of the football team, who now works at a financial firm in Downtown Brooklyn, explained).

Mr. Reed not only played football to help pay his way through school but also joined the National Guard. After those two torn ACLs in sophomore year, Mr. Reed was given a medical discharge, a stroke of bad luck that may well have saved his life—Mr. Reed graduated in 2002, which would have almost certainly have put him on the front lines in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Still, Mr. Reed found time for his other pursuits, taking a role in the student government and acting in, among other pieces, 7 Minutes in Heaven, the first original piece by his dormmate Lin-Manuel Miranda, who later achieved fame with In the Heights. During the summers, he ran an ice cream shop on an island off the coast of Maine with another college buddy.

After graduating with a bachelors degree in government, Mr. Reed spent a year on the island teaching high school social studies while also making time to travel to India, Nepal and Bangladesh. The following year, Mr. Reed arrived in New York on a Coro public service fellowship, which took him through a number of internships at City Hall and the community lending division at JPMorgan. In 2004, Mr. Reed officially joined the Bloomberg administration in the Department of Small Business Services. He spent a little over a year there integrating two older departments that had now been combined into one while also focusing on expanding and reforming the Workforce1 career centers.

It was Rob Walsh, commissioner of the department, who recommended Mr. Reed to Jed Walentas, the DUMBO scion and up-and-comer in his own right taking over his father’s empire in DUMBO. The Bloomberg administration had become staunch advocates of businesses improvements districts—their number has nearly doubled in the past decade—and Mr. Reed was tapped to launch this latest effort. “He has this rare understanding of both the public and private sector and how to get them to work together,” Commissioner Walsh said.

Mr. Reed used to jog over the Brooklyn Bridge many mornings from his apartment in Carroll Gardens, and he was always struck by how many tourists would walk over from Manhattan and immediately turn back around. “My goal was to put DUMBO on the map,” Mr. Reed said. In the span of two years he had, converting a nonexistent advocacy group into one of the foremost BIDs in town.

He built the first pedestrian plaza in the city, at Pearl Street, opened the archway under the anchorage to the Manhattan Bridge, formerly a DOT storage lot, and launched a program to install free wifi in the neighborhood. He presided over a landmarking of DUMBO that preserved its character, then pivoted to a rezoning that carved out room for new development.

“He just has an instinctual understanding of how urban spaces work,” Mr. Walentas said. Meanwhile, a tech sector blossomed and a residential market boomed into the poshest in the borough.

For all the good Mr. Reed had done in the city in his five years here, he still had a longing for greater fulfilment. “I felt like everything that was happening in Iraq and Afghanistan was really the challenge of my generation, and I wanted to be a part of that in some way,” Mr. Reed said. He found a posting for an adviser to a provincial reconstruction team, a small group of 100 civilian and military experts assigned to Division Headquarters in Baghdad.

Mr. Reed arrived in Iraq in May 2008. After five years of war, the situation on the banks of the Tigris was unspeakably worse than along the East River, yet both had undergone a considerable building boom that now needed managing.

“The mandate was, get as many projects built as possible, and let's really start to demonstrate that the tide was turning and and conditions were improving,” Mr. Reed said. “But it was like community development gone wild.” He said it was common for a local battalion commander to be out on patrol, run into a sheikh, ask him what they needed, and voila, a school or hospital would materialize out of nowhere—with no one to run or even necessarily fill it. This not only created underutilized resources but a new vulnerable infrastructure that if not defended and put into could use could become a nest for insurgents.

“There was a lot of the best intentions that were meeting just a kind of discoordinated effort, and not through the fault of anyone specifically, but, I think, through the fault of being in a war zone,” Mr. Reed said. It was a year after the military surge, and things had begun to improve, but untold amounts of work remained to be done. Mr. Reed makes mention of 18- to 20-hour workdays.

“He’s kind and generous, but holds people accountable for their actions,” Lou Ann Linehan, a diplomat in the Basra consulate who was Mr. Reed’s superior in Baghdad, said in an email. “He fills up the room with his personality. He does not suffer fools.”

One of his fondest projects—something only a New Yorker could cop to—was helping to rebuild the sanitation network. “You’re working on trying to restore the most basic level of service where you’re training people to follow a set route, come at a dependable time each day to build the trust of the customer so they know if I go and put my garbage out at 5 o’clock it’s going to be picked at 5 o’clock, and that’s the most basic level of service because the place had evolved into complete chaos,” Mr. Reed recalled. “People aren’t really caring about garbage when you’re worrying about if you’re going to get blown up.” Yet that is part of the reason regular trash removal was so important—the ubiquitous piles of garbage were a popular hiding place for IEDs.

This was a matter of personal import, as well, since Mr. Reed was venturing out into these same streets three to four times a week from the relative safety of the Green Zone. In talking about his time in Iraq, Mr. Reed is careful to be matter-of-fact, not wanting to sound boastful or self-important. His posting is something he felt obligated to do, but it was also just another job to do and do right. “There was the physical danger aspect to it, which, when you're in the situation, you kind of push to the back of your mind, because if you don't, it will drive you crazy,” Mr. Reed said of the challenges of working in a war zone.

When he got homesick, he would watch Rick Burns's New York documentary, and it helped inform his view of the city when he returned. “I watched the whole series while I was over there again, there is some quote in there from Fitzgerald talking about how New York burns with all the effervescence of the sun,” he said. “With all that ligh,t how could you not want to be a part of it?”

After only six months, Mr. Reed had been promoted from an adviser to chief of staff, but after seven more, he found himself exhausted. It was time to return home to the bright lights.

The day after his big announcement, a clear, muggy Friday morning, Tucker Reed was giving a tour of his downtown domain, strolling through the leafy confines of the MetroTech Plaza, having just walked over from the noisy scene on the Fulton Mall. The two are closer than even locals realize, and in many ways they remain worlds apart, though upscale developments on both sides—a French bistro recently opened in MetroTech—draw them ever closer. Mr. Reed considers this his top priority.

“For me, one of the big things is the Downtown Brooklyn experience,” he said. “We want to create a destination, with everything so close together, but it can be very confusing since there’s not a grid, there’s no easy path.” Everything from smartphone apps to digital kiosks is in the works.

After returning from Iraq, Mr. Reed spent a few wayward months figuring out exactly what to do with himself. He moved into his girlfriend’s Midtown studio—she had departed their Carroll Gardens apartment when he headed overseas—and mostly spent his time decompressing, visiting with family and friends and traveling around the country. He passed the foreign service exam and considered moving to Washington, but eventually took his old friend Jed Walentas up on an offer to join Two Trees.

He spent two years as a project manager working on everything from the new Mercedes House project on the Far West Side to liaising with City Hall and managing philanthropic efforts on behalf of the Walentases. Much as he enjoyed his work in the private sector, he jumped at the opportunity to take over the partnership when Joe Chan, its founding director, stepped down last fall.

“I had met him during a tour with Jed once, and I remember being impressed, but when he came in for an interview for the job, we knew immediately he was our guy,” Forest City Ratner executive vice president MaryAnne Gilmartin said. “His resume just blew us away.

It was a tumultuous time at the BID, where competing interests among the areas long-time developers often ran up against each other. On top of that, a scathing report from City Comptroller John Liu charged the partnership with mismanagement of funds, spending lavishly on executives while local needs were ignored.

Much as he did in Iraq, Mr. Reed focused on finding common ground among the competing parties, stressing their shared interests: let’s capitalize on the 56,000 college students, more than in Cambridge; better wayfinding, connectivity and open space are key; tech, tech, tech. He made of point of meeting with all 120 partnership members, not just the big shots on the board, though he has also conscripted them into monthly one-on-ones.

If there are any skeptics, they are among the groups that have long been critical of the partnership, most notably Families United for Racial and Economic Equality. Mr. Reed met the group within the first few months of taking over and even agreed to go on a walking tour of the neighborhood, which impressed the member of FUREE. But when he released the strategic plan, they were disappointed. "We worry it's largely lip service," Patrick Gomez, a FUREE board member said. "So far these policies have mostly benefited the luxury developers, and the elite business interests that dominate the boards of the Partnership. We look forward to working with the Partnership to promote development that uplifts the long-time residents, local small business owners and workers who have contributed to the area's success."

While Mr. Reed is willing to work with local groups, he was clear that it is not his first priority. “We are not a city agency, a housing advocate, a workforce development provider or an enforcement organization,” he responded

Despite such objections, Mr. Reed is upbeat. At the end of the tour, standing in front of Shake Shack—regarded by some as the clearest sign of the changes to Downtown Brooklyn—Mr. Reed surveyed his domain. “Within 10 or 15 blocks, it’s really all here, from Brooklyn Bridge Park to the BAM to the Barclays Center,” Mr. Reed said. “We have to think about how to knit it together. It’s not about going to the office or going to the Fulton Mall anymore. You’re coming here to see a show, to shop, to work, to live. You really don’t have to leave the area—you can do it all.

Big government meets big business.

Muni money.

The Landmarks Preservation Commission has been on the defensive of late, fighting off claims from the real estate industry that it hinders development rather than helping it. But in givings its unanimous approval to the transformation of the Brooklyn Municipal Building—in the newly created, much maligned Downtown Brooklyn Skyscraper Historic District—the commission reasserted its role as a steward of both the city's history and economy.

“It proves again and I don’t know how many times we have to do it, that economic development and preservation go hand in hand and here’s a textbook example of it,” Commissioner Chairman Robert Tierney said in an email.

United American Land, a local developer active in the Fulton Market, plans to transform the first, second and below-grade floors of the building into roughly 48,000 square feet of retail space. Albert Laboz, United American Land's principal, confirmed plans for a restaurant within the building and noted that the company is close to signing a lease with Sephora.

While the commission has no control over tenants, Sherida Paulsen, the architect who presented the project at a hearing on behalf of Mr. Laboz, noted to commissioners that the retail space would not be used for banks, pharmacies or fast food.

The space is currently being occupied by the Department of Finance, which will relocate within the building to other city-owned space.

Elizabeth de Bourbon, a spokeswoman for the LPC, said there was no opposition expressed during the hearing and many commissioners expressed tremendous approval for the project. “Several of the commissioners noted it’s a great project,” she said.

Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, whose office in Borough Hall looks out on the Municipal Building, said he looks forward to its transformation into a vibrant retail corridor.

“Downtown Brooklyn is in the middle of an amazing renaissance and this will only enhance our stature as a 24/7, live, work, play and learning city center,” Mr. Markowitz told The Observer in an email. “With the help of developer United American Land, we will soon be able to celebrate 210 Joralemon becoming an economic powerhouse and world-class destination for dining and shopping.”

Mr. Laboz said his company is eager to bring great retail to Brooklyn and is happy to have successfully gained the commission’s approval. The remaining process for the approval of the retail development of the building consists solely of authorization from the Department of Buildings.

“We have had a lot of interest from various retailers and we can now move forward with plans with a stronger sense of certainty,” Mr. Laboz said.

Fingers crossed: off-street parking requirements might be reduced in Downtown Brooklyn. (Photo: Department of City Planning)

There’s a reason why public transportation exists: so that people don’t have to use cars. Downtown Brooklyn residents have long accepted this reality of urban living and it appears that the Department of City Planning has too.

At Monday's  City Planning Commission meeting, DCP unveiled their latest proposal: a plan to reform Downtown Brooklyn’s off-street parking requirements. The oh-so-creatively titled Downtown Brooklyn Off-Street Parking plan would reduce the current zoning requirements for parking in new developments from availability for 40 percent of residential units to 20 percent.

As it turns out, Brooklynites aren't really using parking garages. Either they don't have cars or they prefer to duke it out on the streets. According to a study sponsored by the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership,  parking garages built in new residential buildings—the same ones that developers were required by the city to build due to zoning laws—are only half full in the evenings and on weekends. And, only some 20 percent of Downtown Brooklyn households own cars, according to the Census—a paltry amount given that 43 percent of residents in Brooklyn and 45 percent of residents in New York City have cars.

Add to that the fact that Downtown Brooklyn has a slew of public transportation options—it’s served by seven subway stops, 13 subway lines, commuter rail, and numerous buses—and you’d be hard-pressed not to be in favor of the proposal.

“This is an area that’s extremely walkable and easy to get to using public transportation,” said  Noah Budnick, deputy director of Transportation Alternatives, a New York City-based transportation advocacy organization. “It will make for more efficient use of real estate in the area.”

Changing the parking requirements would also help both developers and buyers save money. “The fact is, people who move there don’t own cars or don’t bring their cars,” Mr. Budnick told The Observer, “it doesn’t add to any benefits to the new development. In fact, it makes it more expensive and adds costs that potential buyers and developers don’t want.”

And, considering that the cost of property in Brooklyn is on the rise, housing that's affordable, or at least more affordable, is welcome indeed. 

The plans for the proposal are still hazy—it is only in the first stage of the public review process expected to last until August—but DCP said that the new requirements would only apply to high-density commercial districts throughout the Special Downtown Brooklyn District, which runs from Tillary Street to Atlantic Avenue, and from Clinton Street in Brooklyn Heights to Ashland Place.

The off-Street parking proposal has some lofty goals. As city planning writes in a release, it's seeks to “better balance community needs for parking, the cost of constructing new housing, maintaining mobility and ensuring an environmentally sustainable future for the city.” That may be ambitious, but they all sound pretty good to us, so here’s hoping it passes.

jschiewe@observer.com

Here to stay. (Getty)

Downtown Brooklyn developers and cooperators, with a hefty helping hand from the real estate lobby, threw everything they could at the Borough Hall Skyscraper Historic District, a new landmarking effort aimed at saving the area's historic highrises. In the end, the preservationists won out, as a City Council subcommittee voted unanimously yesterday to approve the historic district, all but ensuring its passage by the full council on February 1.

There were some interesting compromises that may not have fully assuaged concerns in Downtown Brooklyn but will hopefully go a way toward addressing any problems in the future. The co-op board at 75 Livingston Street was one of the loudest critics of the proposal. Brooklyn Councilmen Steve Levin, who represents the area, and Brad Lander, chair of the landmarks subcommittee, released a joint statement yesterday celebrating the passage of the district but also calling on the Landmarks Preservation Commission to go easy on the co-op.

"We want to particularly recognize the co-operators of 75 Livingston Street and praise them for their stewardship of the building over the past decade, as they have spent millions restoring their building after years of decline," the councilmen said. "Given their hard work and investment, we ask the LPC to work with the board of the building, and to show maximum appropriate flexibility as they move forward in their efforts to maintain the building without imposing hardships on the co-operators."

Another new wrinkle, one that will have citywide implications, is an announcement by the commission to revise how it reviews storefronts, another major issue for landlords. Instead of lengthy public reviews, these will be handled at the staff level. "These new guidelines will allow many more new and relocating stores—in Downtown Brooklyn and around the city—to obtain a quick, staff-level approval for exterior work," the councilmen said.

"After close consideration," they concluded, "we believe that this new historic district will strengthen the character of Downtown Brooklyn, allowing for new development and growth, like the new retail space planned for the Municipal Building, while preserving the graceful, historic, early-generation skyscrapers that make it Brooklyn’s civic center."

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC