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Demolition has begun on a group of buildings at 401-411 Bridge Street to clear the way for the glassy new H&M store scheduled to open at the corner of Fulton and Bridge streets on the Fulton Mall. 401 Bridge Street, a cute building with some historic windows you can see in pre-demolition form after the jump, was being torn into when we passed by on Monday, although the building permit is only for a partial demo. 405-9 Bridge Street was already done for, and the brick building on at 411 Bridge/497 Fulton also had work being done. (That building is approved for a partial and interior demo.) All the buildings are owned by Al Laboz’s United American Land. As you can see from the renderings above, the new structure appears to be slightly smaller than the one that the landlord originally envisioned more than two years ago.

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401 Bridge Street via Property Shark


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  1. I agree, MM. I really miss the old shops on Bridge St. Would have been nice if the new could have lived side by side with the old, but that’s not how the city works. It’s all or nothing.

  2. The new builing renderings don’t look awful. Don’t know enough about the old building or condition to really comment.

    I miss Save-a-Thon and the fabric stores that were on Bridge Street. But H&M seems like a good fit for Fulton Mall area.

  3. I mourn downtown Brooklyn’s answer to the garment center’s retail row. Both sides of Bridge between Fulton and Willoughby were once filled with fabric, trim/notions and sewing machine shops. In the 80’s, when I was doing costuming, I never had to leave Brooklyn. There were some great shops, great deals. Alas, the best of them packed up in the 90’s, and by last year, there were only one or two left, and they weren’t the better ones. It’s too bad they couldn’t have relocated, but that ship sailed a long time ago.

  4. Not just “slightly smaller”. That’s a dramatic downscaling of the proposed new building from 4 stories to 2. Unless there was some weird zoning variance failure, that’s a surprising counterpoint to the generally optimistic vibe about Fulton Mall.