A former Modell’s once slated to become office towers as part of the troubled Pacific Park megadevelopment will open this fall as a youth basketball training facility.
Alibaba co-founder and Brooklyn Nets owner Joe Tsai’s BSE Global will operate the 18,600-square-foot multi-court facility at 140 Flatbush Avenue, according to a press release. BSE is the holding company for the Brooklyn Nets, Barclays Center and the New York Liberty.
The basketball facility is a temporary use, according to Norman Oder’s Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Report blog. BSE is subleasing the space from Greenland USA, which had planned to build office towers on the state-owned site.
The property across from Barclays Center is known as Site 5 of the Pacific Park project, along with the adjacent site of a shuttered P.C. Richard & Son. It has been an eyesore for years, standing in stark contrast to the arena and popular Chick-fil-A and Shake Shack down the street.
The Modell’s closed in 2019, the year before the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and shuttered all its physical stores.
Site 5’s redevelopment has been stifled by forces other than its marketability. In 2016, the development team — then a partnership of Forest City Ratner and Greenland — announced a plan to turn the sites into two office towers totaling more than 1 million square feet.
Details about the towers were elusive, and the plans ultimately didn’t pan out. After that, the future of Site 5 remained unclear. Greenland inked a memorandum of interim lease for Site 5 in 2021, according to property records. In 2022, the company defaulted on $350 million worth of loans tied to six rental development sites of the development’s Phase 2.
The development rights for those sites are expected to be transferred to a new development team, which could include Cirrus Real Estate and LCOR. It is not clear if Greenland will remain the developer of Site 5.
Representatives from Empire State Development did not immediately respond to requests for comment about the details of the arrangement.
Erik Engquist contributed reporting.
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