Raise high the roof beams, Mr. Ratner. (SHoP_

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.

Forest City Ratner has spent $3.5 million on research and development for prefab construction, according to The Journal, which dug the number out of its annual report. Since Mr. Ratner began considering prefab apartment towers in 2009, that is more than a million dollars per year. Add to that the lawsuit Forest City helped fight, and this seems like a considerable commitment to this new approach.

This may put to rest claims that the developer was only looking at prefab as a means to break the unions and get a better rate from them on Atlantic Yards. Then again, with 15 towers containing millions of square feet of space, a few million could be but a drop in the bucket if it means bigger labor saving on the future of the site.

The entire project has been predicted to cost $5 billion, so even a 5 percent reduction in costs through labor negotiations could equal $250 million in savings. Even if Forest City Ratner were to spend $50 million researching prefab construction, if it gets the labor unions to bend and build a cheaper traditional building, that would be money well spent.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

The project first popped up in 2009, and the architects, Peter Gluck & Partners, have just filed a new set of plans, pushing the project from seven to eight stories. Not exactly 32, like Bruce Ratner has planned, but it shows the potential on mid-rise sites, especially when the ambitious scope of the project is considered: According to Curbed, the plan is to build the modules in the span of three months in Pennsylvania, ship them in and erect it all in the course of eight days. Can you imagine a developer would not be interested in that kind of turn around?

The future is finally now.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

If you build it, will they follow? (FCR)

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.

Mr. Ratner claims that with his new building process, not only will he be able to build by far the largest modular project ever, a 340,000-square-foot apartment tower rising 32 stories over Flatbush Avenue, but he will do it at a savings of 20 percent over conventional construction. He is working with an unproven technology that has been a dream of architects since Henry Ford began rolling cars off the assembly line a century ago.

Small advances have been made in the intervening, but nothing close to what Mr. Ratner is proposing has been achieved until very recently, and even then, there are questions about the viability of a project at the scale he is proposing. Mr. Ratner has admitted to falling under the spell of a YouTube video that demonstrates the current promise: a 15-story hotel erected in China in two days and finished several days after that. “That was the icing on the cake,” he said, “but we’d already been working on this for a while.”

There are those in the construction industry who view this in-sequence proposal with skepticism, but there is an equally strong tendency to simply build the next building just like the last one. Things have changed only so much since the pyramids. At the same time, Mr. Ratner is in the process of winning over once-wary construction unions. They had once feared losing good-paying jobs over a quicker, cheaper building process, much of the savings of which comes from off-site construction, but a number of union officials The Observer spoke with were sanguine about the prospects presented by prefab. Forest City is in the midst of negotiating the specifics of its plan with them.

“I think prefab is the wave of the future, and I think it will come to New York,” said Patricia Lancaster, a former Department of Buildings commissioner now teaching at NYU. “The only question is when and how much power the unions have to do something about it.” She points to the expiration of the New York Plan in January, the overarching arbitration agreement that governs the unions. “After that, anything could happen.”

Forest City is proposing building 40 percent of its project out of more than 930 modules, which will be made in a factory, trucked onto the site, hoisted into place and finished there. Because the prefab process reduces the materials, time, energy and exposure of the total project, as well as employing lower-cost union labor, it could greatly reduce the price of the project. Forest City predicts 20 percent savings from these measures, and hopes to drive the cost further down, as it continues to build the rest of its 15 apartment towers on the 22-acre site.

“Atlantic Yards is the only place this could ever happen,” Forest City Ratner executive vice president MaryAnne Gilmartin said. “Nowhere else could you find the scale to justify building a new factory on spec.”

Once the project is up and running, Forest City believes its presumed success will attract other developers to the modules, which are being built by a firm called XSite. Forest City’s requirements drove off a handful of modular firms considering working on the project, as revealed by the dogged blogger Norman Oder in October. One of these, Kullman Offsite Construction, sued XSite, as a number of the firm’s employees left and ultimately joined Mr. Ratner’s efforts. The suit was dismissed in July.

“In a way, it’s been an R&D project, not just a ‘D’ project,” Mr. Ratner said.

We've been dreaming prefab dreams for decades. (Getty)

Richard Anderson, president of the New York Building Congress, believes Forest City has no choice but to go prefab to make the project viable. “Just start putting it together: a tough construction market, a commitment to build union, a commitment to build affordable housing, to build infrastructure, this is a bear of a development challenge,” he said. “They’re between a rock and a hard place, and this may be their only option.”

The fact that prefab, after decades of dreaming, could finally take off is what has so many unions interested. The current assumption is that the bulk of residential construction will still be built through conventional means, but the market for affordable housing, where modular has already enjoyed some minor success, could be huge. After all, half of the first tower at Atlantic Yards, and 30 percent of its total apartments, will be set aside for low- and middle-income families.

“Unions have never really had any kind of hold in the world of affordable housing,” one labor source said. “We are taking it slow, but there is huge potential upside here.” If the labor agreement between unions, contractors, Forest City Ratner and XSite is properly written, it could ensure union jobs on many future prefab projects, and not just in the factory, but in the field, as well.

And for an industry with the highest unemployment in the city, hovering around 30 percent, construction workers cannot exactly say no to new work. If prefab means more jobs, as some of the more than 600 stalled construction projects across the five boroughs are revived, it could even mean more work. And Forest City has talked of exporting prefab modules across the country and even the globe, which could mean yet more jobs.

Given the complexity of building a 32-story prefab tower—with taller ones to come—a number of building professionals were suspicious the firm could achieve the 20 percent cost savings Forest City has been boasting about. Among them is Jerilyn Perine, the executive director of the Citizens Planning & Housing Council and a former housing commissioner in both the Giuliani and Bloomberg administrations, where she worked on a number of low-income modular projects. “I’m not against modular. I think it has its place,” she said. “I don’t think it’s like discovering fire.”

Even boosters of the process are ambivalent about modular’s prospects. “You go down this path, you promise a lot of things,” one engineer who has done modular work said. “Whether or not you realize those things, it remains to be seen. It’ll be cool if it works, but it’s a pretty heavy lift.”

Among the challenges facing Forest City is that to build the tallest modular structure in the world would require a structural system the likes of which has never been achieved. “Technology moves very fast, people move very slow,” Ms. Lancaster countered. Indeed, SHoP, the architects behind the arena and apartment towers, had two separate design teams working on the project at once, walled off from each other. They used different engineers and everything, had a mini architecture competition, and the prefab team came out on top.

Despite the promise at Atlantic Yards, there is skepticism of the applicability of prefab elsewhere. Simply getting modules over the bridges and into Manhattan would seem to pose a challenge, not to mention the tight streets. Such a building in the Financial District seems remote. Regardless, almost everyone in the industry seems to be rooting for Forest City.

"It's interesting how New Yorkers have a hard time thinking outside the box sometimes," said Jennifer Murphy, a vice-president at Plaza Construction. "For such a forward-thinking city, we can really lag behind. Maybe this will be the turning point."

If modular happens, it would be a miracle. But then again, so is the fact Atlantic Yards is being built in the first place.

mchaban@observer.com

Forest City Ratner, Meet Buckminster Fuller

Prefabricated buildings have not been such a hot topic of conversation since Buckminster Fuller passed away, but that is about all anyone can talk about at Atlantic Yards anymore. On the one hand, it could signal a paradigm shift in how New York City builds; on the other, it goes against many of the employment promises Forest City Ratner made when the project won support from politicians and labor unions. With building plans recently filed, the decision on what to do is getting close. How close?MaryAnne Gilmartin, executive vice president at Forest City Ratner, could not say when the decision would be made, but she did admit, “We’re on the cusp.”

“It’s definitely a 2011 conversation, and one we look forward to having very soon,” she added. That leaves us with 88 days until the big reveal. –Matt Chaban

About those apartment buildings... (SHoP Architects)

Prefabricated buildings have not been such a hot topic of conversation since Buckminster Fuller passed away, but that is about all anyone can talk about at Atlantic Yards anymore. On the one hand, it could signal a paradigm shift in how New York City builds, on the other, it goes against many of the employment promises Forest City Ratner made when the project won support from politicians and labor unions. With building plans recently filed, the decision on what to do is getting close. How close? The Observer asked Maryanne Gilmartin exactly that.

We were on the phone with the Forest City Ratner executive vice-president for a story about privately owned public spaces—made famous recently at Zucotti Park; read all about it in tomorrow's paper—but we also took the opportunity to ask about the prefab progress. While Ms. Gilmartin could not say when the decision would be made, she did admit, "We're on the cusp."

"It's definitely a 2011 conversation, and one we look forward to having very soon," she added. That leaves us with 88 days until the big reveal.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

Raise high the roof beams, Bruce. (NBA.com)

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.

The Observer’s initial read of the DOB application, which Brownstoner turned up today, details Bruce & Co.’s intention to build a residential tower that will run 33 stories tall and 375,000 square feet large. Although there is no word yet on whether this tower will be the pre-fabricated tower that got us so excited back in March, it is clear from the filing that, in keeping with the company’s initial agreement to develop the Atlantic Yards site, approximately half of the new building’s 368 units would be reserved for affordable housing.

What is most telling about the filing is not contained in the document itself but in the mere action of its filing.

As The Observer reported in the fall, Forest City Ratner planned to begin construction on the project during the first half of this year. While it has missed that mark, there was suspicion nothing would get built this year at all. Herewith is the first proof that might not actually be the case.

According to Forest City Ratner, everything is moving ahead as planned. "The permits were filed as standard operating procedure as we move forward," Director of Commercial & Residential Development MaryAnne Gilmartin said in a statement. "We are still designing both prefab and conventional alternatives for the first residential building at Atlantic Yards and are shooting for a year end groundbreaking. We hope to show renderings to the public during the 4th quarter of this year."

tmcenery@observer.com

Prefab can even look cool! (Photo: Inhabitat)

The city needs to build. We are running out of apartments (more on that later), and part of the reason, argues a new report out from the Regional Plan Association, is the cost of construction in New York City. At a fiery breakfast this morning, developers, builders and labor unionists debated the report, which places a good deal of blame on the latter's ostensibly intransigent work rules. We're planning another post later on the meat of the meeting, but one subject in particular bears mentioning on its own.

In the past, The Observer has looked at the potential for the city to revolutionize its construction practices through prefabricated buildings. It's been a dream of architects and builders for nearly a century, almost since the first Model-T rolled off the line, but it has had limited impact on construction in the country, and almost none whatsoever in New York.

But that changed when Bruce Ratner began pursuing a prefab tower for Atlantic Yards, which at 32 stories would be the largest such structure in the world. It gets very much at the issues brought up today, namely labor costs, because not only are the materials for prefabricated building cheaper, but less skilled laborers are needed to produce the projects.

Our pal Norman Oder asked a question of the panel about the prefabulous building in question, and the response from Jeff Levine, chairman of Douglaston Development, was telling. "It should act as a warning bell," he said. "Just as our elected officials are telling us that the high cost of oil is beneficial to alternative sources of energy, whether it be wind or  nuclear. But the reality is, we cannot build the perfect cost scenario, as evidenced by the lack of product going up. Having said that, alternatives are being sought. At some point, if it's not non-union, then it's modular. A solution will be found. We have to live somewhere."

So is modular construction coming around? Mr. Oder suggested in asking his question that this may just be a bargaining tactic on Forest City Ratner's part, but whatever the case, it appears it may become reality, if not at Atlantic Yards, then somewhere in the city.

Even the unions are reluctantly gearing up for it, said Robert Ledwith, the business manager and financial secretary for Metallic Lathers Local 46. "We are already in discussion about modular construction," he said, referring to recent meetings among the union leaders. "We are aware of the technological change, we want to grasp it and make it work for ourselves. So that whatever Bruce Ratner does regarding modular construction, we are prepared for it."

The look of the city, and the fate of a good portion of its middle-class, could be in for some big changes.