Atlantic Yards’ Chinese partner doubling down on US property bets

Forest City Ratner’s Atlantic Yards project — recently rebranded Pacific Park Brooklyn — isn’t the only U.S. development that Shanghai-based Greenland Holdings is fast tracking.

With projects in Brooklyn and Los Angeles already under way, the state-owned developer is now looking to double its $6 billion pipeline of U.S. projects by next year by leveraging its experience with rapidly-urbanizing Chinese cities and its strong balance sheet, the Wall Street Journal reported. Greenland plans to invest as much as $8 billion in new projects overseas this year, and it’s eyeing large projects in additional U.S. cities.

The firm’s financial position allows it to execute quickly because it doesn’t have to spend months or years raising money, insiders told the newspaper.

“If they decide that this is something that’s appropriate for them to do…they will sign the contract, and they’ll do it,” Martin Polevoy, an attorney at DLA Piper who represented Greenland in the Atlantic Yards deal, told the Journal.

Greenland agreed to purchase a 70 percent stake in the Atlantic Yards project about this time last year and entered a binding contract by December, according to the newspaper. Since then, the partnership, Greenland Forest City Partners, has announced it will finish the affordable housing component by 2025, 10 years ahead of schedule.

“In many ways, they’re a dream partner — they understand our business, they want to build quickly and they have the equity,” MaryAnne Gilmartin, Forest City’s CEO, told the Journal. [WSJ] — Tom DiChristopher