When Robert Moses built the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway in the 1950s, he pushed the area between the Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridge approaches even further into isolation, hemming it in on all sides with highways. But OTL Enterprises managed to snag a large and favorably zoned parcel at 22 Chapel Street, just off Flatbush Avenue Extension.
Now they’ve filed plans to erect a 20-story, mixed-use building on the lot, which is bounded on the other two sides by Cathedral Place and Jay Street. The project will share the trapezoidal block with the historic Cathedral Basilica of St. James, which was constructed in 1903 and replaced one of Brooklyn’s earliest churches, a cathedral built in 1822.
The development would rise 211 feet into the air and hold 180 apartments. It would hold 133,181 square feet of residential space, a 15,280-square-foot community facility, and 2,000 square feet of ground floor retail. The community facility would occupy parts of the cellar, first and second floors, and the apartments would begin on the third floor, with 13 units. Most of the floors would have 13 apartments, and the top five floors would have a few large units—between two and five apartments per story.
As we’d expect from a luxury Downtown Brooklyn tower, there will be a lounge, children’s room, and gym on the second floor, a pool on the 15th floor, and a roof deck on the top floor. 22 Chapel will also include a subterranean garage with 87 parking spots, which are required by zoning.
The building would replace a two-story rehab center run by START, which has owned the property since 1978. OTL hasn’t purchased the property yet, but a long-term lease or deed will likely appear in public records soon. We wonder if START will fill the new community facility space, but we haven’t heard back from the developer on the details of the project.
This isn’t OTL’s first project in the neighborhood either. They also developed a four-story apartment building at 112 Atlantic Avenue in Cobble Hill.
The city rezoned this little neighborhood, known as Bridge Plaza, from industrial to mixed-use residential uses in 2003. Much of the site is zoned C6-2, which encourages relatively large, mixed-use development.
CetraRuddy will be responsible for the design. The firm has an excellent track record of glassy new towers, like 242 West 53rd Street, as well as sensitively designed conversions at Walker Tower and 12 East 13th Street.
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