It’s been a year and a half since Cornell Realty filed plans for a massive four-building, 208-unit development at 902 Franklin Avenue in southern Crown Heights. Now, Cornell has nearly finished demolishing the series of squat industrial buildings on the site between Crown and Montgomery streets, which used to be a commercial laundry business.
Bushwick and Williamsburg have already started bracing for the MTA to shutdown the L train for 18 months starting in 2019, and many investors are looking elsewhere for development sites. But at the southern edge of the neighborhood, near the J train, new construction is still chugging along. New building applications were filed yesterday to build a seven-story residential building at 1010 Bushwick Avenue, between Grove and Linden streets at the southern edge of Bushwick.
When YIMBY dove into the history of 101-111 Murray Street in TriBeCa earlier this summer, foundation work was underway for a planned 58-story, 157-unit residential tower. Construction on the project is now three stories above street level, as seen in photos posted to the YIMBY Forums by user rbrome. The latest building permits indicate the tower, to rise 800 feet, will encompass 479,278 square feet. The ground floor will host 2,088 square feet of retail, followed by residential units starting on the fourth floor. The apartments, condominiums, should average 2,356 square feet apiece. They will be accompanied by 20,000 square feet of luxury amenities. Fisher Brothers, Witkoff, and New Valley are the developers. Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates is the design architect while Goldstein, Hill & West Architects is serving as the executive architect. MR Architecture + Décor and Rockwell Group are designing the interiors, and Edmund Hollander Landscape Architects is designing the area around the base. Completion is expected in 2018.
Over the spring, a team of developers entered into contract to acquire, from the Jehovah’s Witnesses, the 11-story, 739,000-square-foot commercial complex known as the Watchtower, at 25-30 Columbia Heights, in Brooklyn Heights. The team – now a joint venture between the Kushner Companies, CIM Group, and LIVWRK – have closed on the purchase for roughly $340 million, Commercial Observer reported. The new owners plan to convert the complex into creative office space, likely similar to how some of the same developers transformed the five-building complex now dubbed DUMBO Heights. The redevelopment is expected to begin within a year. In addition to the acquisition of 25-30 Columbia Heights, the same partnership is remains in contract to buy the vacant, block-encompassing development site at 85 Jay Street, in DUMBO.
Construction has been completed on the four-story (plus penthouse), 10-unit residential building under development at 434 Manhattan Avenue in Williamsburg. That’s on the corner with Bayard Street. YIMBY previously revealed schematic drawings of the project when foundation work was underway in the spring of 2015. The latest building permits show the building measures 10,262 square feet. The residential units should average 676 square feet apiece, indicative of rental apartments. Amenities include laundry facilities and a 302-square-foot recreational area on the ground floor. Borough Park-based Yoel Berkovitz is the developer and Beam Group is the design architect. Edward F. Zevallos Architect is serving as the architect of record. Occupancy can be expected very soon. The Lorimer Street/Metropolitan Avenue stop on the G and L trains is eight blocks away.
