More than 1K new apartments coming to Barclays Center area

Residents of Brooklyn’s booming Barclays Center district will soon have even more new neighbors.

In a breakthrough at the slow-moving Pacific Park project, big-league New York developers TF Cornerstone and the Brodsky Organization are taking control of three major sites from the 22-acre complex’s current owners, a joint venture dominated by Greenland USA, a subsidiary of Shanghai-based development giant Greenland Group, The Post has learned.

The purchases are due to close at the end of 2018. They are likely to dramatically accelerate the progress of Pacific Park, where only five of fifteen planned buildings have yet gone up on the blocks east of where Atlantic and Flatbush Avenue converge.

The new units will join thousands more that have sprung up nearby, especially along Flatbush Avenue — including at 80 Flatbush, a planned complex that alone will add 900 more.

The Greenland-led partnership also said on Monday it would break ground in early 2019 on a long-stalled, 500-foot-tall apartment tower next door to Barclays Center. A rendering of the project is shown here for the first time.

Greenland Forest City Partners executive vice president of development Scott Solish said the decision to sell the three sites resulted from “an organic conversation between ourselves and TF Cornerstone and Brodsky” while Greenland was busy focusing on plans for 18 Sixth Ave., the site immediately east of Barclays Center.

“It wasn’t a planned transaction, but it came to us,” Solish said. “We’re thrilled to partner with two developers that have deep roots in the city and are uniquely qualified to work with us.

“These transactions push the whole project forward” to meeting a 2025 deadline with the state to deliver 2,250 affordable apartments, Solish said. If the deadline isn’t met, they’ll face “liquidated damages,” meaning they’ll have to pay a cash penalty to the state.

Terms were not disclosed. Brodsky and TF Cornerstone technically are buying development leases that Greenland and its five percent partner, Forest City New York, have with the Empire State Development Corp. The leases will convert to ownership when the buildings are finished.

Brodsky has developed, owned and managed more than 8,000 rental, co-op and condo units in the city. TF Cornerstone boasts major holdings include in the Hudson Yards area, the Meatpacking District and the Long Island City waterfront.

Brodsky principal Dean Amro said its site at 664 Pacific St., would be the first new Pacific Park project to rise. “We hope to start construction in the first quarter of 2019,” he said. The building will include some 300 rental apartments, about 30 percent of them affordable, atop a new middle school.

Jeremy Shell, a principal of TF Cornerstone, said its buildings at 615 and 595 Dean St., at the complex’s eastern end, need a bit more time. “We’re planning our buildings within the site’s design guidelines, basically a 12-18 month process,” before construction will start. Cornerstone’s pair will have a total of 800 rental apartments as well as stores and parking facilities.

Meanwhile, Greenland/Forest City said it’s begun designing a deck over the sunken Long Island Rail Road train yard which runs along the site’s northern edge. That will allow development to start at six sites along Atlantic Avenue between Sixth Avenue and Pacific Street.

Pacific Park, originally called Atlantic Yards, was launched 13 years ago by Forest City Ratner.

The company’s then head, Bruce Ratner, opened Barclays Center in 2012, but later sold it to Mikhail Prokhorov’s Onexim Sports and Entertainment. Ratner sold a 70 percent in most of the rest of the site to Greenland USA in 2013, and all but 5 percent of its remaining stake to Greenland this year.

Ratner, once bullish on Pacific Park, lost its zeal over concerns that Brooklyn was becoming overbuilt with apartments. As a result, much of the site between Atlantic and Flatush avenues still has large, windswept gaps between the few apartment buildings that have gone up.