Future of Residential Construction Being Built in a Factory at the Brooklyn Navy Yard

Forest City Ratner's plant is cranking out pre-fabricated modules that will be snapped together to create the first building at Atlantic Yards.

 

Forest City Ratner gives the Daily News a tour of the modular factory where the new Atlantic Yards high rises are being built. 

The corner of Dean St. and Flatbush Ave. in Brooklyn is actually being built two miles away. 

In a building at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, Forest City Ratner is creating the building blocks for the tallest pre-fabricated residence in the world, the 322-foot tower whose frame is already rising next to the Barclays Center.

JEFF BACHNER FOR NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Forest City Ratner is building its pre-fabricated apartment units in a factory at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. The finished units will be trucked over to the Atlantic Yards site and assembled there.

“We really think this will change everything about the way we build,” said Bob Sanna, executive vice-president for construction at Forest City Ratner. 

Sanna is not the only one who thinks modular construction is a game-changer, thanks to 25% savings over traditional construction methods, greater speed and efficiency, and even better conditions for workers.

JEFF BACHNER FOR NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

The modules are built indoors in an assembly-line fashion. 

“The safety is huge,” said Gerardo Santiago, a laborer from Williamsburg. “We’re not on top of each other, 20 stories in the air.”

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Once the exterior skin is added, the building (right, with its proposed siblings towering over the Barclays Center) will look like many modern skyscrapers. 

And the building goes up faster because work at the construction site and the factory happen at the same time. There are no weather delays, and the finished modules simply get trucked over to the building as needed. 

“It really speeds up the process,” Sanna said. “The carpenter’s never waiting around for the electrician to do his job. They’re always working.”

JEFF BACHNER FOR NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

A worker moves a modular frame at the Brooklyn Navy Yard site. 

Ratner’s company is earning kudos as a modular pioneer as it quickly finishes its first Atlantic Yards building.

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When finished, the pre-fab apartments won’t look very different from traditionally built units. 

“A lot of projects that would otherwise be unfeasible or too expensive could now get built,” said Jerilyn Perine, executive director of the Citizens Housing and Planning Commission. 

And yet for all the innovation, the modular factory looks like any other construction site, with welders, carpenters and drywall workers building apartments as they might outdoors — except their 930 modules will end up being configured into 363 units, from studios to three-bedroom, depending on how many modules are fused. 

“This is the future,” said Dominic Hackshaw, a foreman from Rockland County. “I wanted to get in on the ground floor.” 

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