November 27, 2004: Vol. 27, No. 46

A competing developer’s plans for a portion of the Atlantic Yards site could throw a monkey wrench into Bruce Ratner’s dream of building a basketball arena, four office skyscrapers and 13 high-rise apartment buildings in Prospect Heights, The Brooklyn Papers has learned.

Aside from usurping a large chunk of the land Ratner has slated for residential development, Shaya Boymelgreen’s plan to build a 1.1 million-square-foot complex of market-rate apartment buildings on Pacific Street could also stymie the Metrotech developer’s hopes of having the six-square-block site designated as urban blight, a key component to getting the state to condemn nearly 11 acres of privately owned property for his use.

Working with fellow property owner Henry Weinstein, who has leased other Pacific Street properties to Boymelgreen over the past six years, the Leviev Boymelgreen development company would build the residential complex on adjoining property Boymelgreen and Weinstein each own at 750-800 Pacific St., between Carlton and Vanderbilt avenues. The site comprises the former Pecter’s Bakery.

Ratner proposes to build a $2.5 billion complex on property bounded by Flatbush, Atlantic and Vanderbilt avenues and Dean Street — including Pacific Street.

Weinstein owns four parcels of land on a block on which Ratner wants to build residential buildings — several as high as 40 stories — as well as courtyards, stores and underground parking, according to plans Ratner released this year. Under Ratner’s plan, Pacific Street would no longer exist on that block.

Boymelgreen has yet to make public his plans for 750-800 Pacific St. but a Web site of Boymelgreen’s joint venture company, Africa Israel Investments, touts the project as one of their American ventures and said the massive development would be built on an assemblage of seven parcels on a lot bounded by Vanderbilt and Carlton avenues, between Pacific and Dean streets.

Weinstein said he was happy to join forces with Boymelgreen, who he described as a “good developer.”

“He says what he’s going to do, he does what he says, and he keeps his word,” Weinstein told The Papers of Boymelgreen. “[He] is very sensitive to what the community needs.”

Boymelgreen’s current lease expires in 2047.

The Africa Israel Web site details that the industrial buildings on the property, would remain intact, converted to luxury one-, two- and three-bedroom condominium units, with new construction above the former baked goods factory.

Weinstein said commercial property would be kept on the lower two levels of the entire project. He said he’s not sure himself of the details, but no matter what, he has no intention of selling his land to Ratner.

Sara Mirski, development director for Leviev Boymelgreen, said she could not comment on the project, but the Africa Israel Web site specified the “existing neoclassical industrial buildings will remain intact” and be converted to eight- to 10-story residential buildings.

Boymelgreen made his name in Brooklyn with the renovation of the Newswalk building, at 700 Pacific St., in 2000. Then, in 2002, the state granted him the development rights for the Civil War-era Empire Stores, along Water Street at Empire-Fulton Ferry State Park in DUMBO, in which he will create a mall and gallery that will be part of the Brooklyn Bridge Park plan. He also has several buildings under construction in DUMBO and plans to build housing along the Gowanus Canal.

Meanwhile, Ratner’s development company, Forest City Ratner, has slipped quietly past its projected deadlines for completed agreements with the city and state over government sponsorship of the Atlantic Yards project.

Ratner’s proposed project is expected to be co-sponsored by the Empire State Development Corp. and needs a memorandum of understanding with the agency before it can start its state-level review process and potential eminent domain condemnations.

While Boymelgreen would need only a Board of Standards and Appeals-issued zoning change to build at 800 Pacific St., a manufacturing zone, the property, which Ratner has slated for several buildings of his 4,500-apartment complex, could still be subject to state condemnation, and sold through eminent domain if Ratner succeeds.

One of the first steps on Ratner’s behalf would be a review of the land surrounding the planned arena complex for condemnation by eminent domain.

Regina Myer, the Brooklyn director of the Department of City Planning, said the state could override a city process, but Weinstein doesn’t believe that the Empire State Development Corp. could possibly deem an area “blighted” when faced with a pending application to build market-rate housing on the site.

“I felt they weren’t bargaining in good faith as long as they have this eminent domain thing hanging over their heads,” he said. Weinstein said he was approached by Ratner officials, but said no deals were struck, and he told them what he thought of their negotiation process.

“I’ve lived here 30 years, and I don’t take kindly to people kicking me off my property,” Weinstein said.

He told The Papers that he and Boymelgreen were “talking about how to maximize the property. But we don’t want to do anything against the community; we want to go along with what they feel.” He said they both have been reaching out to community leaders and neighbors to get a feel of what that is.

“The area’s doing very well without a stadium,” said Weinstein, criticizing Ratner’s linkage of needed housing to a privately owned arena in order to seize property.

“I don’t know why that stadium has anything to do with building houses,” he said.

Though he labeled as “essential” development over the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s Long Island Rail Road storage yards — which both pro- and anti-Atlantic Yards advocates acknowledge to be a blight and “scar” on the community — Weinstein called Ratner’s plan “a waste of resources.”

“We’re certainly not going to go away quietly, that’s for sure. We’re going to spend any amount of money to keep my property — I certainly will, and I think Shaya will, too,” he said.

The Boymelgreen plan also indicates that a once-smooth relationship between the Israeli-financed developer and Ratner has now soured.

Ratner’s plan originally included Boymelgreen’s condominium-converted Daily News building, Newswalk, at 700 Pacific St., but excluded the building from his plan in April.

At the time that Newswalk was gerrymandered out of the Atlantic Yards site plan, the prevailing assumption was that Boymelgreen and Ratner were friends, or at least shared a cordial business relationship.

A Boymelgreen spokesman characterized his boss and Ratner as “friends,” back in January, and said the Newswalk building would become a joint project of the proposed site. This week the spokesman, Will Kim, said he did not believe anything had changed in their relationship despite the competing plans.

A source close to the Atlantic Yards negotiations told The Papers that Ratner and Boymelgreen had agreed to jointly develop the property at 800 Pacific St. but the contract was never signed and Boymelgreen partnered with Weinstein instead.

Forest City Ratner officials declined to comment for this article.

Three other condo apartment buildings are included in the footprint and Ratner has been negotiating with individual unit owners to purchase their properties, aided by the threat of eminent domain condemnation.

Weinstein added his belief that Ratner is not buying the rest of the property in the 21-acre site — the three condos comprise a small portion of the total acreage of private property Ratner needs — because he’s holding out for eminent domain.

“It seems to me that he’s not very anxious to buy our properties at market price,” said Weinstein. “If it was me, and I really needed a piece of property, I’d keep talking no matter what.”

True to Weinstein’s word, he and Boymelgreen have been reaching out to community leaders.

Prospect Heights Councilwoman Letitia James, an ardent opponent of the Atlantic Yards plan, said she met with Boymelgreen officials and would support them in their application for zoning changes.

“They want to ensure that their community remains intact,” she said. “They respect the character of the community.”

James said based on what Boymelgreen representatives told her the residential space would be small in comparison with Ratner’s total proposed housing. It would downsize whatever Ratner hoped to do, if not stop it, James related.

“I think it would put a wrinkle into [Ratner’s] project because he wouldn’t get the acreage that he needs,” the councilwoman said. Asked if she would support a downscaled version of the arena plan, James declined to commit.

“The devil’s in the details,” she said.

©2004 The Brooklyn Paper