Folly of Affordable Housing Development Over NYC Rail Yards

10 June 2025

Is there a messier development than the unfinished portion of Pacific Park?

OK, maybe the leaning tower of FiDi, the stalled Fortis skyscraper tilting north by 3 inches. But no one can blame a mistake like that for Pacific Park’s problems.

Some 22 years after Forest City Ratner announced plans for Atlantic Yards, as it was called then, two decks that were supposed to go over the train tracks still don’t exist.

Nor do (obviously) the six towers and 3,200 apartments planned above them.

Given the state government’s involvement in this, New Yorkers are owed a better explanation than “We’re frustrated too,” which was essentially what the Hochul administration said.

State officials are tight-lipped because:

It’s a bad look to go easy on developers, as Gov. Kathy Hochul is doing
When litigation is likely, lawyers tell their clients to say nothing
No one wants to scare away the developers (Cirrus Real Estate and LCOR) who might actually finish Pacific Park.

The latest snafu stems from a settlement between community group Brooklyn Speaks and the state in 2014, when Greenland USA bought 70 percent of the project from Ratner. The Cuomo administration agreed to fine the developer if it failed to build 876 affordable apartments by the end of last month.

At $2,000 per unit, per month, that’s $21 million annually. But the deadline came and went with no penalties for Greenland.

At the risk of oversimplifying things, this looks like an example of how a promise means little if the economics don’t work. To wit: putting money-losing rentals over active train yards.

Building affordable housing without subsidy in New York City is challenging enough on flat ground. Building it over an active rail yard makes it that much harder.

Affordability was needed to get political support for Atlantic Yards, yet it is making it incredibly hard to build. For the same reason, 10 years after Bill de Blasio and Queens activists imagined 6,000 affordable rentals over Sunnyside Yard, not a single unit has been built.

One exception: Related Companies managed to include affordable units at Hudson Yards. But instead of praising it, critics called the massive development a “playground for the rich” built with billions in tax breaks.

Would they prefer an open pit? That’s what we have in Brooklyn and Queens.

Affordable housing is desperately needed, but projects cannot be built on ideals. The numbers have to work. Yet for some reason, when it comes to expansive rail yards, politicians and activists demand a playground for the poor.
Perhaps that’s why Related, after mulling a takeover of Pacific Park, decided not to step on that third rail.