Last year, the de Blasio administration rolled out a program designed to encourage developers to build one- to four-family homes on small city-owned lots. Now the city has filed plans to develop townhouses on 16 vacant properties in East New York, Ocean Hill and Brownsville.
The single-purpose commercial district is a staple of the city’s urban patchwork, whether it is the Diamond District at 47th Street and Fifth Avenue in Midtown, the Lighting District along the Bowery, or the former Radio Row in Lower Manhattan. Among these spaces, the Flower District in Midtown South is among the most unique. The concrete jungle meets the green jungle on sidewalks lined with rows of flowers and shrubbery. Yet while the District has been around for over a century, ongoing transformations are shaking its identity to the core.
Back in June of 2014, YIMBY reported on new building applications filed by JDS Development for a tower coming to 340 Flatbush Avenue Ext., on the southeastern edge of Downtown Brooklyn. Now, we have the first rendering and actual details for the SHoP-designed tower, which will rise 1,000 feet tall, claiming the title of New York City’s tallest building outside of Manhattan, and giving Brooklyn its first legitimate supertall skyscraper.
With the soon-to-be 777-foot-tall 45 East 22nd Street now climbing quickly into the Flatiron District’s skyline, YIMBY sat down with developer Bruce Eichner to discuss the building’s progress, the surrounding neighborhood’s rapid evolution, as well as what else might be on the horizon for Continuum. YIMBY in bold.
Within the past few months, motorists on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and nearby residents witnessed the rise of a tower crane to the east of the Kosciuszko Bridge, followed by two concrete pillars. They are seeing the progress on the east span of the Kosciuszko Bridge Replacement, the city’s first major new bridge since the Verrazano-Narrows opened over half a century ago in 1964.
