Two months ago, YIMBY brought you the first look at WeWork’s big mixed-use development on the waterfront in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Now we have an official rendering and more details on the 16-story office building, dubbed Dock 72 at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.
The project will encompass 675,000 square feet and “cater to the rapidly emerging technology and creative industries in Brooklyn,” according to a press release. WeWork will anchor the building with a 222,000-square-foot lease. Dock 72 will bring valuable office space close to Dumbo, which has one of the lowest office vacancy rates in the city. The developers aim to charge Dumbo-level rents, and told Bloomberg that they hope to ask an ambitious $60 a square foot.
WeWork Building Location, map from Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Corporation
Dock 72 will rise on a 60,000-square-foot spit of land that juts out into the East River between two active dry docks—specifically Docks 2 and 3. Floor plates will range from 40,000 to 60,000 square feet, and WeWork plans to “curate” 35,000 square feet of amenities that will be open to all Navy Yard workers, including a massage room, specialty food vendors, a basketball court and a rooftop conference center.
S9 Architecture, an arm of Perkins Eastman, will handle the design. The new rendering looks almost exactly like the one we published in May, with an extra two stories added to the top. The structure is stepped into four setbacks, each of which has its own roof garden. Floor-to-ceiling windows clad the exterior, mimicking the look of the Navy Yard’s early 20th century industrial buildings. And a shell that might be concrete wraps around the facade, broken up by zig-zagging stretches of windows.
The Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Corporation promises the new building will bring 4,000 jobs. Tenants will be required to pay their workers a living wage of at least $13.30 an hour, according to Bloomberg, which broke the WeWork news earlier today. The development’s future occupants will supposedly focus on hiring local residents and work to expand the yard’s internship program.
WeWork is partnering with Rudin Development, Boston Properties, and the BNYDC to develop the building, which will be the first new project in the Navy Yard focused on office space rather than light manufacturing.
Construction on the $380 million complex is expected to begin later this year, and tenants are scheduled to move in sometime in late 2017.
The Navy Yard is also redeveloping three other formerly under-utilized sites: Building 77, which will host manufacturing space; Admiral’s Row, set to be demolished for Wegman’s, retail space, light industrial space and community facilities; and the 250,000-square-foot Green Manufacturing Center (aka “The Hub”) that has taken shape next to the Cumberland Street Gate.
Subscribe to YIMBY’s daily e-mail
Follow YIMBYgram for real-time photo updates
Like YIMBY on Facebook
Follow YIMBY’s Twitter for the latest in YIMBYnews
I’m not exactly sure how 4,000 employees are supposed to reach this building— it’s even worse than Dumbo, and probably the least transit-accessible spot in inner Brooklyn. I like biking to work, but not everyone does, and a subway to (infrequent!) bus commute seems like an obstacle to asking for high rent.