Rendering Remix: Will 205 Montague Street Be Too Tall for The Heights?
A property at 205 Montague Street — with air rights enabling a 700-foot-tall tower — just went on the market for a cool $200,000,000. That’s more than 250 feet taller than the oh-so-controversial proposed Brooklyn Heights replacement library and condo tower at 280 Cadman Plaza West. It’s also 282 feet higher than Brooklyn Heights’ tallest existing building….
A property at 205 Montague Street — with air rights enabling a 700-foot-tall tower — just went on the market for a cool $200,000,000. That’s more than 250 feet taller than the oh-so-controversial proposed Brooklyn Heights replacement library and condo tower at 280 Cadman Plaza West. It’s also 282 feet higher than Brooklyn Heights’ tallest existing building.
That record belongs to 16 Court Street, which is 418 feet tall and landmarked as part of the Borough Hall Skyscraper Historic District. (The district ends across the street from 205 Montague.)
205 Montague Street is technically in Brooklyn Heights. But it’s on that odd Manhattan-like block with a dozen banks, the world’s fanciest Chipotle, and the building whose new architect took those controversial drone pictures.
There’s a lot of action going on this neck of the hood. In addition to the drone-enabled redevelopment of neighboring 189 Montague, this site is on the corner of Cadman Plaza just one block south of Hillary Clinton’s HQ at One Pierrepont and the controversial Brooklyn Heights Library-into-condo-tower at 280 Cadman Plaza West.
Developer Midtown Equities bought 205 Montague in 2010 for $33,000,000 and paid another $3,200,000 to the city two years to remove old development restrictions on the property, according to Crain’s. Right now the property is home to a six-story modern office and retail building.
The six-story building at 205 Montague Street today. Photo by Christopher Bride for PropertyShark
Then, the developer bought some neighboring air rights in order to bring the possible size of any development at the site up to 300,000 square feet — potentially rising higher than 700 feet tall.
Cushman & Wakefield is handling the sale — the office of team lead Bob Knakal has been conveniently located inside of 205 Montague for several years — and they released a fancy bird’s eye rendering of a possible tower built on the site:
But as any selfie-taking millennial could tell you, the high-to-low angle has the effect of minimizing the impression of height. So Brownstoner took the liberty of creating a rendering remix (at top) using Hudson Companies’ latest artwork of the proposed tower at 280 Cadman Plaza West.
Would 700 feet be too tall? Or just raising the bar for this bit of Downtown Brooklyn?
[Rendering: Hudson Companies, modified by Brownstoner]
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Won’t someone think of the children who will be blown into the street? lol
Like corner high rise construction is a new thing. How many children have been blown into the street by wind in Manhattan in the last year?
Schools are a concern as well as daycare, kindergartens, high schools, supermakets ect. That is why its a mistake to build so many residential units in a business district. Brooklyn Heights can only take care of its own demands.
This whole idea Tucker Reed and DT Brooklyn council keeps pushing of a “24-7” neighborhood is not well though out. Like they say a jack of all trades is a jack of nothing. You will have neither a good place to do business nor a good place to live. The city should work not to re-purpose these districts but to optimize them for businesses and incentivize commercial building construction.
It means less jobs. Think about it. Today you have this 5 story office building with a couple of hundred decent paying white collar jobs. You replace this building with the condo tower proposed along with a retail base what do you have left? Id say 4 maintenance jobs for the building and tens of minimum wage retail jobs at the base. That is a lot of tax revenue and good jobs, companies lost by the city. The shortfall will have to be made up by you the taxpayer. Multiply this a hundred times and you have the Downtown Brooklyn of today.
Over 1 million square feet of commercial space has been lost to conversion or demolition in order for these condo/luxury residential towers to go up. Think of how many firms, companies small and large have left, how many jobs and revenue lost. If it was an office tower it would be awesome. However for 200 mil, it would be hard for a developer to justify that construction given the rents.
This mediocre skyline with cheap architecture is coming at a very high price.
Residential! Probably with some commercial on the ground floor.