Two years ago, YIMBY brought you a look at Cycle Cities’ futuristic design for an office building at 77 Wythe Avenue in Williamsburg. Now we’ve got a fresh rendering from the new architects behind the nine-story project, which will join 25 Kent Avenue as one of the first major ground-up office developments in Brooklyn in decades.
Hustvedt Cutler Architects have taken over the design, and their take is quite subdued compared to the stacked, cantilevering tower dreamed up by Cycle Cities. However it will still be glassy and modern, with a squat retail base and a set back office tower.
Developed by Cayuga Capital, the building will reach 125 feet into the air and span 128,768 square feet. The ground floor will be devoted to retail, and 40,130 square feet of medical offices will fill the third through fifth floors and part of the sixth. Then 88,700 square feet of office space will round out the rest of the project. Office workers will get to enjoy terraces on several upper floors, and the ninth floor will feature a restaurant with outdoor space.
The latest plans also include parking for 333 cars, spread between a bi-level underground garage and the second floor. The incredible amount of parking highlights the outdated, auto-heavy rules coded into the city’s manufacturing zoning. It’s unlikely that the building will need that much parking, considering the Bedford Avenue L train stop is an eight-minute walk away. 77 Wythe would benefit from the special zoning created for 25 Kent, which cut down parking requirements and offered floor area bonuses for including light industrial space.
Cayuga bought up a full block of Wythe Avenue between 10th and 11th streets, including Vice’s former offices on North 11th Street. The firm completed its assemblage early last year by spending $14.5 million on the headquarters of Colossal Media, an advertising company that specializes in hand-painted murals. Vice recently relocated to the former offices of the Domino Sugar Factory at Kent Avenue and South 2nd Street, but Colossal will stay in its red brick warehouse on North 11th Street until its lease runs out in a few years.
Jamie Weisman, a principal at Cayuga, tells YIMBY that only Colossal’s building will be demolished. The other two industrial buildings on Wythe will remain, and they are currently being renovated for new tenants. Weisman couldn’t give any details on tenants in the existing buildings or the new one. Construction is supposed to start on 77 Wythe in the summer of 2017.
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Separated space on each floor neatly, planning deeply about the main points in a nine-story.
Attractive building but is there really a market for all this new office space in and around Williamsburg? Manhattan is the CBD and is accessible from all the boroughs and the surrounding suburbs, Williamsburg is not. If you live in parts of Brooklyn or Queens the ‘G’ train will drop you off in the vicinity. But if you live anywhere else in the region it means multiple transit changes or driving in on the BQE, which is a nightmare.
Williamsburg is developing into a true live/work/play neighborhood. It may blunt the Manhattan-centric view of NYC. You’ll have relatively affordable housing from the rest of Brooklyn feeding in from the G as well as the L (as well as great bus lines from Queens), to balance the higher cost apartments in North Williamsburg. Then with the bars/nightlife/restaurants/stores, there will be no reason to go to Manhattan. It may change how people view their options to locate.
Interesting to see the addition/evolution of office inventory in Williamsburg. One note: special zoning at 25 Kent was only granted to that specific property under a special permit and will not apply to any other surrounding block. In order for 77 Wythe to benefit from similar FAR and parking requirements, they would need to apply for a special permit separately and follow the ULURP process.