City Point, Flagship of Downtown Brooklyn's Transformation, Debuts With Century 21 Store

The multi-decade, multi-billion-dollar plan to transform Downtown Brooklyn advanced Tuesday with the opening of discount fashion mecca Century 21 Department Store at City Point.

Eager shoppers will have about three football fields of merch to finger in the four-story-high, 140,000-square-foot emporium at 445 Albee Square West, about half a block from Fulton Street.

It’s the second Brooklyn location for the 11-store New York metro area institution, which was founded in 1961 by cousins Al and Sonny Gindi. The original location in Bay Ridge still stands today.

In a ribbon-cutting ceremony at the sparkling new store, multiple generations of the Gindi family gathered, along with company representatives, store employees, and notable Brooklynites, including Borough President Eric Adams and Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Carlo Scissura.

“I haven’t been lost in a department store since I was three years old,” Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams joked, referring to the sizable surroundings. Speaking about Century 21’s new role as an anchor of Downtown Brooklyn, Adams said, “Just like in sports, you need a marquee player, a LeBron James, so to speak. With that marquee player, you can build a great team around it.”

“There are two types of Brooklynites – those who live here and those who wish they could,” he added.

Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce’s Scissura echoed Adams’ sentiments, praising the store for hiring local Brooklyn workers and aiding the local economy by investing in Brooklyn.

“Now Brooklyn is the hot place to be anywhere in the world,” he said. “Twelve or 13 years ago there was a vision to create a new Downtown Brooklyn, even though no one thought it was going to happen. But we’re living proof today that it did.”

While Century 21 is the first retailer to open at the downtown shopping hub, Target and dinner-with-a-movie chain Alamo Drafthouse Cinema are expected to follow any day now. Officials at Tuesday’s ceremony declined to say when the other retailers would open. Copenhagen-based design store Flying Tiger and Szechuan restaurant chain Han Dynasty recently signed leases.

Once the highly anticipated Trader Joe’s and mom-and-pop foodie wonderland DeKalb Market Food Hall open in 2017, the combined force of their draw will be a game-changer for Brooklyn, especially Downtown.

Given the combination of powerhouse retailers and food from celebrated venues around the five boroughs, City Point could well become a popular shopping destination rivaling some spots in Manhattan and pulling in tourists and residents around the region. It will certainly offer a plethora of options on the Fulton Mall in Downtown Brooklyn.

The shopping hub is part of a gigantic mixed-use mega-project comprising some 1.8 million square feet of apartments, stores and offices. The last of its three towers, made possible by a 2004 rezoning of Downtown Brooklyn, is expected to be completed around 2020.

The complex takes up an entire city block bounded by Fulton, Duffield, Willoughby and Gold streets at the east end of the Fulton Mall close to Flatbush Avenue. It replaced an earlier mall known as Albee Square Mall, which replaced the Art Deco-era Albee Square Theater.

City Point initially opened in 2012 with Armani Exchange as the first retailer, then shuttered in 2015, when construction resumed, as we reported at the time. A handful of towers have gone up in the area since the 2004 rezoning. In the works nearby are a 600-foot-high tower at 420 Albee Square and a super-tall tower 1,000 feet high at nearby 9 Dekalb Avenue, next to the landmarked Dime Savings Bank.

The growth of Downtown Brooklyn was initially planned as offices and has been more residential than expected.

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