Along the way, Ratner has helped spark the revival of Brooklyn through his first megacomplex—a public-private academic development called MetroTech Center. In the mid-1980s, at the time of the deal for the 16-acre MetroTech, no other commercial real estate company would touch the blighted borough with a 10-ft pole, let alone replace a high-crime area deep in the broken heart of downtown Brooklyn with a $1-billion-plus high-technology office park (ENR 2/10/92 p. 26).
Spillover development followed. A subway stop got renamed Jay Street-MetroTech. Not only that, the development became a model for urban renewal.
"Bruce was way ahead of anyone else in the public or private sector in understanding the potential of Brooklyn as a vital economic contributor to New York City," says Kathryn S. Wylde, president and CEO of the non-profit Partnership for New York City, which helps grow the city's economy. "I'm a big fan."
In the mid-1990s, Ratner shifted his sights a mile from MetroTech. There, he triggered a trend in the city by building its first big-box-store mall. He also planted renewal seeds in an unsavory area.
Ratner then crossed the street to an even worse urban wasteland and made Brooklyn, population 2.6 million, hip. He bought the New Jersey Nets, partnered with entertainer Jay Z and built the borough's first National Basketball Association arena. The $825-million year-old home of the Brooklyn Nets, called Barclays Center, is the centerpiece and first completed building of Atlantic Yards, a transit-oriented development. The city's third-largest transit hub has been renamed Atlantic Avenue-Barclays Center.
The public-private development, delayed five years by lawsuits from local opposition, is Ratner's most public, ambitious, complicated and controversial venture. Foes of the plan, who often refer to the developer by the first syllable of his last name, remain outraged by what they call FCRC's land grab and the project's scale. Thinner-skinned developers would have run for the suburbs.
FCRC's modular high-rise venture at Atlantic Yards may be his biggest gamble to date. ">The 32-story B2 Bklyn is on deck to be the Western Hemisphere's—and perhaps the world's—tallest modular apartment building. If B2, which is under construction, works out, FCRC plans to use hybrid modular delivery for the village's other 15 residential towers. B3 and B4 are already in design.
FCRC figures the approach could cost 20% less than conventional cast-in-place concrete construction. And it could cut a typical 2- to 2.5-year project schedule by four to six months, thanks to concurrent sitework and factory fabrication.
B2 may be just the beginning. With the tower, FCRC hopes to set a 322-ft-tall stage for an era of faster, safer, less intrusive and less costly apartment-building construction. Eventually, his plan is to sell turnkey modular high-rises to other developers and landowners.
"If they are successful, they are going to provide a solution to achieving affordability in union-built, high-rise housing," says the Partnership for New York City's Wylde.
The high-rise modular venture is an example of FCRC's "bigger vision of how the industry needs to operate," adds Bill Flemming, Skanska USA Building Inc.'s president and CEO.
