Red Hook was severely damaged by flooding during Hurricane Sandy in 2012, and few residential developers have been willing to touch the transit-starved Brooklyn neighborhood. But commercial projects are alive and well among the 19th century warehouses, from Est4te Four’s big office complex to a factory-to-office conversion on Van Brunt Street.
Now new building applications have surfaced for a five-story hotel at 411 Van Brunt Street, only a block from the waterfront. The building between Van Dyke and Beard Streets would have 19 hotel rooms and 3,700 square feet of medical offices.
The Schedule A filing calls for three hotel rooms on the first floor, medical offices on the second floor, eight rooms each on the third and fourth floors, and a dining room and recreation area on the fifth floor. Those 19 rooms would be divided across 17,065 square feet of commercial space, and even if we subtract out the amenities on the fifth floor, the average room will be a fairly spacious 736 square feet.
There will also be a parking lot with room for eight cars.
This 11,700-square-foot site is zoned exclusively for manufacturing and commercial use, so the city allows hotel development here as-of-right. Plus, it’s located in the Southwest Brooklyn Industrial Business Zone (IBZ). The developer, Abe Leser of the Leser Group, is probably trying to secure DOB approval for the hotel before the administration imposes special permits on hotels in IBZs.
Leser picked up a series of industrially zoned lots on Van Brunt, Beard, and Richards Streets for $11,606,754 back in 2008. John Schimenti Architect, who’s based in Lynbrook, Long Island, applied for the permits.
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What’s the annual flood insurance premium?