Rendering Posted for Prominent Bed Stuy Development Site

The old Weinstein hardware store, which had long dominated a prominent corner in Bed Stuy, will be torn down to make way for  — well, not a shiny new building, but a glassy and rusty one. We’re not sure what the materials shown in the construction fence rendering at 420 Tompkins Avenue will be, but it looks like concrete, steel, glass and rusty Corten steel paneling.

The overall effect is a mix of the industrial with the glitzy that would play well in Williamsburg but looks jarring in largely 19th century Bed Stuy and, not surprisingly, already has Bed Stuy residents and preservationists upset, going by the emails and Facebook posts over the past week.

The puzzling lack of retail on the ground floor is a mistake, in our opinion. This is a major thoroughfare in Bed Stuy, on the Halsey bus line, and is the gateway to a large retail corridor (Tompkins) that is only getting bigger and bigger with such venues as Eugene & Co. and Bed-Vyne Wine and Brew.

The new-building permit calls for six stories and 44 units, so we’re guessing this will be a rental building. The developer is CS Management, which purchased the property in 2006 for $1,065,000 from Warren Weinstein, as BuzzBuzzHome reported last month. The architect is Charles Mallea Architect. The structure will have 30,704 square feet and include an exercise room, lounge, bike storage, and laundry room.

The well-known mural on the Halsey Street side has been covered up by the construction fence and will eventually be torn down. You can still see a tiny bit peeking over the fence on the Tompkins side in our photos below. You can see the whole thing in the NY Times video that ran last week (though we estimate the fence has been up for about three weeks, at least).

Also, as a commenter below notes, this is going in on the same block as the now-notorious 410 Tompkins, whose rendering with black birds circling above a facade with mirrored cracks prompted commenters to dub it the Bulgarian Neo-Goth Supervillian Crack Lair.

What do you think of the design?