A long-stalled plan to build hundreds of affordable apartments over the train tracks at Brooklyn’s Atlantic Yards is getting a do-over after two decades of broken promises.
The fresh start means a previous developer will fully skirt millions in ongoing penalties for missing a May deadline to deliver the low-cost housing under the terms of a 2014 legal agreement, angering some local leaders. The monthly fines for each missing apartment were supposed to seed an affordable housing trust fund that could help finance projects elsewhere in the borough.
But a newly approved development team called Brooklyn Ascending Land Co., led by the firms Cirrus Real Estate Partners and LCOR, has agreed to contribute $4.5 million to the fund in the next 30 days, followed by another $7.5 million over two years. New York state officials and executives from the real estate companies described the pledge and an initial community engagement plan at a meeting in Brooklyn on Thursday.
“What the affordable housing trust payment represents is a combination of both actual money now … alongside actual progress,” Empire State Development Senior Vice President Anna Pycior told members of a community task force.
Under the new agreement presented Thursday, the companies have until the end of March 2026 to produce a detailed proposal for the development site, which will require them to construct a pricey platform over the railyard before building residential towers. A 2019 estimate put the cost of the platform at around $200 million, but the price is almost certainly higher six years later. The owners of Hudson Yards in Manhattan may receive $2 billion from the city to build a similar deck. The original Atlantic Yards plan called for six towers on or along the platform at the site, which has been rebranded as Pacific Park.
Empire State Development Executive Vice President Arden Sokolow said her agency will pause any fines for the new developers for at least two years, until the state formally approves the revised proposal.
“We want to enter into a new framework of new timelines, new deadlines, new enforcement tools to ensure that we're getting the community benefits that we all want to see here,” Sokolow said.
State officials and company executives declined to provide a timeframe for when they might complete the new housing. They also declined to say what subsidies they may seek to help fund affordable units, until they unveil more concrete plans.
The $12 million is insufficient.
The latest restart comes 22 years after state officials and the firm Forest City Ratner first announced a sweeping plan to develop Atlantic Yards in 2003. That plan promised thousands of new apartments surrounding a centerpiece sports arena by bypassing the city’s typical review process and seizing some property through eminent domain.
Over the ensuing two decades, developers completed Barclays Center, now home to the Brooklyn Nets and New York Liberty, and about 3,200 mostly market-rate apartments in eight high-rise towers. Yet they only built 1,374 of the promised 2,250 affordable units for low- and middle-income tenants.
A coalition of community groups reached an agreement with the state and development team in 2014 to deliver the remaining units by the end of May 2025, or face $2,000 monthly fines for each missing apartment.
China-based real estate firm Greenland USA took the property over from Forest City, but never broke ground on the project. The firm later defaulted on its debt, plunging the delayed plan into further chaos.
State officials waived the fines, as Gothamist first reported. Empire State Development Senior Vice President Joel Kolkmann later cited threats of a lawsuit by Greenland as the reason for doing so.
Some community leaders at Thursday's meeting said they were glad to see progress at the site. Others involved in the 2014 legal agreement criticized the state authority for not enforcing the penalties or collecting more from the new development group.
Michelle de la Uz, head of the affordable housing developer and policy group Fifth Avenue Committee, cited the “extensive displacement” of predominantly Black residents of the neighborhood over the past two decades.
“While I think we all share the goal of a project that is feasible and that addresses current and future public needs, it doesn't erase the fact that we don't have 877 units of affordable housing today that can address the affordable housing needs of communities,” de la Uz said. “The $12 million is insufficient to address that.”
A view of the incomplete Atlantic Yards development, now rebranded Pacific Park.
Greenland remains in the picture despite its failures. The company controls a valuable parcel of land known as Site 5, which now contains a vacant Modell's Sporting Goods and a P.C. Richard and Son. The site was previously approved for a 910-foot residential tower and is now part of the deal with Cirrus and LCOR.
Empire State Development and the developers will now relaunch a community engagement process to hear from residents next month.
Cirrus Managing Partner Joseph McDonnell said the company was eager to make “lemonade out of lemons” and finally deliver on the decades-old plan.
“A lot of the easy sites were built a long time ago,” he said. “There aren't many projects of scale with this type of location, this type of transportation connectivity and this type of neighborhood amenities.”
