Forest City Breaks Ground for

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Business Editors

CLEVELAND--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 7, 2003

Forest City Enterprises, Inc. (NYSE:FCEA)(NYSE:FCEB) today announced groundbreaking for Quartermaster Plaza, a $68 million retail center in South Philadelphia.

Located on a 44-acre site with more than 450,000 square feet of leasable space, Quartermaster Plaza is the largest retail development to occur in Philadelphia in recent years. Home Depot and BJ's Wholesale Club will anchor Quartermaster Plaza. When it opens in 2004, Quartermaster Plaza will also include Staples, AJ Wright, PETsMart and Prada Messenger bags Walgreens, among other national retailers and local merchants. The new development is expected to create 1,000 permanent new jobs for the region.

Quartermaster Plaza sits near Girard Estates, a historically significant and architecturally distinguished neighborhood, and a vibrant community. The site is part of the former Quartermaster Depot military facility that distributed Army supplies from World War I through the Gulf War.

"Quartermaster Plaza will be a premier retail destination of choice for the people of Philadelphia and the surrounding region," said Charles A. Ratner, president and chief executive officer of Forest City Enterprises. "We understand and appreciate the historical significance of this site, and we are delighted to have the opportunity to bring this large-scale development to South Philadelphia's underserved retail market."

Elsewhere in Philadelphia, Forest City has been involved in several adaptive re-use/historic preservation projects. Forest City redeveloped the Drake Tower, an upscale apartment community that was once an elite high-rise hotel. The Company also redeveloped a former headquarters of Bell Telephone Company into luxury apartments known as the Lofts at 1835 Arch. Forest City has interests in more than 1,200 apartment units in Philadelphia.

"Our activities in Philadelphia reflect our Core Market Strategy, under which we concentrate on large, high-growth urban markets with relatively high barriers to entry," Ratner said. "We enter an attractive market with a specific investment opportunity - residential in this case - and then expand our presence with additional property types as market factors allow - such as we are now doing with the exciting Quartermaster Plaza retail project."

Corporate Description

Forest City Enterprises, Inc. is a $5.3 billion NYSE-listed real estate company headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio. The Company is principally engaged in the ownership, development, acquisition and management of commercial and residential real estate throughout the United States. The Company's portfolio includes interests in retail centers, apartment communities, office buildings and hotels in 22 states and the District of Columbia.