Brodsky Organization doubles down on Pacific Park complex
The Brodsky Organization is doubling down at Pacific Park, the 22-acre Brooklyn mega-complex that’s re-energized after years of false starts and dawdling.
Powerhouse residential developer Brodsky has joined master site developer Greenland Forest City Partners in a joint venture to develop 18 Sixth Ave., a long-planned, 859-unit apartment tower next door to Barclays Center along the complex’s Atlantic Avenue side.
The deal will further accelerate progress at Pacific Park, where the pace is finally picking up after a 13-year go-slow.
Groundbreaking is to take place within two weeks. The $640 million tower is to be finished in 2022. “We’re a multigenerational family business and we’re bullish on Brooklyn,” said Dean Amro, a Brodsky principal, explaining the company’s long- and short-term perspectives.
Brodsky has developed, owned and managed more than 8,000 apartment units in the city. It’s already working on a different Pacific Park apartment building, 664 Pacific St.
Brodsky controls that site outright, having bought rights from Greenland Forest City last year. Greenland Forest City, of which Greenland USA owns 95%, also sold two other Pacific Park sites to TF Cornerstone.
The involvement by the established New York firms raised hopes that the go-slow project had finally found the fast track.
Greenland Forest City executive vice-president Scott Solish told The Post that Brodsky is “doing 664 Pacific Street on their own but within the framework of the project’s master plan.”
He said that while Greenland is the majority shareholder in the JV, Brodsky “bought a significant piece and will manage development” of 18 Sixth Ave.
Pacific Park is to have 15 buildings that will include 6,430 housing units, of which 2,250 are to be “affordable,” as well as office space, stores and eight acres of public open space. TF Cornerstone will build some of the greenway as part of its tower development, and Greenland Forest City will finish the rest.
Only five buildings have gone up so far. But the new Brodsky and TF Cornerstone towers will begin to add density to the still- mostly undeveloped triangle where Atlantic and Flatbush avenues converge.
Forest City’s New York arm, led by Bruce Ratner, got the nod to develop the site from the Empire State Development Corp. in 2005. But Ratner was stalled by construction problems and the 2007 crash. He later got cold feet over fears of a Brooklyn residential “glut.”
He sold Barclays Center to a Russian company and, later, 70% of most of his other Pacific Park holdings to Greenland USA in 2013. Greenland upped its stake to 95% in January 2018. Forest City now owns only one building at the site, 461 Dean St. Ratner Forest City was sold to Brookfield Asset Management in December.
Greenland USA, a division of China’s publicly traded Greenland Group, has invested $8 billion in US projects, including the Metropolis complex in Los Angeles.
Solish said that the new JV came about when “we were in the process of closing the deal last fall” for the 664 Pacific site. The Brodskys “approached us” to discuss possibly teaming up elsewhere. “We [already] had plans for 18 Sixth Avenue, so we asked if they were interested in joining us. It happened very organically,” he said.
Solish said that Greenland has nearly completed infrastructure work on the exposed LIRR train yard beneath the site, “which will let us start to build a platform” over the open cut.
TF Cornerstone meanwhile is working on designs for the two parcels it controls on Dean Street.
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