Atlantic Yards Phase II: What the Build Order Means for Fort Greene

"It's very far in the future."

Arden Sokolow, an executive vice president at Empire State Development, said that at a September 14 meeting of the Atlantic Yards Community Development Corporation. She was answering a question about paying for the second railyard platform, the eastern block between Carlton and Vanderbilt Avenues. ESD estimates the state's share for that block at about $350 million. City Limits reported in September 2026 that no plan exists yet to fund it.

If you're comparing homes in Fort Greene, that one sentence carries a lot of weight. The Vanderbilt Yard sits just south of Atlantic Avenue, directly across from the neighborhood's southern edge. The plan to finish building over it now has a proposed start of 2028 and an end of 2040. The plan also builds the easiest pieces first and the hardest, unfunded piece last. So the length of time an address lives next to construction depends on which block it faces, not on the 2040 headline.

Who is building, and what is actually on paper

Atlantic Yards is on its third development team. Greenland Forest City Partners defaulted on debt backed by the EB-5 visa program. The railyard development rights then went through foreclosure. On October 7, 2025, ESD approved affiliates of Cirrus Real Estate Partners and LCOR as the permitted developers for Phase II. The project's documents use the name Cirrus Workforce Housing, a firm City Limits describes as funded in part by construction labor unions.

On June 29, 2026, the developers presented a revised plan with seven towers on six sites. Five would sit over the railyard on parcels B5, B6, B7, B9 and B10. Two would go on Site 5, across Flatbush Avenue from Barclays Center, where P.C. Richard and the now-closed Modell's used to be. Parcel B8 would become a park. The B1 tower once planned over the arena would be dropped. Phase II would hold about 5,600 homes, roughly 4,600 rentals and 1,000 condos. The railyard towers would range from 452 to 684 feet. The tallest tower in the proposal would reach 799 feet.

None of this is adopted yet. The August 2026 Phase II memorandum of understanding between ESD and the development team, signed July 28, says outright that it is nonbinding. It still needs public review, environmental review and ESD's adoption of an amended General Project Plan. Until then, the existing plan and the 2014 Memorandum of Environmental Commitments stay in force.

The build order, west to east

The sequence matters more than the end date. It starts on solid ground, where building is cheaper and faster, and moves east onto the platform, where it is neither. Here is the order the developers have described:

1. Site 5 and B6 first. Site 5 needs no platform. B6 can start on solid ground that juts south of Atlantic Avenue, so its section of the platform can be built at the same time.
2. B5, B7 and the open space on Block 1120 next. This completes the western railyard block.
3. Block 1121 last. That means B9, B10, the B8 park and the bed of Pacific Street, all between Carlton and Vanderbilt Avenues.

The MOU locks parts of this order in. The developers can't sell off the B9 or B10 sites until the Block 1121 platform has started. The B8 park has to be finished before B9 can be occupied. Before signing any lease for vertical construction on Block 1121, the team must have started every vertical piece of Site 5 and Block 1120. Those rules keep the developers from skipping ahead to easy sites and leaving the hard ones behind. They also mean the eastern block can't move until the western one is well underway.

Where the money is, block by block

The milestones in the MOU, set next to the funding picture:

Each deadline comes with room to slip. The first one-year extension costs the developers a $500,000 contribution to the city's affordable housing trust fund, and the second costs $1 million. After that, more extensions are up to ESD's "reasonable discretion." City Limits points out that the two paid extensions alone would let the first five buildings finish in 2039. It also notes that a 2042 fallback for a block with no funding agreement could "potentially portend another project reboot."

ESD's own draft environmental scope calls the 2028 start and 2040 finish "subject to some uncertainty" and says the review will also model a longer schedule. The developers say the first apartments could open as early as 2031. That first group would be about 2,000 rentals, including 500 low-income affordable units, plus 400 condos, all in the buildings that rest mostly on solid ground.

So the western half of the railyard has money, a sequence and deadlines a decade out. The eastern half, between Carlton and Vanderbilt, has a sequence and deadlines but no money yet. It's also the last block to go, after more than a decade of work beside it.

What the construction itself looks like from the north side of Atlantic

The current rules send construction trucks along city-designated routes, mainly Atlantic Avenue, Flatbush Avenue, Fourth Avenue and the BQE, and use a Pacific Street queuing area when one is available. Noisy work and deliveries are supposed to happen on weekday daytime hours where feasible. That's a goal, not a ban on nights or weekends. ESD's 2026 engagement Q&A expects temporary partial lane closures during platform and foundation work. As Norman Oder reported in May 2026, it doesn't say which streets, when or for how long.

Phase I is the best guide to how those rules play out:

• Hours. In March 2021, Oder documented after-hours variances for 18 Sixth Avenue, including 5 a.m. weekday starts, weekday work until 10 p.m., and weekend work from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
• Dust. That same month, a resident described dust getting into their building and weekend work. When Oder called the Community Liaison number, he heard "message quota exceeded."
• Crossings. In 2015, residents north of Atlantic Avenue said they were afraid to cross at Sixth Avenue. A Forest City executive admitted traffic agents were "not doing their job well enough."
• Noise. At a June 2015 community meeting, the same company described rock excavation at 38 Sixth Avenue as "mind-numbingly loud."

The official record and residents' accounts don't always match. In 2014, ESD said its oversight program had worked and counted 113 construction complaints among about 1,750 messages to its liaison office. Residents and the coalition BrooklynSpeaks described repeated problems and gaps in monitoring. For Phase II, the MOU proposes assigned quality-of-life contacts, a staffed phone line and email, and regular meetings. It sets no standard for how fast complaints get answered. On September 22, BrooklynSpeaks asked for a public complaint dashboard with measurable response standards.

The comment window Fort Greene hasn't used yet

ESD's engagement report describes the project as sitting where Prospect Heights, Fort Greene, Park Slope and Boerum Hill meet. The draft scope lists the Fort Greene Historic District among the historic resources near the site. Even so, Oder's report on the September 24 online scoping hearing noted that "No one from Fort Greene, across Atlantic Avenue from major construction, weighed in." About 88 people attended and 15 spoke.

Written comments on the draft scope are open until 5 p.m. on Monday, October 26, 2026. You can email them to [email protected] or mail them to Empire State Development, Attn: Atlantic Yards, 655 Third Avenue, 4th Floor, New York, NY 10017. The scope decides what the environmental review studies, including truck routes, construction effects and a delayed-schedule scenario. That makes it the earliest point where people on the north side of Atlantic can shape the rules they'll live with for the next decade. You don't have to own a home there yet to send a comment.

For a buyer, a few questions come straight out of the timeline:

• Does the address face Block 1120, the funded western block, or Block 1121, between Carlton and Vanderbilt?
• Is the building on or near Atlantic Avenue, the main truck route?
• How long do you plan to stay? A five-year hold and a fifteen-year hold overlap very different stretches of the schedule.
• If you'd rent the unit out later, what would roughly 4,600 new rentals across the avenue, the first possibly in 2031, do to your plans?

A few quick answers

Is the new plan approved? No. As of early October 2026, the latest official documents are a draft environmental scope and a nonbinding MOU. City Limits reported in September 2026 that the environmental review is expected to wrap up by the end of 2027.

When does construction start? The draft scope expects 2028. That's a planning assumption, not a permit date.

What happens to the B8 site? It becomes a publicly accessible park, and it has to be finished before B9 can be occupied. Both sit on Block 1121, the block that doesn't have funding yet.

If you're weighing a Fort Greene home near Atlantic Avenue and want help working out which railyard block it faces, Say Hey to Claudette Rolling. We'll go through the timeline with you, address by address, before you make an offer.