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Filed Under:affordable housing, Atlantic Yards, Barclays Center, Mayor Bill de Blasio, Rich Lamb
NEW YORK, NY - OCTOBER 11: A development site at the Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn is viewed on October 11, 2013 in New York City. A Chinese company is set to take a 70 percent stake in in a 15-tower apartment project at the Atlantic Yards, a 22-acre controversial development that includes the new Barclays Center arena and is being developed by Forest City Enterprises Inc. If the deal is approved, Shanghai's Greenland Group Co. will act as a co-developer and will shoulder 70 percent of the project's costs. It would rank as the largest commercial-real-estate development in the U.S. to have majority Chinese financing. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)NEW YORK, NY - OCTOBER 11: A development site at the Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn is viewed on October 11, 2013 in New York City. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)


NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — A deal has been put in place to build thousands of affordable housing units at the Atlantic Yards project.

As WCBS 880’s Rich Lamb reported, the job of building more than 2,000 affordable homes near the Barclays Center — long-delayed — is now expected to be completed 10 years ahead of schedule.

The move comes under a deal the city and the state reached with a developer.

“I’m someone who supported that project from the beginning and believed it could be pivotal to ensuring economic diversity in that area of Brooklyn, the area that I come from, Mayor Bill de Blasio said. “But the pace of the affordable housing has just plain been too slow and we were not gonna see that pattern continue. By the way the state of New York felt the same way.”

De Blasio said construction on the first buildings is set to begin in December.

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