Towers have risen at Barclays Center’s edge during pandemic

The last time the Nets played at Barclays Center, the first week of March, two new residential towers at the edges of the arena had barely risen above ground. Now, after a construction slowdown brought on by the pandemic, the two are rising fast, one at the northeast corner of the arena bloc, the other down Sixth Avenue and across the street.

As reported by Norman Oder, critic of chronicler of progress at Pacific Park, the building at 18 Sixth Avenue at the northeast corner of the bloc, is now at 21 stories on its way to 51 while the building down the street at 37 Sixth Avenue, which will include a middle school, is now at 24 stories on its way to 26. Both should be topped off by October when the NBA season ends, but aren’t scheduled to open until 2022.

Here’s what the 51-story tower will ultimately look like...

Will all this construction inconvenience fans (as it inconveniences residents)? No doubt. In the past, construction scaffolding has narrowed walkways along Atlantic, Sixth and Dean.

Both towers as well as Barclays Center are part of Pacific Park (formerly Atlantic Yards), the 22-acre, 16-building project originally envisioned by Bruce Ratner who brought the Nets to Brooklyn. Much delayed, the project is being put together by a variety of developers led by Greenland Forest City Partners. which is owned by a Chinese company that in turn is controlled by the city of Shanghai.

The arena may ultimately get an even larger neighbor where the now closed Modells and P.C. Richards currently stands. As Oder has noted, “Site 5” could hold two office/residential towers, one as tall as 75 stories. In fact, when New York was trying to attract Amazon to the city, the site was one of those proposed to Amazon. Oder notes there’s no word yet on condemnation of the site, the first step in its development.

How many of the residences in the project will be affordable —and what constitutes “affordable”— as well when they’ll be completed remains an open question.