A year ago, a local developer filed plans to convert and expand a small commercial building on Flushing Avenue in Williamsburg’s Broadway Triangle into a nine-story yeshiva with apartments. Now, the project at 685 Flushing Avenue has resurfaced as a new, 12-story building with a synagogue and a hotel.
The 55,500-square-foot development would replace two empty lots and the commercial building between Throop Avenue and Whipple Street, right along the border with Bed-Stuy. There would be 16,176 square feet of community facility space for the synagogue and 39,296 square feet of commercial space for a hotel. If the developer’s plans have remained the same, the synagogue, Congregation Kolel Vyashkem Avrahom, would be part of a special yeshiva school for married Orthodox Jews, known as a kolel. The school’s dean and rabbi, Schlomo Landau, told YIMBY last year that he hoped to house students who are visiting Brooklyn and wish to study at the yeshiva. The hotel may serve that purpose.
The ground floor would have entrances for the hotel and synagogue, followed by worship space on a mezzanine level and the second floor, as well as the rabbi’s office and an outdoor terrace. The third and fourth floors would accommodate study space for the synagogue and possibly a school, offering a studio, workshop, library, office, and storage space, according to the Schedule A filing. Each of the remaining floors would host 15 units, for a total of 120 hotel rooms.
Elmhurst-based Timothy Lee Architect applied for the permits. The synagogue is developing the project under at the name YLSL F687 LLC, which picked the development site for $1,800,000 in 2012.
The wheels of development are slowly cranking into motion around the Broadway Triangle, even as large swaths of property in the industrial neighborhood remain tied up in contentious litigation over a rezoning that some say favored the Orthodox Jewish community over its Latino and black neighbors. A few other residential developments are set to transform the hood, including two six-story residential buildings on Throop Avenue and a 96-unit project at 100 Union Avenue.
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Synagogue and hotel in the plan, different of two types but possible when developer had decided.
property for sale across street at 688 Flushing ave