400 Bedford Avenue
Architect: Bricolage/Henry Radusky

In the latest installment of “What Recession?” Week, our inadvertent look at projects that are (or may be) starting up, moving forward or finishing despite the iffy housing market, we bring you 400 Bedford Avenue. This is the site at the northwest corner of Bedford and South 6th/Broadway, directly across from the King’s County Savings Bank/Williamsburg Art & Historical Center building. At some point in the 1990s a building was constructed on part of the site (in the Taco Bell style), and as recently as 2004 it was still there (somehow it doesn’t surprise us that neither of these events appear in the DOB record).

Plans were filed for a new building in October, 2007 but only approved in February of this year. A permit was pulled for foundation work in March and since then, progress has been quick – the steel is up to one story and higher.

For the record, the building projected for the site will be six stories tall with retail stores on the ground floor (good move) and an “ambulatory health care facility” on the second (community facility bonus); there will be eight residential units on the top four floors. The architect for the project is Henry Radusky of Bricolage, so it is sure to be a worthy complement to its neighbor across the street, one of Williamsburg’s premier landmarks.