The Park Slope branch of the Brooklyn Public Library, an individual landmark located at 431 6th Avenue, will be getting a reading circle and community garden. The Landmarks Preservation Commission approved the plan on Tuesday.
Ocean Hill, the triangular neighborhood just west of Broadway Junction in Brooklyn, has become the final frontier for developers priced out of Bed-Stuy and Crown Heights. Builders pick up decrepit row houses or empty lots in the area, and put up rentals that are generally cheaper than Stuyvesant Heights to the west.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo has revealed plans to expand the Jacob K. Javits Center, located at 655 West 34th Street on the far West Side, by 1.2 million square feet, Curbed reports. The already enormous convention center sits bound between Eleventh and Twelfth Avenues between West 34th and 39th Streets. With the expansion, the facility would measure 3.3 million square feet in total, 665,000 square feet of which would include brand-new meeting rooms and an exhibition hall. Some of the other additions would be a 58,000 square-foot ballroom, 22,000 square feet of outdoor event space, and a 633,000 square-foot truck garage.
Fareri Associates is planning to develop a three-million square-foot biotechnology research complex on roughly 80 acres of undeveloped land adjacent to the Westchester Medical Center and New York Medical College, in Valhalla. Dubbed the Westchester BioScience & Technology Center, it will, once complete, include 2,252,600 square feet of research facilities, 400,000 square feet of medical offices, and a 34,000 square-foot Children’s Living Science Center. In addition, a 100,000 square-foot hotel with 100 rooms and 114,000 square feet of ground-level retail are planned. The project will be built in phases and is being designed by Torti Gallas & Partners. Of the 80 acres of land, 43.6 acres of land will be preserved as green space. The developer must first lease roughly 60 acres of land from Westchester County, according to Westfair.
DDG and Westbrook Partners plan to convert the former Standish Hotel building at 169 Columbia Heights, in Brooklyn Heights, into condominium units, according to Crain’s. The team acquired the property from Taurus Investment Holdings for $60 million in the summer of 2015. Taurus had converted the 12-story building into 112 rental apartments last decade. It’s currently dubbed The Standish. It was not disclosed if the number of units will change after the conversion.
