Forest City Realty Trust

In 1920, Forest City was founded as a family-owned lumber and household hardware business by siblings Charles, Leonard, Max and Fannye Ratner, immigrants from Poland.[2] Beginning in the 1930s, the company invested in residential garages, apartments, retail strip centers. During World War II, the company manufactured and prefabricated governmental housing.[2]

In 1960, Forest City became a publicly-traded company.[2] In 1987, the company sold its retail lumber business to Handy Andy Home Improvement Center.[3]

In 2011, the company sold a 49% stake in a retail portfolio in New York for $172.3 million.[4] In 2013, the company acquired a 100% interest in a mall in Pittsburgh.[5] The company also sold a Sheraton hotel in Station Square in Pittsburgh for $61 million.[6] It also announced plans to redevelop Ballston Common Mall.[7] The company acquired a key parcel from Macy's for $13.4 million.[8]

In 2016, for tax purposes, the company converted into a real estate investment trust.[9] The company also sold its stake in the Brooklyn Nets and the Barclays Center to Mikhail Prokhorov,[10] sold its military housing division to Hunt Companies for $208.8 million,[11] sold Terminal Tower to K&D Group for $38.5 million,[12] and sold 7.7 acres and 8 buildings in Cleveland to an investor group for $3.5 million.[13]

In June, 2017 Forest City shareholders voted to eliminate the dual share structure that had enabled the founding Ratner family to control the company.[14] The City of New York also filed a lawsuit against the company in conjunction with the rent due pursuant to a ground lease.[15]

In August, 2017 the company sold 25 acres in Cleveland.[16] In October, 2017 the company sold its interests in 10 malls to Queensland Investment Corporation for $1.55 billion.[17]

On December 7, 2018, the company was acquired by Brookfield Asset Management.[18][19]

Forest City developed The New York Times Building in New York City in 2008.

Notable projects that were owned by the company are:

• 8 Spruce Street, also known as "New York by Gehry", for its designer, Frank Gehry.
• Pacific Park, Brooklyn, a mixed-use development in Brooklyn that includes the Barclays Center.
• Central Station, a primarily residential development on the site of a former railroad terminal in Chicago.
• Mercantile National Bank Building, a mixed-use urban redevelopment project of a historical office complex in Dallas.
• Mesa del Sol, planned for 100,000 inhabitants in Albuquerque, is the company's largest mixed-use development, co-owned by Covington Capital Partners.
• New York Times Building, a 52-story building in Midtown Manhattan designed by architect Renzo Piano.
• Northfield Stapleton is an open-air, 1,200,000-square-foot (110,000 m²) retail town center at the company's mixed-use redevelopment project at Stapleton International Airport in Denver.
• Public Health Service Hospital District in San Francisco's Presidio.
• Radian, a 26-story, curved residential tower in the Financial District of Boston.
• Showcase Mall, a shopping center on the Las Vegas Strip.
• Short Pump Town Center, an outdoor mall in Richmond, Virginia.
• Station Square, a 52-acre (210,000 m²) indoor and outdoor shopping, dining and entertainment complex in Pittsburgh.
• University Park at MIT, a mixed-use urban redevelopment project on an abandoned industrial site near the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
• Victoria Gardens, a mixed-use shopping center development in Rancho Cucamonga, California.
• Westchester's Ridge Hill, an upscale, urban open-air shopping center in Yonkers, New York anchored by Lord & Taylor, until the store closed in 2020.
• Westfield San Francisco Centre, an upscale, urban shopping center in San Francisco co-owned and managed by The Westfield Group.