Tall & Urban News

A new waterfront park and two mixed-use towers may soon come to the Brooklyn waterfront, north of the Domino Sugar Factory redevelopment site in the Williamsburg neighborhood.

Developers Two Trees Management (also behind the Domino megaproject) unveiled a proposal to build two mixed-use towers, including one 650 feet (198 meters) tall, designed by Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG), and a 6-acre (2.4-hectare) park with access to the East River, designed by James Corner Field Operations (the firm behind Domino Park and the High Line). The waterfront development will stretch from Grand to North 3rd Street on River Street.

“We put a world-class team here together and really challenged ourselves to build another park with the impact and significance and social benefits as Domino Park,” Jed Walentas, principal of Two Trees Management, said at a project presentation on 12 December 2019. “We really thought that this site was an opportunity to change the way that New Yorkers interacted with the river and the water.”

The BIG-designed towers will have 1,000 residential units, 250 of which will be below-market-rate. They will also include a 47,000-square-foot (6,900-square-meter) YMCA, 30,000 square feet (2,800 square meters) of retail space, and 57,000 square feet (5,300 square meters) of office space.

“There’s this post-industrial possibility where we can actually reimagine the waterfront as sort of a living and lively urban and natural habitat,” Bjarke Ingels, founding partner at BIG, said about the development site. He added that one of the main missions of the project is to close the gap between Grand Ferry Park and the North 5th Pier to create a “continuous journey” of public space along the waterfront.

One of the most noteworthy aspects of the project is its public waterfront park, designed by Field Operations with community input, which will have a circular esplanade extending into the East River, a sandy beach, tidal pools, a fishing pier, salt marsh, a boating cove on North 1st Street, and an amphitheater. There will also be community kiosks with 5,000 square feet (460 square meters) worth of space available to community partners and kayak rentals, among other things.

One of the project’s goals is to increase resiliency on the waterfront, “to really expand the river in order to create a softer shoreline, and have one that has active ecological benefits, as well as access benefits, and part of this strategy, is really to increase resilience,” Lisa Switkin, senior principal at Field Operations, said during the project’s presentation.

“The idea of creating a series of breakwaters, including marshlands and other types of things that actually slow down the waves and dissipate that energy, so both the impact as well as the rebound actually get softened,” Switkin said.

Built on the former Con Edison North First Street terminal site, the developers will seek a rezoning and make their way through the city’s Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP). Walentas said he aims for the project to get approved in the next two years, and that construction should take around five years. Two Trees recently bought the 3.5-acre (1.4-hectare) site for US$150 million.

At a community board meeting in May 2019, before the sale, a neighborhood group deemed Sustainable Williamsburg (formerly known as the Friends of the Northside Waterfront) expressed their opposition to a possible rezoning of the site and launched an online petition against the site’s rezoning.

“There’s this post-industrial possibility where we can actually reimagine the waterfront as sort of a living and lively urban and natural habitat”

Meanwhile, southwest of Williamsburg in Boerum Hill, demolition is almost complete at 80 Flatbush Avenue. It is the site of an 840-foot-tall (256-meter) skyscraper. A large amount of debris and rubble is scattered across the narrow, triangular property and awaiting removal. The steel frame of a previous structure is still standing, but will soon be knocked down to make way for the new multi-structure, mixed-use complex developed by Alloy Development.

Photos show the last remaining building still standing on the southern end of the property, covered in scaffolding and black netting. Excavators are busy working on the middle and northern sections.

80 Flatbush Avenue is bound by Flatbush Avenue, State Street, Third Avenue, and a small sliver of Schermerhorn Street. The development includes a planned 350-seat elementary and high school by Khalil Gibran International Academy and two ground-up skyscrapers. Two historic structures will be preserved. The property will have a total of 870 residences, 200 of which will be affordable units. The closest subways are the 2, 3, 4, and 5 trains at the Nevins Street station up Flatbush Avenue and the B, D, N, Q, and R trains at the Atlantic Avenue-Barclays Station. The Atlantic Terminal is across the street to the south.

Construction and completion dates for the skyscraper has not been announced yet.

Right next door at 100 Flatbush Ave, Alloy Development has unveiled plans to construct a sustainable mixed-use development. The residential portion of the tower will be 100 percent electric.

Designed by Architecture Research Office, the two public schools within the lower levels of the tower will be designed to meet Passive House standards, a framework of rigorous architectural guidelines that ensure extremely low energy consumption.

The 38-story structure is expected to break ground in spring 2020 and will eventually rise 510 feet (156 meters) above ground. Additional components designed by Alloy include 100,000 square feet (9,300 square meters) of Class A office space and 30,000 square feet (2,800 square meters) of retail. The residential area will yield 256 units.

All functions and components within the building that are typically powered by natural gas will instead be powered by electricity.

“As New York City looks to pursue carbon neutrality, buildings are an obvious target, since they account for nearly 70 percent of the city’s carbon footprint,” said senior associate Jonce Walker of Thornton Tomasetti, a global engineering firm that is providing the project team with Passive House energy and Climate Mobilization Act consulting services. “Alloy’s decision to go with an all-electric building not only eliminates the burning of fossil fuels on-site but locks them into an electrical grid that will only get cleaner over time.”

100 Flatbush is expected to be fully completed by 2023 and will debut as phase one of 80 Flatbush. The second phase includes the 100 Flatbush tower described above. The final phase comprises the rehabilitation of two aging structures at 362 Schermerhorn, the former home of the Khalil Gibran International Academy high school.

For more on these stories, go to Curbed New York and New York YIMBY.