Empire Stores Is Getting a Beer Garden

The former coffee warehouses at Empire Stores will have a rooftop beer garden and an upscale restaurant, the Brooklyn Eagle reported. There’s a French brasserie slated for the ground floor, and developer Midtown Equities is in talks with a few well-known chefs who might open two other eateries in the huge brick building. Leases are out for all three food businesses, but they haven’t been signed yet. Ground-floor restaurants will face Brooklyn Bridge Park and its iconic views of the bridges and Manhattan. On the Water Street side, Midtown Equities is negotiating space with a yoga studio and a gym.

When construction on the landmark building finishes, Empire Stores will offer 430,000 feet of rentable space — 150,000 square feet of which has already been taken by furniture retailer West Elm and fancy coffee shop La Colombe. And the asking rents are high, even by Dumbo standards. Midtown Equities wants $90 per square foot for office space in a glass-faced rooftop addition, $65 a square foot on other floors, $150 a square foot on the ground floor facing the park, and $125 for the ground floor retail space facing Water Street, the Real Deal reported last year.

Eat, Drink and Be Merry – in Empire Stores’ Rooftop Beer Garden [Brooklyn Eagle]