Permits Filed for First Building in Massive 10-Building Rheingold Brewery Complex

Developer Read Property Group is moving ahead with its massive for-profit development that will transform Bushwick. Permits for the first of 10 buildings were filed yesterday, as New York YIMBY was the first to report.

The building at 123 Melrose Street (outlined in the right bottom corner, above) will have eight stories and 385 units over 285,000 square feet of residential space. YIMBY notes that works out to an average of just under 740 square feet per unit. The Schedule A calls for 64 units per floor on the middle floors, with 11 units on the penthouse level. It sounds like rentals, although we don’t know that for sure. The developer agreed to make 30 percent of the apartments in the complex affordable in exchange for a zoning variance granted in the last days of the Bloomberg administration, though we don’t know how many affordable units this particular building will have. The mostly empty site was previously zoned for industrial use only.

Bushwick has a significant amount of affordable housing, much of it built under the reign of ex-state Assemblyman Vito Lopez, but the size of this for-profit complex will probably rival only Hope Gardens, public housing built on the ruins of the fires that swept Bushwick in the 1970s.

Permits Filed: 123 Melrose Street, 385-Unit Rheingold Brewery Building in Bushwick [NYY]
Rheingold Coverage [Brownstoner]
Image by Meredith Hoffman for DNAinfo