Bruce Ratner’s Forest City Ratner and the Swedish real estate development group Skanska are suing one another over cost overruns at the Pacific Park project in Brooklyn.
The two suits center around the halted construction on a new 336 unit, 34 floor residential tower there. Last week Skanska unilaterally ceased construction of the building, leaving 150 construction workers out of a job.
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Forest City Ratner has asked a court to order Skanska to resume construction. It has also blamed Skanska for tens of millions in cost overruns that have resulted from the stoppage and of poor performance on the project.
Its complaints states: “Skanska and the personnel it assigned to this project lacked the skill, experience and diligence to complete the project in accordance with the promised schedule and price. The more Skanska floundered, the more it manufactured excuses to evade responsibility for its own malfeasance.”
Forest City CEO MaryAnne Gilmartin added in a statement, “Our priority is to re-open our factory and put the employees that Skanska wrongfully furloughed back to work so we can resume construction on B2. Skanska’s unilateral action has barred construction from continuing, and this lawsuit is the first of many steps we intend to take to get this building moving again.”
Skanska, in turn, has accused Forest City of not providing specific instructions for construction, changing the building plans without consulting them and ignoring flaws in the building. It is seeking $50 million in damages.
“The work at the B2 Project is currently stopped because Forest City Ratner has steadfastly refused over many months to engage in an honest dialogue about the serious commercial and design issues facing the project, ” co-chief operating officer for Skanska USA Building Richard Kennedy said in a statement. “Slinging mud at Skanska in the press and in legal documents that misstate the actual facts is not going to get the B2 Project moving again or put the modular factory workers back to work.”
The residential building is being constructed using modular techniques and is slated to be the largest modular building in the world.
Ratner is developing the $5 billion project previously known as Atlantic Yards where the Brooklyn Nets’ Barclays Center is located in partnership with the Chinese conglomerate Greenland Holding Group.
