It’s hardly uncommon for an application to the Landmarks Preservation Commission, if it warrants a public hearing, to not get approved the first time it is presented. Usually, the second presentation comes a month or more later. Not this time. The revised proposal for one Brooklyn residential building came back to win approval just one week later.
As the city prepares to rezone a big swath of East New York, officials haven’t paid much attention to Brownsville, the smaller and poorer neighborhood next door. Despite Brownsville’s rough reputation, developers have started buying up property in the area.
As the Jehovah’s Witnesses place their Brooklyn properties on the market, the group has agreed to give the city $5.5 million towards rebuilding Bridge Park 2, located below the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway in DUMBO. The park has been in limbo for over a decade, and previous plans to renovate and upgrade the dilapidated site never came to fruition. The redesigned park could have a skate park and a multipurpose field, although the Parks Department will have to finalize the redesign, according to the Brooklyn Paper.
Arbie Development has filed applications for a four-story, seven-unit residential building at 105 Schenectady Avenue, in eastern Crown Heights, located five blocks away from the Utica Avenue stop on the A and C trains. The structure will measure 6,861 square feet in total and residential units will spread across 4,978 square feet, which means units will average a rental-sized 711 square feet each. One of the units on the fourth floor will feature a fifth-floor penthouse. Forest Hills-based ARC Architecture + Design Studio is the architect of record and an existing three-story townhouse must first be demolished.
Early last month, the first rendering surfaced of Chetrit Group’s planned hotel-condo conversion of the 37-story, 855,000 square-foot office building at 550 Madison Avenue, between East 55th and 56th Streets in Midtown. Sony Tower’s 14th through 20th floors will be converted into a 170-key and will be operated by Oetker Collection Masterpiece Hotels. The 21st through 43rd floors will be converted into 113 condominiums, but Real Estate Weekly now has details on the three stories of redesigned retail at the bottom of the building. The retail space, formerly occupied by Sony, will measure 25,451 square feet in total and will be split into four separate leases. Robert A.M. Stern is designing, and completion of the conversion is expected in early 2018.
