From left: Bruce Ratner and MaryAnne Gilmartin

Forest City Ratner’s CEO Bruce Ratner announced today that his chief lieutenant MaryAnne Gilmartin would replace him as chief executive, a move expected since news of Ratner stepping down broke in January. Ratner will remain chairman of the development company.

“It is important for me and the industry to recognize MaryAnne’s role in leading our major efforts, from Atlantic Yards to New York by Gehry,” Ratner said in a press release. “While I will stay involved in key projects like Barclays Center, Atlantic Yards and Ridge Hill, and be active in strategic planning and new initiatives, it is the right time to make this change.”  [more]

Sherwood Country Club estate in Thousand Oaks, Calif., which went into foreclosure

Bruce Ratner said to mull bidding on Nassau Coliseum, former home of New York Islanders. Now available: a castle on the Upper West Side at a $10.1 million discount. Retirees are choosing to live in intergenerational communities. Williamsburg record store veteran Sound Fix will close next month. Read these stories and more after the jump.

MaryAnne Gilmartin

From the March issue: No one can say that MaryAnne Gilmartin isn’t battle-tested. For years, she has served as chief lieutenant to Bruce Ratner in the fight to develop Brooklyn’s controversial Atlantic Yards project, a clash marked by lawsuits, bad press and angry protesters. So when news broke in late January that Ratner was planning to step down as CEO of Forest City Ratner, the company he founded, sources pointed to Gilmartin as his most likely successor.

“When you have been through what they have together, when you face the opposition they have, either you end up with an unbreakable bond, or you end up never speaking with each other again,” said CBRE Group’s Tri-State CEO Mary Ann Tighe, who’s worked with both of them over the years. “There is a deep respect there.”  [more]

Screenshot of Bruce Ratner The foundation of the first residential tower at Atlantic Yards is being laid down and in May, the 32-story building will rise above the ground, Bruce Ratner, CEO of Forest City Ratner, which is developing the massive Brooklyn project, told Bloomberg News (see the video after the jump). The property is slated for completion about a year from this June, he said. The building, dubbed B2, broke ground in December and is slated to be the world’s tallest modular tower. “We wanted to come up with a method that assured the same kind of pricing and also was less expensive to build, but still as good or higher quality,” Ratner told Bloomberg of the modular construction method…. [more]

Bruce Ratner and MaryAnne Gilmartin

Bruce Ratner will be stepping down as chief executive officer of Forest City Ratner, but will continue serving in a chairman capacity, Crain’s reported. MaryAnne Gilmartin, current executive vice president, will succeed him. An unnamed source told Crain’s that Ratner will “step down sooner rather than later, likely the next few months.” A Forest City Ratner spokesperson declined comment and another unnamed source told Crain’s that “I wouldn’t expect him to disappear. He’ll still be very much involved at Forest City.” [more]

Don Monti

Long Island politicians and developers are in talks to develop a 5 million-square-foot biotech campus in the vicinity of the Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum, current home of the New York Islanders, the Wall Street Journal reported. Developers see the Islanders’ 2015 exodus as an opportunity to cultivate an area that has languished since the arena was built in the 1970s. Don Monti, the president and CEO of Renaissance Downtowns, a Plainview, NY-based real estate development company, came up with the idea for the campus. In November, Nassau County appointed Monti and Forest City Ratner’s Bruce Ratner—whose Barclays Center in Brooklyn will be the Islanders’ new home— as consultants on the project, which is estimated to cost between $2 billion to $3 billion…. [more]

Bruce Ratner and Barclays Center

A lawsuit filed against the city by Brooklyn Events Center, a subsidiary of Barclays Center developer Forest City Ratner, over a $741 million property tax appraisal for the stadium has been dropped, the New York Post reported.

Last month, the Ratner-affiliated organization went to New York State Supreme Court in Brooklyn arguing that the city’s appraisal of the music venue and Nets basketball team home was off base. The developer suggested that the stadium’s actual value was closer to $111 million — despite not owing property taxes on the site under its current deal with the city and receiving some $761 million in subsidies and tax breaks to develop the 22-acre Atlantic Yards site. [more]

From left: Bruce Ratner and the interior of Barclays

Brooklyn’s Barclays Center in Brooklyn will open tomorrow with a week of concerts by Jay-Z and the debut of the 675,000-square-foot, 22-acre project owes itself to Bruce Ratner’s purchase of the then New Jersey Nets, the New York Times reported. Ratner bought the team in 2004 for $300 million and not because he was a basketball fan — it was his way to bring sports back to Brooklyn and make way for the nearly $5 billion project. [more]

The interior of the Barclays Center

Forest City Ratner chief Bruce Ratner, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Brooklyn Nets owner Mikhail Prokhorov were among those marking the official opening of the Barclays Center arena in Brooklyn today.

The trio cut the ribbon on the new venue, which will officially open for business September 28 with the first of eight sold-out concerts by Jay-Z. The 675,000-square-foot area, designed by SHoP Architects and AECOM — formerly Ellerbe Becket — and the new home of the Nets, was hailed by Ratner and others as “an iconic structure.” The area has 18,000 seats for basketball and up to 19,000 for concerts. [more]

Bruce Ratner, chairman of Forest City Ratner

Bruce Ratner, head of Forest City Ratner, developer of arguably Brooklyn’s most controversial development ever, sat down with the Times and told them, among other things, that the Atlantic Yards will be completed on time, that pre-fab construction is a great way to make housing construction more affordable and that after 2015, he’d like the Islanders to come to the sports arena.

“There is no winning,” Ratner said, in reference to the debate about whether the Atlantic Yards project will offer enough affordable housing. “And that’s ok.” [more]