Empire State Development declines to honor a 2014 settlement that provided for monetary damages if affordable apartments are delayed past May 2025, instead trying a new version of a risky single-source strategy under which two previous developers failed.

BROOKLYN, NY, June 3, 2025: Eleven years after local organizations in the BrooklynSpeaks coalition won a settlement with New York State Empire State Development to require 2,250 affordable apartments at Atlantic Yards be completed by May 2025, community leaders and elected officials called upon Governor Kathy Hochul to fulfill the agency’s pledge to collect liquidated damages for apartments the project has failed to deliver.

When the Atlantic Yards project was announced in December 2003, its 2,250 promised affordable apartments were seen as a solution to a burgeoning housing crisis in Brooklyn. By building platforms over rail yards along Atlantic Avenue, the project would remove blight and connect neighborhoods by creating new open space and high rise apartment towers. Twenty years later, the platforms haven’t been started, and neither have a remaining 877 affordable apartments. The $2,000 per month charge for each unfinished apartment agreed upon in the 2014 settlement means ESD must collect $1,754,000 each month from developer Greenland USA beginning in June. The funds are to be used by the City of New York to create and preserve affordable housing in the neighborhoods surrounding the project.

“ESD has allowed the Atlantic Yards developers to delay the costliest parts of the project–deeply affordable apartments and platforms over the rail yards–until the last possible moment,” said Michelle de la Uz, Executive Director of the Fifth Avenue Committee. “In the meantime, rising housing costs have pushed out thousands of low-income households out of the surrounding neighborhoods. The Governor has a responsibility to ensure her agency fulfills its commitment to address the housing crisis in Brooklyn.”
 

Advocates and Elected Officials Call for Accountability and Change in Oversight

“Urban Room” was to have been a significant public amenity; Hochul administration must collect $10MM in damages from Greenland Forest City Partners for failure to build it

BROOKLYN, NY, July 14, 2022: City and State elected officials and community leaders today called upon Governor Kathy Hochul to hold developers at the Atlantic Yards project accountable for failing to deliver a key element of its design by a contractual deadline. Project documents describe the “Urban Room” as “a significant public amenity comprised of a large, glass-enclosed public space” that would “accommodate the major flows of people to and from the subway system during the day and night, serve as a direct subway entrance to the Arena and allow for a variety of public uses and programmed events throughout the year.” However, developer Greenland Forest City Partners (GFCP) has taken no action to start construction of the Urban Room, which was required to have been completed in May of this year. The project’s Master Development Agreement (MDA) between GFCP and Empire State Development (ESD) provides for a penalty of $10 million if the deadline is missed.

In a letter to ESD CEO Hope Knight, Assembly Members Jo Anne Simon, Phara Souffrant Forrest, and Robert Carroll; State Senator Jabari Brisport; and City Council Member Crystal Hudson wrote, “The Urban Room remains a significant public commitment of the project, and its completion deadline and remedies for non-performance by the developer remain in effect. We request ESD to affirm that liquidated damages will be assessed, as provided in the MDA, for failure to deliver the Urban Room as required, and inform us when they have been collected. We note that the first payment is due this month. ESD’s affirmative response is necessary to retain our confidence in the agency’s ability to ensure compliance with the upcoming affordable housing deadline (we estimate those liquidated damages to be $1.75 million per month), and our support for the agency’s continued role as the lead agency responsible for overseeing the Project.”