Have you been listening to the Hell Gate Podcast? You can catch last week's episode here.
On the subterranean practice basketball court at Barclays Center on Monday night, a group of real estate developers stood in front of more than 100 Brooklynites and asked them to participate in the "reimagining phase" of an unfinished project that began more than two decades ago, and is now marred with a history of broken promises.
The meeting was the second in a series of public workshops held by the state's quasi-private economic arm, Empire State Development, with developers Cirrus Real Estate Partners and LCOR after the pair took over the Atlantic Yards project from Greenland USA in October.
For locals, there's a certain deja vu: ESD first came to them in 2003 with a plan to build a new neighborhood around a centerpiece arena. The plan would bypass the City's typical land use review process—with the state seizing some properties through eminent domain. But it would be totally worth it, because the developer would build 2,250 units of much-needed affordable housing atop the railyard. Also: Brooklyn would get a basketball team. If Jay-Z was behind it, could it really be that bad?
Despite fierce opposition to the plans at the time—including warnings that the affordable housing was an empty promise—the land got seized, the stadium got built, and 3,212 apartments went up, with fewer than half of them "affordable." Developer Greenland defaulted on nearly $350 million of loans in 2023 that forced a foreclosure auction before it could build the rest of the promised housing, shorting New Yorkers by about 900 affordable units. And despite signing a legally-binding agreement that required them to build all those units by May of 2025, New York officials opted to not hold Greenland accountable for the millions in monthly fines they were meant to pay for not doing the damn thing, citing their fear of a lawsuit.