Brooklyn community leaders and elected officials on Tuesday voiced their frustration with the state for failing to hold the developer of Pacific Park accountable for missing the deadline to build all the promised affordable housing units, and hinted at a potential lawsuit to force the developer to pay monetary damages.
When the development to build luxury housing and Barclays Center was announced in 2003, it was called Atlantic Yards and then-developer Forest City Ratner Companies promised to build 2,250 affordable housing units to appease the state that used eminent domain and a zoning override to clear properties for the project.
So far, eight of the 16 planned buildings have been built, which includes 1,373 affordable units. However, a 2014 settlement from a lawsuit stipulates that for every affordable unit that hasn't been built, Greenland USA, the current developer, would pay $1.75 million in monthly penalties starting in June 2025.
However, the Empire State Development (ESD) is not enforcing the monthly penalties despite Greenland's failure to complete building the remaining 877 units of affordable housing. Instead, it is working on transferring development rights to new developers by August, and will kick off a new community engagement process by December. (This was first reported by the Gothamist.)
Members of Brooklyn Speaks, a coalition of about a dozen community groups and nonprofits that have been advocating for accountability at Pacific Park, said they were mulling filing a lawsuit to force ESD to start collecting the owed funds that should be going towards building affordable housing in community board districts 2, 3, 6 and 8.
"There is no justification for waving the fees," and a lawsuit will be considered, said Michelle de la Uz, executive director of the Fifth Avenue Committee, one of the nonprofits part of Brooklyn Speaks.
That said, Greenland USA is out of money. The company defaulted on two loans in 2023, which paused work on the site. The loans were made in 2014 from the U.S. Immigration Fund, which helps foreigners gain permanent residency by investing in business through the EB-5 immigration program. It is unclear if the EB-5 investors associated with the loan will receive the repayment of their capital or Green Cards.
"Empire State Development shares the community’s frustration with the pace of construction of affordable housing at Atlantic Yards," ESD spokesperson Emily Mijatovic said in a statement. "Let us be clear: the liquidated damages have not been waived and ESD retains the rights to collect them. The state expects nothing less than progress to be made and milestones met once the lender has an approved qualified development team capable of moving this long overdue project forward.”
The development also calls for 8-acres of open space to be built onto top of the rail yard that is still essentially an open pit, said state Assemblymember Jo Anne Simon.
"One reason this key deadline was missed is because ESD has consistently allowed developers to take bigger risks than they were able to manage," she said. "Two developers have already failed to perform on this project. Having the next plan at Atlantic Yards come from investors speculating in the distressed debt of the last developer certainly doesn’t sound safer.”
In August 2024, Related Companies and other real estate investors, said they were close to reviving the project. Now, Cirrus Real Estate Partners has submitted an application to take over the project, according to the Gothamist.
"Every time something doesn't get built here, someone goes to a homeless shelter," said Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso.
It is shameful that the state is willing to give the developer a blind eye, said City Council Member Crystal Hudson, who emphasized that an unaffordable city equates to displacement of the Black and brown population of the borough.
Diane Foster, who was born and raised in Prospect Heights, said not much has changed since she was displaced from her family home on Pacific Street in 2014 due to the development project.
"When do taxpayers say enough is enough?" Foster said.
Speakers also included state Assembly Member Robert Carroll, City Council Member Shahana Hanif and Gib Veconi, the former chair of the Prospect Heights Neighborhood Development Council.
