As the Rabsky Group plans to rezone an industrial swath of Williamsburg’s Broadway Triangle for a huge residential development, other landlords are converting the area’s commercial buildings to apartments and retail. Schlomo Landau has filed alteration applications to expand a two-story storefront at 687 Flushing Avenue to a nine-story building with apartments and a school.
The through-block property fronts both Whipple Street and Flushing Avenue, and sits in a triangular block also bounded by Throop Avenue. The ground floor will hold 1,088 square feet of retail, followed by 28,800 square feet of community facilities on the second through fifth floors.
When we called Landau, we learned that the expanded building will become a special yeshiva school for married Orthodox Jews, known as a kolel. It will be able to accommodate 1,000 students between the ages of 17 and 25. Landau, who’s the dean and rabbi of the school, says it will be the largest kolel in Brooklyn. The synagogue for the congregation, Cong Kolel Vyashkem Avrahom, will occupy about 8,000 square feet, and the remaining 20,000 square feet will be classrooms and possibly a dormitory.
Apartments will take up the top four floors. 32 units will be divided across 25,144 square feet of residential space, for an average unit of 785 square feet. The apartments will house students who are from out of town and need a place to stay in Brooklyn.
The retail space will face Flushing and might be a coffee shop or a cafe where the students can grab a quick bite.
Ultimately, the revamped building will grow from 10,000 to 50,000 square feet of interior space, and the roof line will rise from 22 to 86 feet.
The congregation acquired the property for $1,800,000 in September 2012, and hopes to finish construction in the next two years.
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For what it is worth, this triangular property once hosted the Grace movie theater. It has been closed for many, many years.