Norten Design for BAM is Resurrected by Two Trees
Hey, remember this rendering? It bears more than a passing resemblance to the Enrique Norten/TEN Arquitectos design for the $135 million library that was supposed to be built in the BAM Cultural District. While those plans were scrapped last spring, the Sun is reporting that a glassy Norton building may yet rise on the lot…
Hey, remember this rendering? It bears more than a passing resemblance to the Enrique Norten/TEN Arquitectos design for the $135 million library that was supposed to be built in the BAM Cultural District. While those plans were scrapped last spring, the Sun is reporting that a glassy Norton building may yet rise on the lot where the library was slated to go. The new plans come via Two Trees, who want to develop a 371,000-square-foot building with 180 units of housing and 187,000 square feet of commercial space, with some of the latter set aside for community arts organizations. Two Trees would buy the site from the city for $20 million and transfer a nearby lot on Ashland Place, between Lafayette Avenue and Hanson, to BAM, which would use the property to build administrative offices and a 263-seat community and educational theater. All of this still needs city approval in order to happen.
Mixed-Use Facility Planned For Brooklyn Cultural District [NY Sun]
No Norten for BAM? [Brownstoner]
Rendering from The Sun.
Tish James may have campaigned for the little guy, but those were empty promises as evidenced in her extreme rent hikes at her property on 296 Lafayette. Though professionals such as me don’t count as low income renters, the remaining tenants certainly fell into that bracket. Her dwelling was a revolving door of tenants due to her yearly 10% rent hikes. The only promise she has fulfilled was that of greedy politician and ne’er do well community advocate. I’m hoping she has opposition that represents the needs of the entire community, one that keeps harmony between the gentrifiers and the low income residents. Her divisive rhetoric helps no one in the community. End her ride on the coat-tails of the impoverished and the downtrodden, petition to get a viable candidate on the ballot.
Camille Hyatt
The BK Visual & Perf Arts Library was designed to be 8 stories tall and 110,000 sq ft. Two Trees’ new design is 371,000 sq ft. And on that little triangular plot, the only way to accomodate another 261,000 sq ft is to build up. The building’s height will likely rival the Williamsburgh Savings Bank tower. Poor Willie The Clock! He never gets any respect. Not from Ratner. Not from the Walentas. Does anybody care about Willie?
Couple of questions:
1. Is this rendering above of the new building? It looks just like the old one – are they using the same design?
2. If they will be using a tower instead of the rendering above, is there any concern that it would cover one of Brooklyn’s oldest landmarks, the clocktower? How tall would they go?
To the person who made the Time Square comment at 9:30 – I don’t know if you were joking or not, but that’s just what I was thinking. Brooklyn’s own Time Square. But who’d want to live there? Don’t get me wrong. I know a buch of people probably will, but all that traffic would drive me bonkers.
Cool building, however. I’d love to see it built.
Guest 2:20, this really isn’t that large a project. It would still be completely viable if the developer paid market for the site. You may believe that any reasonably-sized project has to get a sweetheart deal from the City to be built, but the truth is that most projects aren’t given away for a song.
Clearly you are one of the people that believes that the great “Atlantic Yards Swindle” was just the city and state doing good business.
A scant few blocks away from this site, Massey Knakal has a nice development site for sale for $20,000,000 that has a maximum buildable square footage of 116,508. It’s for sale on the open market and is in the range of what Two Trees is paying for their development site, but it’s less than one-third of the buildable square footage.
http://www.masseyknakal.com/listingimages/setup/pdf/123livingston.pdf
Two Trees may be paying the right price for themselves, but they definitely aren’t paying market. Insider deals are fine when the City isn’t the seller and our tax dollars aren’t the subsidy.
2:32 — I bet that pledge to give space to community arts groups will vaporize when James’s latest rant blows over. BAM is the only org that will get anything out of this.
Even if Shahn’s numbers are wack, why isn’t this subject to an RFP? Cause Tish got whatever she was asking for so there ain’t nobody locally holding the city accountable?
$150-$170 per bsf? Keep dreaming. No real developer, capable of actually building that project would ever pay that. Two Trees is paying the right price.
Great news to keep going with the plan to make it a cultural district. Space for arts organizations would be awesome.