Adam Neumann at WeWork’s 175 Varick Street location

Trendy shared office space provider WeWork has joined forces with Forest City Ratner in its bid to redevelop the Lower East Side’s Seward Park, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Last week, Forest City Ratner and other top developers, such as the Related Companies and AvalonBay Communities, submitted proposals for the 1.65 million-square-foot site, which was approved by the city last year and is slated to offer 1,000 housing units, as well as retail and office space. Forest City Ratner’s plans included a roughly 400,000-square foot headquarters for WeWork.  [more]

From left: John Catsimatidis, Bruce Ratner and Bill Thompson

Several New York City mayoral candidates threatened to penalize Forest City Ratner for delaying the construction of housing at Atlantic Yards, the Brooklyn Paper reported. [more]

From left: Bruce Ratner, MaryAnne Gilmartin and David Berliner

Forest City Ratner’s newly minted chief executive MaryAnne Gilmartin has tapped the development’s company’s general counsel David Berliner to be her chief operating officer, the Wall Street Journal reported.

“I needed to make sure my bench was deep and capable of allowing me to succeed in a new role,” Gilmartin — who was recently profiled by The Real Deal — told the Journal. “David was an obvious choice.” [more]

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]

East River Plaza, which received $8.1 million in tax breaks under ICIP

Even tax breaks have an afterlife. The owners of some 7,000 buildings are still receiving a tax abatement under a city program that expired five years ago, the New York World reported. Known as the Industrial and Commercial Incentive Program, the tax break will cost the city $650 million this year alone. [more]

113 St. John’s Place and MaryAnne Gilmartin

Cometh the hour, cometh the woman, cometh the Brooklyn pad. Forest City Ratner’s executive vice president and soon-to-be chief executive MaryAnne Gilmartin has purchased a townhouse in Park Slope for $3.85 million, city records seen by the New York Observer show.  [more]

From left: 15 Metrotech Center and Tough Mudder founder Will Dean

Compared to its 10- to 12-mile obstacle courses — which feature barbed wire, electric zaps and names like “Arctic Enema” and “Ball Shrinker” — Tough Mudder’s sublease negotiations at 15 Metrotech Center must have seemed like a breeze. The self-proclaimed “hardcore” obstacle course event company is in talks to take roughly 70,000 square feet of office space at the Forest City Ratner-owned building, located in Downtown Brooklyn, Crain’s reported. [more]

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]

Barclays Center

Mayor Michael Bloomberg highlighted the 2,000 jobs created by the Barclays Center in his State of the City speech yesterday, but the bulk of these positions are part-time and without benefits, DNAinfo reported. In fact, only 100 are full-time. However, most Barclays Center employees are union members of SEIU 32BJ, according to Forest City Ratner spokesperson Ashley Cotton. “There are no health benefits because they’re part-time employees,” Cotton told DNAinfo. “However, we feel, and hopefully they do too, that there’s a benefit to being part of a union.” [more]