Hotels are flocking to North Brooklyn’s industrial zone, but yesterday YIMBY noticed an unusual filing for a new artist studio building at 58 Grattan Street between Morgan and Knickerbocker Avenues in East Williamsburg.
This project would rise two blocks from the Morgan Avenue L stop, where art studios, galleries, and live/work spaces have occupied old factory buildings since the 1990s. But new construction art studios are still uncommon in Bushwick and East Williamsburg, because hotels, restaurants and nightclubs generate more profits for landlords and developers. However, they offer a potential life raft for artists priced out of increasingly expensive work spaces in the neighborhood.
The building would rise four stories and reach 53 feet into the air on an empty lot. It would have 7,426 square feet of commercial space, beginning with retail space in the cellar and ground floor. Art studios would occupy the second, third and fourth floors, and there would be a roof deck.
Since the area’s manufacturing zoning doesn’t allow art studios as-of-right, the owner will have to get permission from the Board of Standards and Appeals in order to build.
Peter Mugavero of Bath Beach-based PJM Architect is the architect of record, and the owner is a Park Slope-based LLC headed by Dawson Stellberger. The 2,500-square-foot plot last sold a year ago for $855,000
We’ve heard about one other art studio project under construction nearby at 100 Bogart Street, a few blocks north of here between Johnson and Ingraham Avenues. The six-story building broke ground in February and will have 50 to 60 studios spread across 56,000 square feet.
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