London Co-Living Firm The Collective Taps ODA to Design 27-Story Building on Broadway in 'Burg

Well-known architecture firm ODA is designing a 27-story hotel and apartment building on Broadway in Williamsburg, next to the stately old Lincoln Savings Bank. It will become the New York City flagship of London-based co-living firm The Collective, which is also developing the old Slave Theater site in Bed Stuy and revamping the Paper Factory Hotel in Long Island City.

The massive structure will take up about half the block and have a rooftop pool, underground parking for 180 cars, a hammam or Turkish bath, 293 hotel rooms and 254 apartments, DOB filings show. On the ground floor will be a market hall, community space and stores. Event spaces, terraces, a gym, laundry, meeting rooms and numerous “amenity lounges” will be scattered throughout.

Filed under the address 24 Boerum Street, the new building will eventually be known as 555 Broadway and cover what are now five separate lots, all empty except for one housing an old one-story factory. The triangular-shaped block faces the elevated train tracks along Broadway and is bounded by Boerum and Lorimer streets on its other sides.

The only other structures on the block are the early 20th century Lincoln Savings Bank at 545 Broadway and a condo building that opened in 1999 at 14 Boerum Street in a former telephone exchange belonging to the New York Telephone Company. (The Lincoln Savings Bank, recently slated to become a 27-story tower, sold its air rights to the London firm and will remain a four-story office building, according to the most recent DOB filings.)

The complex will cost $450 million to develop, and be the “biggest co-living project” in New York City, offering “expansive space to members and the public, including a market hall, restaurant, community gardens, wellbeing center and rooftop pool,” the company said in a press release earlier this year. Cultural programming will focus on “urban innovation and entrepreneurship” and “draw from the rich local culture surrounding it and look to become a focal point and a nexus for Brooklyn’s wonderfully varied population.”

Both it and the Slave Theater site are aiming to open in 2022. The firm, which has opened two co-living spots with 1,255 rooms in London since 2016 and has ambitious plans to expand internationally, caters to an increasingly mobile and global society, founder and CEO Reza Merchant told Brownstoner. New York YIMBY was the first to note the application for a new building, filed June 27.

Another architect known for Brooklyn projects, Morris Adjmi worked on plans for the Slave Theater site before The Collective bought the property.

ODA is famed for its variations on the design theme of stacked or irregular boxes. The Manhattan-based company is prominent in Brooklyn, with dozens of projects throughout the borough, including 10 Jay Street in Dumbo and Eliot Spitzer’s jagged glassy towers at 420 Kent Avenue in Williamsburg. Renderings for 555 Broadway are not yet available, a Collective spokeswoman told Brownstoner.

Coworking and co-living are making a noticeable impact on real estate in Brooklyn, where there are a myriad of coworking spaces. Co-living company Common now runs 10 co-living places in Brooklyn.

“We are very focused not just on how people feel in our spaces, but what they might become there,” said Merchant in a prepared statement. “We take a huge amount of inspiration from Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and believe it is our duty to cater to all levels of the pyramid — starting from essentials like food and shelter, all the way to the top, which is self-actualization.”

Related Stories

• London Co-Living Firm Buys Slave Theater for $32.5 Million, Plans ‘Cultural Programming’
• Common Opens 10th Brooklyn Location in Landmarked Clinton Hill Brownstone
• Black Pride, Kung Fu and Social Justice: The Life and Times of Bed Stuy’s Slave Theater

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