NEW YORK CITY-Downtown Brooklyn is a hotbed of real estate activity, with development activity with movement on the retail and office leasing front as well. In the middle of it all is Joe Chan, president of the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership. Chan and his group work to advance economic development in the area and serve as a bridge between city agencies, developers and retailers looking to enter the market in the area. Chan spoke to GlobeSt.com recently about the neighborhood’s changing face and his hopes for its future.

GlobeSt.com: What are the goals of the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership?

Chan: Simply put, our goals are to advance economic development activity in Downtown Brooklyn, arguably one of the most rapidly growing downtown centers in the country.

Our job is to really bridge the gap between the public and the private sector to make sure that economic development happens and happens in a way that compliments the communities that surround Downtown Brooklyn. This entails attraction of new office and retail tenants to the area, and it involves serving as the city’s partner for the design and construction of those public realm improvements like the Fulton Mall streetscape project, which is just being completed now.

We also partner with the city on the growth of the BAM Cultural District. Other things that we do--we manage business improvement districts down here that really focus on business conditions and quality of life within the area.

A lot of what we do is identify negatives and turn them into positives.

GlobeSt.com: A lot of office workers have been relocated to this area from Manhattan for cost-savings during the recession. Do you think there is enough retail in the area to support them?

Chan: On the retail front, Downtown Brooklyn still remains under-retailed. The way we think about Downtown Brooklyn is it’s downtown to a city of 2.5 million people. Across the nation, the average retail per square foot per capita is something like 22 square feet per capita. Here in Brooklyn it’s at six. A study done by the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce shows that the capacity of Brooklyn is up to 13 square feet per capita, so we think that there is a lot of opportunity to grow down here. This is where the borough shops. There are already 100,000 shoppers who come to the Fulton Mall everyday--probably closer to 150,000 shoppers in Downtown Brooklyn. I can guarantee you that in two year’s time, the Fulton Mall will be one of the places in New York City where you can come and shop and find a number of different department stores and a number of different retail options.

Apple is such a natural fit for Downtown Brooklyn. I can’t think of a place where the Apple brand could be more synergistic with the local population. Apple is about creativity, innovation--it’s about youth and energy and being a little bit avant garde and that’s Brooklyn, particularly the communities that include and surround Downtown Brooklyn. They are chock full of writers, graphic designers, architects and artists.

GlobeSt.com: What do you think would be the ideal use for 370 Jay St.--the MTA’s building? You testified about that building in April. What response have you gotten?

Chan: We’ve been making a lot of noise about the building itself for as long as we’ve been around. I think the arguments are two-fold. Number one, the building is a blight on the surrounding community because it’s vacant and not particularly well maintained. Number two, it’s a huge forgone economic development opportunity in that it’s a 400,000 square foot building that’s vacant so we think that you could have 2,000 employees or students using that building every day. I think you could create a real destination there and, again, turn a negative into a positive. You could do anything from dorms for the many academic institutions that exist in and around Downtown Brooklyn--we’ve actually had some academic institutions from outside of Downtown Brooklyn look at the building. There’s a very strong case to be made for an academic-driven reuse.

The MTA historically has been a terrible landlord at 370 Jay St. They’ve been negligent in allowing the building to be a blighting factor upon the community and they have been irresponsible in allowing such a large and significant public asset to go unutilized. That said, we think that the MTA right now is under very strong leadership and we have seen an increased willingness to engage in a dialogue about the constructive reuse of 370 Jay St.

GlobeSt.com: A lot of people who live in Downtown Brooklyn reference a lack of affordable housing. What do you think is a solution to that and will any of the partnership’s initiatives address that?

Chan: The supply of affordable housing is a challenge here in Downtown Brooklyn. It’s a challenge that we face throughout the city. Everywhere the city owns land, we’re advocating that the city leverages that toward an affordable housing commitment. I think you have seen that on Schermerhorn Street. It was actually the state--where the state required that some parking lots that were being converted to residential had a minimum of 27% affordable housing on those sites.

There are certain area of Downtown Brooklyn--particularly Schermerhorn Street--where you do see significant levels of affordable housing and there are certain parts where you don’t. What can be done? I think leveraging city land and the 421a program moving forward, which has been changed since the rezoning happened and requires for developers to build at least 20% low income in order to take advantage of it. I think those are the two main tools.

Developers need economic incentive to create affordable housing, or to invest in any sort of public good, whether its affordable housing or the creation of open space or the creation of transit related facilities, like a new subway entrance to a building.

GlobeSt.com: What do you think the main challenge facing Downtown Brooklyn is? What is the most pressing issue facing the area?

Chan: Ten years ago, and even to some degree five years ago, the type of tenants that Downtown Brooklyn tended to attract were large back offices of financial institutions and insurance companies. Those institutions’ and those industries’ real estate needs have changed over the last couple of years. The ones that remain have been much more conservative in their real estate approach. They’ve taken smaller footprints and have relocated their employee base to areas where costs are lower. So we can’t depend on those industries alone. The good news is that there has been an influx of new industries to Downtown Brooklyn.

The challenge is that, on the commercial office side, we’re seeing more and more of those new tenants, more of those new industries, but they take smaller increments of space. A bank might take 300,000 or 400,000 square feet, or in some cases like the Bank of New York an entire office building. It takes many more of [the new tenants] to fill or anchor a building than it would with one of the old school tenants.

GlobeSt.com: We see tech jobs driving the economic recovery in a lot of areas. How important is tech to Downtown Brooklyn?

Chan: The city and groups like the Center for an Urban Future have shown that New York City has a great opportunity to capitalize on the growth of the tech sector. I think Downtown Brooklyn has a particularly unique opportunity, given the presence of NYU-Poly right in the middle of Downtown Brooklyn and the fact that NYU-Poly was acquired by NYU and is in the process of becoming NYU’s engineering school. I think you’re going to have a center for talent and innovation out of NYU-Poly. I think you also have seen within this specific area the beginnings of a creative, technology community.