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The upscale modern makeover of the park-end of Prospect Heights that began with the Richard Meier-designed On Prospect Park will continue with the construction of a 10-story triangular wedge of a building designed by Gene Kaufman on the site of an old laundromat on the corner of Underhill and St. John’s Place. Plans for the structure (which is technically an alteration not a new building) have been approved for over a year but work won’t begin in earnest until the Fall. Here’s the blurb from Kaufman’s website:

This triangular lot was actually so small that new development was prohibited, but through a complicated process, approval was obtained to enlarge an existing laundromat to ten stories for residential use and the full floor area allowed by zoning. The core was set against the inner wall, with one unit per floor in the base and duplexes comprising two full floors in the tower of the setback upper floors to take full advantage of the two long street facades. The metal panel clad apartments and the brick service core provide an exterior reading of the plan and a dialogue between closely nested elements on a vestigial slice of land.

It would certainly be interesting to know more about the “complicated process” by which approval was obtained. More renderings on the jump. GMAP P*Shark DOB

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What's Your Take? Leave a Comment

  1. hey you assholes out there.
    a/ so what the guy is black and very wealthy one up for us.
    b/ these blogs just help to show that white americans are still the most racist people in the world,remember your place on the totem pole (last race not first)
    c/this neighborhood does not need you in it. this area or any other in the immediate brooklyn area is not Iowa,Oregon,Texas are any other suburb you may be dreaming it to be.
    d/I wonder with all these comments you make when you see everything come to homogenization will you still want to follow us for culture because its obvious you have none and as you still want to be like us when we go everything goes with us.
    e/ get a life-you are not special anymore.
    hurray for that wonderful guy. the black millionaire

  2. I have lived in this neighborhood all my life and i grew up on Lincoln place and I must say that I like the improvements I’ve seen in the last 10 years , Prospect Heights is really getting on the map! It is thou very unfortunate that a lot of good people are going to be priced out of this neighborhood including those first brave souls who came into this neighborhood in the early nighties and helped start the revival process they made this neighborhood cool ,and now there richer cowardly counterparts are now flooding the neighborhood . You will know when the neighborhood has completely gone to crap when God forbid a star bucks opens up on Washington ave then its game over. Oh by the way Lincoln place is no way shape or form hot , nothing happens on this block anymore its become pretty gentrified and getting more so everyday,don’t get me wrong most of these buildings are rent stabilized so the racial mix will be balanced for years to come so if your looking for a future Caucasian utopia this is not the neighborhood for you but if you want to live in a neighborhood with a diverse racial mix with good relations amongst the groups plus easy access to the parks , library, museum, Manhattan etc… then Prospect Heights maybe your cup of tea. I just wanted to say one more thing ,that new building there going to build on what is now the old laundromat site looks like crap its so out of character with the neighborhood very sad indeed.

  3. All of this yuppie propaganda is kind of sickening. You come in with your big money and start talking shit on the locals who have been here for 40 years??! The guy who has the dogs (not pits) on the corner of St. Jonh’s & Underhill happens to be a great guy and the dogs are sweet as well. Check yourself before you start posting negative things about the people that are the very fabric of this neighborhood- good or bad. It’s people like you that are going to ruin this neighborhood. It has the potential and resources to be an amazing hood but yuppies come in in droves and want to turn it into Massachusetts. Hopefully you get jumped and head back to the slope cause you don’t belong here..