Hush Street is tracking what’s changing in Prospect Heights — a small, largely landmarked neighborhood whose development story is dominated by one enormous, decades-old project finally getting a real restart.
That project is Pacific Park, formerly Atlantic Yards. Its prior developer defaulted on hundreds of millions of dollars in loans and lost the unbuilt half of the site to foreclosure. A new team has now signed a framework deal with the state for a $5 billion buildout, with construction targeted to start in 2028.
Beyond Pacific Park, the neighborhood’s other real story is the Atlantic Avenue Mixed-Use Plan — the same corridor-wide rezoning covered in more depth in Hush Street’s Crown Heights tracker. Two of its earliest private acquisitions sit squarely in Prospect Heights, and smaller permits are starting to follow.
Where a claim comes from a developer or agency’s own materials rather than independent reporting, we say so.
| Project | Location | Status |
|---|---|---|
| 1Pacific Park | Atlantic & Flatbush Avenues | MOU Signed / Pre-Construction |
| 21029 Dean St. & 1104 Pacific St. | 1029 Dean Street | Financed / Pre-Construction |
| 3962 Pacific St. & 863 Dean St. | 962 Pacific Street | Site Assembled / Pre-Filing |
| 4Atlantic Avenue Corridor Infill | Atlantic & Underhill Avenues | Permits Filed |
| 5Eight80 BK (880 Atlantic Ave.) | 880 Atlantic Ave. | Completed / Leasing |
One Megaproject, and a New Corridor Catching Up
Four anchors: Pacific Park’s long-awaited restart under new ownership, and three stages of the Atlantic Avenue rezoning taking hold next door — a financed 170-unit project, a freshly assembled site still awaiting its first filing, and the smaller permits already following both.
1
Pacific Park
A Broken Promise and a Foreclosure
Pacific Park — the rebranded successor to the original Atlantic Yards project, built around a 2005 rezoning that displaced hundreds of residents — delivered roughly 3,000 apartments across eight buildings and Barclays Center over nearly 20 years. Then it stalled again.
Chinese developer Greenland USA, which controlled the unbuilt half of the site, defaulted on roughly $350 million in construction loans in 2024. Greenland was also contractually obligated, under a 2014 city agreement, to build 876 affordable apartments by May 2025 — it built none of them, and the state chose not to pursue the full penalties rather than risk further delay through litigation. Greenland lost the site to a foreclosure auction in October 2025.
A New $5 Billion Plan
The winning bidders — Cirrus Real Estate Partners and LCOR, backed by Fortress Investment Group and U.S. Immigration Fund — signed a nonbinding memorandum of understanding with Empire State Development on July 30, 2026, alongside a $12 million payment (including $4.5 million upfront) settling Greenland’s unbuilt-housing obligation.
The plan unveiled with that MOU calls for seven new buildings across six sites — including a two-tower building on Site 5, the former Modell’s Sporting Goods corner — totaling 5,600 units, 4,600 of them rental and 1,000 condos. That would bring the full site to 8,812 apartments across 15 towers once built out. Only about 1,242 of the new units, roughly 30%, would be income-restricted — less than the 35% originally required two decades ago, a gap Assemblywoman Jo Anne Simon publicly criticized as failing to meet the area’s actual affordable-housing need.
The tallest tower, at Site 5, is planned at 799 feet; the rest range from 452 to 684 feet. New York State has pledged $700 million toward the platforms needed to build over the active railyards, on top of $175 million in state budget subsidies already committed.
The Environmental Review Is Now Actually Underway
Empire State Development released a Draft Scope of Work for a supplemental environmental impact statement on August 24, 2026, and held a public scoping meeting on September 24; written comments are being accepted through October 26. The review is expected to take about 18 months. Separately, the development team’s memorandum of understanding with the state sets its own construction deadlines by phase — the first platform block by 2032, three towers on that block plus two at Site 5 by 2037, and the second block’s towers by 2042 — with the state’s own current estimate putting full buildout around 2040, “subject to some uncertainty.” Construction on the first phase is still targeted to begin in 2028.
Sources: Wikipedia; BKReader; Crain’s New York Business; 6sqft; 6sqft ($12M settlement); Atlantic Yards Report (environmental review scope, Sept. 2026)
2
1029 Dean Street & 1104 Pacific Street
The Corridor’s First Financed Project
Castell Group and Montgomery Street Partners bought these two adjacent, formerly industrial-zoned sites for $25.15 million in a JLL-brokered deal, inside the newly rezoned Atlantic Avenue corridor. Hush Street’s Crown Heights tracker covers that April 2026 land sale — reported at the time as a Crown Heights transaction — in more depth, and the rezoning itself in full.
Three months later, the story moved forward: Commercial Observer reported BridgeCity Capital had closed a $47.4 million construction loan, at an 81% loan-to-cost ratio, for a 10-story, 170-unit building across both sites — the corridor’s most concrete project to date, with a completion target of mid-2027.
Which Neighborhood Is It?
The same site gets called both “Crown Heights” and “Prospect Heights” depending on the outlet — JLL’s brokerage announcement said Crown Heights, while Commercial Observer’s financing coverage led with Prospect Heights, citing the site’s proximity to Prospect Park, Park Slope, and Barclays Center. Hush Street records both framings rather than picking one; the sites sit close enough to the boundary that either description is defensible.
Sources: Commercial Observer; JLL Capital Markets (original sale)
3
962 Pacific Street & 863 Dean Street
The Site That Helped Trigger the Corridor-Wide Rezoning
This long-vacant lot has its own pre-history worth telling. Former owner Nadine Oelsner had proposed a roughly 150-unit project here in the early 2020s, with childcare and manufacturing space included — blocked by Council Member Crystal Hudson as the city moved toward a comprehensive, corridor-wide rezoning instead of approving it as a one-off spot rezoning.
That comprehensive rezoning — the Atlantic Avenue Mixed-Use Plan — is now in effect, and Avery Hall, the Brodsky Organization, and Monadnock Construction bought the site in April 2026: $16 million for the Dean Street parcel alone, with the Pacific Street price undisclosed. Maxim Capital Group provided the acquisition loan. The joint venture has said only that it will “pursue a mixed-use project” aligned with the new zoning — no unit count, height, or renderings have been released.
Sources: Hoodline; Brodsky Organization
4
Atlantic Avenue Corridor Infill
Smaller Sites Are Following the Big Ones
Alongside the corridor’s two headline sites, a handful of smaller permits have followed. At 858 Atlantic Avenue, between Vanderbilt and Underhill Avenues, permits describe a 15-story, 155-foot mixed-use building with 36 residences; no demolition permit has been filed yet. Around the corner at 8 Underhill Avenue, a vacant lot has a 12-story, 124-foot residential building with 36 units filed against it.
A block away at 105 Underhill Avenue, demolition is already underway for a five-story, 21-unit building designed by Isaac & Stern Architects for Underhill Gardens LLC, with completion anticipated for spring 2028. None of these three are large enough to warrant their own full section, but together they’re early evidence that Atlantic Avenue’s new zoning is drawing more than just the two big joint ventures above.
5
Eight80 BK, a Finished Tower the Corridor’s Newer Filings Are Following
Already Finished, Ahead of the Corridor’s Newer Wave
Eight80 BK went up before this tracker’s other Atlantic Avenue projects even broke ground: EMP Capital Group secured a $110 million construction loan, leasing began July 2025, and the city issued a certificate of occupancy in January 2026. Amenities include a cold-plunge pool and a pickleball court.
The building is a useful marker for how fast the corridor is turning over — by the time 962 Pacific Street/863 Dean Street or the smaller Underhill Avenue filings above are finished, Eight80 BK will already be a fully leased, several-years-old building.
Sources: Brooklyn Paper; New York YIMBY; Multi-Housing News
What We’re Watching Next
Pacific Park’s environmental review did start on schedule in September, with public comments open through October 26 — the clearest open question now is whether the nonbinding July MOU survives that public review process; Assemblywoman Simon’s affordable-housing objection suggests it won’t go unchallenged. On the Atlantic Avenue corridor, both 962 Pacific Street/863 Dean Street’s actual building plans and any further land sales are worth revisiting once filed.
Prospect Heights’s own landmarked core — a roughly 850-building historic district designated in 2009 — remains as quiet as Crown Heights’ and Clinton Hill’s brownstone blocks; nearly everything in this tracker is happening at the neighborhood’s Atlantic Avenue edge. Grand Army Plaza, at the neighborhood’s southern tip, is getting its own major public redesign — covered in Hush Street’s Park Slope tracker rather than duplicated here. Prospect Heights also borders Downtown Brooklyn and Fort Greene, both of which Hush Street also tracks.
By Hush Street Editorial Updated Built from city filings and published reporting. About Hush Street
