A major commercial project has officially topped-out at 25 Kent Avenue, Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The building will bring a phenomenal amount of office space to the area, along with room for retail and production facilities. Rubenstein Partners and Heritage Equity Partners are developing the full-block eight-story structure.
It was only last summer that the latest major addition to Williamsburg’s nascent office development boom had received a special permit from the City. Now, construction on 25 Kent Avenue is well underway, with the latest from 5B Films showing the first floor beginning to rise.
Since façade installation was underway earlier this year on Columbia University Medical Center’s 15-story, 107,299 square-foot Medical and Graduate Education Building at 104 Haven Avenue, in Washington Heights, construction has wrapped up entirely. Photos of the completed 196-foot-tall building can be seen in a Curbed NY report. The new academic building will feature a lobby and café on the ground floor, a piano room and a 275-seat auditorium on the second and third floors, and a mix of lecture halls, classrooms, offices, and laboratories on the fourth through 14th floors. Diller Scofidio + Renfro is the design architect, while Gensler Architects is serving as the architect of record. The facility will open on August 16.
In early January, the city’s Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP) kicked off for Heritage Equity Partners’ planned eight-story, 400,000-square-foot office/manufacturing building at 25 Kent Avenue, in northern Williamsburg. Now, the City Planning Commission is expected to support rezoning the block for the project, Crain’s reports. But the approval comes at the expense of the proposed neighborhood rezoning, which would establish an “Enhanced Business District” over most of the North Williamsburg Industrial Business Zone (IBZ), allowing for the surrounding blocks to be developed similar to 25 Kent Avenue. The rezoning would grant developers a boost in allowed commercial FAR in exchange for the inclusion of light manufacturing space, identical to a normal community facility FAR bonus. City Planning is expected to approve the application later this month, at which point the City Council will vote on the project. Mayor Bill de Blasio will complete the ULURP review if he decides to sign off on City Council’s pending approval. Rubenstein Partners is partnered in the project, and Gensler and Hollwich Kushner Architecture (a.k.a HWKN) is designing.
One of New York City’s most magnificent public spaces will be getting some upgrades. On Tuesday, the Landmarks Preservation Commission approved changes to the atrium of the Ford Foundation Building at 320 East 43rd Street.
