One of the big empty lots in Williamsburg’s Broadway Triangle is about to become a seven-story apartment building. Plans were filed yesterday to erect a 70-foot-tall residential development at 7 Whipple Street, on the corner of Flushing Avenue.
The IFC Center, deeply in need of more space, is one step closer to an expansion. The Landmarks Preservation Commission recently approved plans for the movie theater at Sixth Avenue and West 3rd Street to expand to a vacant lot behind it at 14-16 Cornelia Street. That would bump IFC’s five theaters seating a total of 480 people to 11 theaters seating a total of 948 people, while also clearing out the sidewalk with added lobby space.
The industrial zone along the waterfront in Sunset Park is a remnant of when the area was filled with cold storage warehouses, major international shipping operations, and heavy industry that ranged from canneries to ammunition factories. The blocks between Third and Fourth Avenue, just east of the Gowanus Expressway, have always felt a little more transitional, because they mix low-slung warehouses with little prewar townhouses. But the neighborhood’s zoning prevents new residential construction, and all the new buildings that sprout here are budget hotels. One such hotel is in the works at 142 33rd Street, across the street from two more newly finished hotels.
The existing building has been completely demolished at 11-51 47th Avenue on the southern tip of Long Island City, clearing the way for the 11-story condominium tower that will house 56 units and rise 125 feet.
Property owner Kenneth Wong has filed applications for a four-story, two-unit residential building at 2125 72nd Street, in Bensonhurst, located 10 blocks south of the 20th Avenue stop on the N train. The structure will measure 4,050 square feet in total, and the family-sized units will average a very spacious 2,025 square feet apiece, spanning across two full floors. Anthony Lee’s Lower Manhattan-based AJR Architecture is the applicant of record. A very recessed, single-family home must first be demolished.
