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.
