Forest City to sell all but 5% of Pacific Park to Greenland USA

Forest City has reduced its stake in the $5 billion Brooklyn’s Pacific Park mega-complex to 5 percent, as part of its restructuring of its joint venture with Greenland USA.

The real estate development company sold its 25 percent stake to its partner, Greenland USA, a subsidiary of Chinese giant Greenland Group, increasing its stake to 95 percent from 70 percent.

Greenland Forest City Partners, the joint venture, also announced that design work will begin early this year on B4, the next building at Pacific Park, which is expected to break ground in 2019.

Greenland USA will take primary responsibility for the remaining development work at Pacific Park. The restructuring will not impact the three projects that Greenland Forest City has completed to date: 38 Sixth Avenue, 535 Carlton and 550 Vanderbilt.  The transaction is expected to close in mid-2018.

Pacific Park Brooklyn is the redevelopment of 22 acres in downtown Brooklyn that has already delivered four residential buildings with nearly 800 units of affordable housing, a state-of-the-art sports and entertainment arena — Barclays Center — a new subway entrance to the Atlantic Terminal Transit Hub and ongoing transportation infrastructure improvements. Design for the fifth building, designated B4, will move forward at the corner of Atlantic Avenue and 6th Avenue. Design work will begin early this year with groundbreaking planned for 2019.

When complete, Pacific Park is expected to deliver 6,430 units of housing, including 2,250 units of affordable housing, as well as office space, neighborhood retail, community facilities and eight acres of publicly accessible open space. Pacific Park also includes major infrastructure improvements including a new storage and maintenance facility the LIRR, new rail access to and from the Atlantic Terminal station, and significant improvements to the infrastructure network in the surrounding area.

The announcement comes after Forest City went public and reduced its development activity to remain focused on already constructed assets, according to the New York Post. In addition, Mary Anne Gilmartin, the CEO of Forest City’s New York arm, plans to depart to form a new company with L&L Holding’s Robert Lapidus and David Levinson, according to The Real Deal.