19-Story Apartment Tower Climbs on Nursing Home Site in a Largely Low-Rise Area of Bushwick

Walking in the triangle created by Myrtle and Bushwick avenues and Stanhope Street in Bushwick, it’s impossible to miss the 19-story high-rise that has quickly gone up on the parking lot of a Cedar Street nursing home. The new build, topped out but still covered in scaffolding, protrudes into the skyline. Overshadowing its mostly two- to four-story neighbors, it is one of the neighborhood’s tallest buildings.

A work permit for the construction of the new apartment complex at 60 Cedar Street was issued by the Department of Buildings in March this year.

According to DOB filings, the tower will have 139 apartments, a 490-square-foot ambulatory health facility, and 153 parking spaces (117 of which will be covered and 20 of which will be for the adjacent nursing home). The development will have a garden located on the roof of the Buena Vida nursing home at 48 Cedar Street.

While no renderings are available for the development, zoning diagrams show a tall narrow building with four tiers and a landscaped front and back yard.

At a whooping 197 feet tall, 172 feet higher than its two-story row house neighbor at 72 Cedar Street, the building is a rarity for its height in Bushwick’s varied landscape. However, a similar sized 20-story development is in the works on Linden Street near Broadway.

By acquiring air rights from the nursing home, turning its roof into outdoor recreational space for residents, and leaving some of the site as open space, the building owner, listed in city records as Cedar Towers LLC, got the green light for the development in an area zoned R6.

The architect, Shmuel Wieder of S. Wieder Architect P.C., has set back the upper floors to abide by exposure sky plane laws.

Developing the nursing home’s parking lot with its leftover air rights was possibly the reasoning behind Fortis Business Holdings, TL Management, and nursing home operator Elizer Jay Zelman’s 2020 acquisition of the site from Riseboro Community Partnership for $58.75 million. (Fortis Business Holdings is an affiliate of Fortis Property Group, the prominent developer behind Olympia Dumbo and the controversial and troubled development of LICH in Cobble Hill.)

In June, the LLC offloaded the Buena Vida nursing home for $70 million to nursing home operator Solomein Klein under the name BV SNF Realty LLC, while keeping 60 Cedar, PincusCo reported at the time. On 60 Cedar’s new-building application, Brooklyn-based developer Louis Handler of Keren Star is listed as the property’s owner. Brownstoner reached out to Handler for comment on the plans but did not hear back.

Nonprofit community and senior service provider Riseboro Community Partnership developed the nursing home in 2001 after buying the site from the city in 1998 for $66,000.

Tax photos from the 1940s show the nursing home and its parking lot were once occupied by rows of two- and three-story houses. By the 1980s, those houses were gone, leaving behind empty, overgrown lots, tax photos from the time show.

In the mid-’90s, the city claimed the lots through condemnation as part of the Bushwick II Urban Renewal plan, before selling the land on to Riseboro in 1998 for the construction of a 260-bed nursing home, city records show.

[Photos by Anna Bradley-Smith unless otherwise noted]

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