Greenpoint Complex Hotel

Greenpoint’s former “Forgotten City” has been remembered by longtime deed holders Jack and Joshua Guttman of Pearl Realty Management.

The father-son development team filed permits Wednesday with the Department of Buildings to convert part of the historic Greenpoint Terminal Market into a 155-key, 84,000-square-foot, nine-story hotel. In addition to the hotel rooms, the industrial warehouses will get a ground-floor restaurant, retail space, bar, gym and rooftop pool.

The Guttmans have owned the sprawling, historic complex since 2001, when they purchased it for $25,000,000. Since then, little has been done with the building officially addressed as 60 West Street, besides the barring of the lower floors from would-be trespassers, and the haphazard gut job that occurred after a 10-alarm fire ravaged buildings in the 14-acre, six-block complex in 2006.

Prior to the fire, the Municipal Art Society had suggested landmarking the structures. As longtime readers may recall, the fire was investigated as suspicious but owner Joshua Guttman was not charged. The city charged and convicted a homeless man for igniting the fire.

Manhattan-based FXFOWLE will be the project architect for the conversion. The 35-year-old-plus firm handles interior design, planning and urban development in addition to architecture around the world.

Its Brooklyn projects include Northside Piers, Navy Green, BAM North Site 1, and the controversial Long Island College Hospital development in Cobble Hill.

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67 West Street

The sprawling industrial space was formerly home to one of America’s biggest rope-making factories and the second-largest employer in Brooklyn. Other moments in its history include a famous labor riot, a short life as a squat and later as a popular destination for urban exploration. “The Forgotten City” is its nickname.

The new Greenpoint Terminal Market hotel will not be the Guttmans’ first development in the area. Just last year they opened the nearby Brooklyn Expo Center at 72 Noble Street.

The Guttmans have also made progress developing other warehouse buildings in the complex, including five-story 67 West Street, which fared comparatively well in the fire and is now a glassy event-and-gallery space that also includes artist studios.

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Part of the complex following the fire. Photo by Vidiot.

Despite rapidly rising rents in the area, Greenpoint has not yet experienced the same glut of hotel construction other neighborhoods have (excluding, of course, the proliferation of Airbnbs in the area). Thus, the Greenpoint Terminal Market conversion could mark another significant shift for Greenpoint, bringing swaths of out-of-towners to a sparsely populated industrial strip.

Only now is the industrial waterfront area beginning to be developed, following the 2005 rezoning that has transformed Williamsburg.

Permits for the hotel were filed the same week as de Blasio announced a plan to increase limitations on hotels attempting to build as-of-right in protected industrial business zones.

[Source: TRD | Top photo: Hannah Frishberg]

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