The Brooklyn development project known as Atlantic Yards was once held up as a potential catalyst of the borough’s revival, bringing housing, office buildings and a professional basketball arena to a relatively sleepy area near downtown.
More than 20 years after it was announced, though, the project remains unfinished, a symbol of broken promises and the pitfalls of taxpayer-subsidized mega-projects.
On Monday, New York State economic development officials unveiled a $5 billion plan to finally complete Atlantic Yards. It includes six new high-rises reaching up to 800 feet, with 5,600 homes, including roughly 1,242 apartments that would be made affordable to low- and moderate-income households. It would also add about five and a half acres of open space to the site.
The pension funds of several unions, including those of local carpenters, bricklayers and communications workers, are providing much of the investment to fund the project. It could take another decade or more to build. And because several buildings will be built on top of rail lines, the project could require some $700 million in additional subsidies, state officials estimate, a sum that is sure to draw fresh scrutiny.
But officials hope the plan will finally deliver on the promises made to the public long ago and derailed by lawsuits, financial troubles and a host of other problems.
“Brooklyn has waited long enough, and today we are turning a corner from years of delay to new homes, jobs and open space,” Gov. Kathy Hochul said in a statement.
The plans for the project’s completion were shared on Monday at a meeting of the Atlantic Yards Community Development Corporation, a body that advises the state’s economic development arm on the project.
It is not yet clear whether Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who has called for more private development to increase the housing supply, supports the new plan, or how it will be received by local politicians. Previous iterations have been criticized as contributing to the area’s gentrification. Similar taxpayer-subsidized projects that involve construction over rail lines, like Sunnyside Yard in Queens, which Mr. Mamdani has pushed to advance, remain contentious.
The announcement comes as New York City continues to grapple with a housing shortage that has sent costs soaring. Long seen as an affordable alternative to Manhattan, Brooklyn has experienced a sharp uptick in demand in recent years, pushing up housing costs and supporting an immense amount of development in neighborhoods like Gowanus and Downtown Brooklyn.
The median asking rent in May 2016 was around $2,645 in the borough, according to the rental platform StreetEasy. This May, it was $3,895, a nearly 50 percent increase.
Atlantic Yards sits in a high-demand part of the borough. But the project has long been criticized, not least because of the concerns about gentrification. The state attorney general, Letitia James, said in 2006 when she was a member of the City Council that the project would only help to “further the Manhattanization of Brooklyn.”
In 2004, for example, just after plans began to emerge to build the Barclays Center arena and office towers, residents in the area protested the potential loss of homes and businesses associated with the project. Almost two years later, neighbors filed a lawsuit after the developer announced plans to demolish buildings on the site.
One case reached New York’s highest court, which ruled in 2009 that the state could seize private property for the 22-acre development.
“I look at this as the last major hurdle,” the developer, Bruce C. Ratner, said at the time.
Barclays Center opened in 2012, becoming the new home of the Brooklyn Nets, the basketball team that formerly played in New Jersey. But the project continued to lag, with the developer citing obstacles like lawsuits and the Great Recession.
The slow development of 2,250 affordable apartments, one of the selling points of the project, became a flashpoint. Even the involvement of a new investor, a Chinese developer, did not push the project to completion, and the developer, Greenland USA, ended up defaulting on its loans.
While the project remains unfinished, it has yielded some results, according to state officials. In addition to Barclays Center, eight mixed-use buildings have been developed, including more than 3,200 homes, roughly 40 percent of which are considered affordable. Three acres of open space have been added to the area, as well as a public school and upgrades to playgrounds and sewers.
Still, officials acknowledge that Atlantic Yards has been widely viewed as a failure.
They hope the new development team, including the real estate firms LCOR and Cirrus Workforce Housing, will win back New Yorkers’ trust.
One of the trickiest and most costly parts of the project involves building decks over active rail lines between Atlantic Avenue and Pacific Street. The new development team plans to use some of the foundations already laid years ago, and the state this year included $175 million in subsidies in its budget, though more will be needed.
The proposal announced on Monday includes six new buildings with a mix of market-rate and more affordable apartments.
One of the first buildings to go up, south of Flatbush Avenue between Atlantic Avenue and Pacific Street, would have 1,430 units.
The exact rent levels will be negotiated in the coming months, and could change depending on when the building is complete. But early estimates and this year’s affordability guidelines provide a rough proxy: About 50 units in that building would be affordable to families of four that earn up to $67,840, and more than 150 apartments would be for four-person households earning up to $101,760.
Other planned buildings have similar breakdowns. Hundreds of units are targeted at so-called moderate-income households that earn up to $169,600.
State officials hope that the new proposal will be seen favorably because it is backed by unions representing working-class city employees, and the buildings would be built and run by union labor.
Still, the project will be closely scrutinized, and it is likely to face criticism.
In March, a group of elected officials representing the area sent a letter to Ms. Hochul expressing worries about the affordability of the apartments, among other issues. A coalition of civic groups, under the name BrooklynSpeaks, has long called for more transparency and public input in the project.
At the meeting on Monday, Michelle de la Uz, the executive director of the Fifth Avenue Committee, a nonprofit that advocates economic and social equality and is a member of BrooklynSpeaks, asked what accountability measures would be in place to see the project through.
Ms. de la Uz noted that the state did not collect on penalties that were owed by the developer Greenland USA for missing deadlines to build affordable housing.
“I would love to see the details connected to ensuring this actually gets built,” she said.
Assemblywoman Jo Anne Simon, one of the officials who signed the letter to Ms. Hochul, said at the meeting that the focus on moderate-income units did not sufficiently address the need for low-income housing.
“It’s already been gentrified,” she said of the surrounding area.
The plan must clear many hurdles before construction can begin, including a lengthy environmental review that state officials estimate could begin in September. Work could begin as early as 2028.
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