Crain’s reports that the former Matchett Candy Factory at Wythe and South 4th, one of the handsomest old factory buildings in Williamsburg, is fully rented. Further evidence (viz. 175 Kent) that the market for rentals in former condo developments remains very strong in North Brooklyn. (The market for condos isn’t doing too bad either, but clearly the market right now is in rentals.)
This isn’t really news – the developer has been talking up some sort of gallery or museum for months. And the Crain’s report doesn’t really add much in the way of definitiveness – the whole project, including the vacant lot next door, is still pretty ill-defined.
The architect for the project talks up the challenges of creating a museum in a landmark interior (can’t hang art on the landmarked walls?!?). Which is pretty rich when you consider that parts of the Metropolitan are landmarked, and they get by just fine. Even better, apparently without irony, the rest of the Crain’s article is about the challenge of fitting drugstores, and a host of other corporate retail establishments into landmark interiors. if Duane Reade can figure out to squeeze themselves into a landmark interior, you’d think a museum would be a piece of cake.
It will be interesting to see what this developer comes up for the space – no doubt it’s a challenge dealing with designated interiors, but he’s not the first to cross this river. Yes, it will be some of mix of hotel, gallery/museum and catering hall. But so far, the only thing that is definite is the catering – the knee-jerk, least creative use for bank interiors. And we knew that a year ago – the fact that the development team is still floating vague ideas doesn’t inspire confidence.
[via Brownstoner]
The hulking steel skeleton of stalled development at Bedford and North 4th is back in play at bankruptcy court, as two developers fight for control of the property. The property had been tied up with urban renewal restrictions through 2009, though the current owner had proposed a deal to get out of those restrictions back in ’07 or ’08.
City closes a Bronx school after it finds elevated levels of trichloroethylene, a legacy of the industrial uses that occupied the property before it was a school.
From Curbed, 11 Broadway gets a new (tan) facade. The building is about halfway up, and Curbed reports that it is slated to open (possibly with a grocery store) towards the end of 2012.
The Wooden House Project is a new blog by Elizabeth Finkelstein that deals with Brooklyn’s wood-frame row houses. The site is well-designed and content-rich, and it’s a subject that is very near to my heart, so I am looking forward to some good things. If this post is any indication, this site has a lot of promise.
[via @Brooklynology]
Also from the Real Deal, 33 Nassau Avenue (you probably know it as the Spritzenhaus Building) is leasing monthly office space on its second floor.
The Real Deal reports that 175 Kent Avenue – a 112-unit building at the corner of North 3rd Street – is now full leased.
What really caught my eye, though, was some of the broker babble:
The 112-unit rental conversion at 175 Kent Avenue…
Conversion from what? This is a new building. Never lived in. Doesn’t a building have to have some sort of prior use to be a conversion?
…the Williamsburg waterfront property…
The waterfront is a block away. Now either side of Kent Avenue is “waterfront”.
The Newtown Creek Boathouse proposal, which was the top-ranked project for funding under the State-administered fund established to mitigate the City’s ongoing pollution of the creek during the construction of the Newtown Creek Waste Management plant may run aground because of the Federal designation of the creek as a Superfund site.
Got that?
The Daily News reports today that the City is reneging on one of the key components of the 2005 Greenpoint/Williamsburg rezoning – the 28-acre Bushwick Inlet Park. The park – which would straddle Greenpoint and Williamsburg – was the centerpiece of the City’s open space plan under the rezoning.
In the six years since the rezoning, the City has acquired less than a third of the property that was to make up the park. In a letter to one of the property owners on the site, the Parks Department is now saying that it has “no schedule for the acquisition of the site” (a position which was apparently reiterated by other City officials in a meeting with the Community Advisory Board last week).
In the 2005 rezoning, the City promised that it would add roughly 38 acres to North Brooklyn. Six years – and thousands of new housing units – later, less than 3 acres of that is actual, usable open space. The rest is 35 acres of broken promises and, ultimately, a ruined rezoning.
