NY Sun: Downtown Brooklyn Is Booming
There’s a ton of information in today’s NY Sun article “Downtown Brooklyn Is Booming” — too much to fully cover in one blog post, so we’re going to focus on some of the things that we haven’t touched on recently or are news to us. Big picture: More than 5,000 condominium units and 2,000 hotel…
There’s a ton of information in today’s NY Sun article “Downtown Brooklyn Is Booming” — too much to fully cover in one blog post, so we’re going to focus on some of the things that we haven’t touched on recently or are news to us. Big picture: More than 5,000 condominium units and 2,000 hotel rooms are in the pipeline. Newsflash #1 is that The Smith (rendered at right), Leviev Boymelgreen’s project at Smith and Atlantic that seems to be dragging on forever, will have more hotel rooms(93) than condos (50). Forest City Ratner has more than just Atlantic Yards on its plate, with a one million-square-foot mixed use tower at 300 Jay Street planned and another 800,000-square-foot residential complex contemplated on the former site of Brooklyn Technical High School.
In hotel news, McSam Hotels will begin construction later this year of 200 moderately-priced rooms at Nevins and Scherhorn streets; the Lam Group is already building the adjacent 300-room Sheraton and 200-room Starwood Aloft on Duffield near Willoughby.
The Flatbush Avenue building boom, started by the Oro Condominium, will continue as well: AvalonBay will start on a 42-story residential tower on the southern portion of the block bounded by Gold Street, Flatbush Avenue, Myrtle Avenue, and Prince Street while nearby the North Development Group will kick off a 21-story condominium project at 85 Flatbush Extension.
“The demonstrated high demand for Brooklyn defines it as the leading destination for the young urban professional and growing families looking for affordable, high-quality housing, driving the absorption of new condominium development,” the president of Metropolitan Valuation Services, Steve Schleider, said.
Downtown Brooklyn Is Booming [NY Sun]
As a proud graduate of Brooklyn Technical High School, I hope this is not true. Tech means alot to me, both personally and professionally. I would hate to see them replace that building so that a bunch of over payed Yuppies can live in one of the most historical public school building in the city. The building serves as a symbol of what is right with the public school system in terms of educating poor, working and middle class students to gain an excellent education in this society.
I don’t know that FCRC has interest in any particular neighborhood where ultimately the building would be owned by someone else (condominium shareholders, for example). I think the company is only interested in fulfilling promises made as part of the Atlantic Yards project.
Interestingly, FCR also has its eye on some properties on Lincoln Road in PLG, including the current home of the Maple Street School. This surprises me because I didn’t know they had an interest in this part of Brooklyn. Then again, I guess greed knows few bounds…
hey BT alum… go to school’s website and find discussion of possibility of new school building
Real estate, 6:16 PM.
nice, only problem is lam and mcsam building the hotels – we can predict with 95% certainty that they will be eyesores..
Anon 6:59/BT Alum – I sincerely hope you’re right.
But all those luscious details you describe are probably giving Ratner a woody, thinking about how he can get his hands on them.
As a Brooklyn Tech alumnus, I can tell you that I have heard ZERO about any plans to re-locate, renovate or tamper with the High School in any way. There would be hell to pay from tens of thousands of proud grauduates, the local community and anyone interested in preserving a jewel of a school that has graduated innumerable professionals, industry leaders, scientists and politicians, not to mention a couple of billionaires, astronauts and nobel prize winners. The suggestion that the school would be moved to make way for some condo complex is not only silly but insulting. There are too many irreplaceable details to the building to list but they include a huge basement level swimming pool, an open air rooftop gymnasium, elevators with cast metal doors, a metal working foundry, multi-level rooms for architectural reconstructions, laboratories of all type, the second largest auditorium in the city (next to Lincoln Center)and a functional radio broadcast system complete with that large antenna that we can all see from accross the city. The ground level has rose marble floors with bronze inlays and WPA era murals, there are even wooden clocks to match the original wooden moldings throughout the school’s hallways for goodness sakes!
I’m pretty sure they meant the school’s football field a few blocks away as a possible site for development in the future, the football stadium donated by a generous Tech graduate a few years ago.
5:38, to what are you referring? The internet boom, the real estate boom, the EDC? Don’t get your point…