The developers planning the next phase of Brooklyn’s Atlantic Yards project said Monday they are targeting a 2028 groundbreaking on buildings that would deliver about 1,200 affordable apartments by 2031, according to BK Reader.
At an Atlantic Yards Community Development Corporation directors’ meeting, Joseph McDonnell, a managing director at Cirrus Workforce Housing, said the development team has a “fairly ambitious goal” to first break ground on building B6 and shortly after on Site 5. McDonnell said 75 percent of the 1,200 income-restricted units would go to low- and very-low-income residents.
Cirrus and its co-developer LCOR plan to build five buildings over the railroad tracks that run along Atlantic Avenue (B5-10), as well as another building on Site 5, BK Reader reported. Together with the rest of the next phase, those buildings would add roughly 5,600 apartments to the Prospect Heights corner of Fourth and Atlantic Avenues. Empire State Development and the developers are currently negotiating a memorandum of understanding for that phase.
The Atlantic Yards project, also known as Pacific Park, has delivered eight mixed-use buildings over the past two decades with 3,200 residential units, more than 1,374 of which are affordable, according to BK Reader. The $4.9 billion project’s next phase would significantly expand that count.
Local officials, residents, and advocacy groups have been pressing the state and the development team for more units at deeper income levels. The previous developer, Greenland USA, did not build all of its promised affordable units, and the state did not enforce legally-binding penalties that BK Reader reported could have yielded millions of dollars for the community.
Michelle de la Uz, executive director of the nonprofit Fifth Avenue Committee, asked the executive committee to produce an accountability plan. “I’d love to see the details connected to ensuring this actually gets built,” she said.
A public town hall on the project is scheduled online for Monday, July 13, from 6:00 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.
Featured image: Bushwick Daily archive
