Tower Twice the Height of Brooklyn's Tallest Is Probably Coming to Downtown Brooklyn

Brooklyn’s tallest tower has some serious competition in the works. Ava DoBro topped out earlier this year at 595 feet, but a tower nearly twice its size may be brewing for a lot just a block from the residential high rise, Crain’s reports.

Developer Michael Stern — he of the 1,400-foot-tall (and we mean tall) tower rising at 111 West 57th Street on Manhattan’s Billionaires’ Row — just made a $90,000,000 deal with developer pal Joe Chetrit of Chetrit Group to purchase the former Dime Savings Bank of New York at 9 Dekalb Avenue. The building is lovely. But no one thinks that Stern and Chetrit are in it for the classical architecture.

Buying the building comes with 300,000 square feet of air rights which would enable the duo to build a 600,000 square foot tower on an adjacent site they co-own at 340 Flatbush Avenue Extension, according to Crain’s. The building could be the city’s first to rise taller than 1,000 feet outside of Manhattan.

Brownstoner took the above photo just this morning, and added CityRealty‘s rendering of the possible new construction to show how very towering the tower may be.

Composite image of Joe Chetrit, Michael Stern, and 340 Flatbush Avenue Extension

Both Chetrit and Stern are known for sky-scraping projects — Stern is building tall towers on 57th Street in Manhattan, and Chetrit notably purchased and renamed Chicago’s Sears Tower before selling in 2014 and is planning a condo conversion of Manhattan’s Sony Tower.

These aren’t the first rumors of a 1,000-foot-plus Brooklyn tower by the duo. We saw this same 1,000-foot speculation last year after Stern and Chetrit purchased two low-rise buildings at 340 Flatbush Avenue Extension for $43,500,000 and bid on the neighboring site of Junior’s Cheesecake — presumably for the air rights.

They filed permits in June 2014 to build a 695-foot tall residential tower designed by SHoP Architects. Only months later, when Junior’s owner Alan Rosen decided not to sell, the Dime Savings Bank became the next obvious source of air rights.

The sale of the bank building gives them an additional 285,000 square feet of development rights they could use for building at 340 Flatbush Avenue Extension.

It’s possible that Stern and Chetrit will move forward with last year’s plan to build a merely 695-foot-tall tower — which would still be the tallest building in Brooklyn. The permits have yet to be approved. However, Crain’s speculates that the final design will be between 1,000 and 1,200 feet tall.

The Dime Savings Bank — built in 1907 and designed by Mowbray & Uffinger — is landmarked and in no danger of demolition. In fact, the building’s elegant colonnade and sculptured pediment was only just restored in 2008. Located in the midst of City Point, 340 Flatbush, and Fulton Mall, it will likely become high-end retail space.

Brooklyn May Soon Get a Tower as Tall as The Empire State Building [Crain’s]
340 Flatbush Avenue Extension Coverage [Brownstoner]
Dime Savings Bank Coverage [Brownstoner]
Rendering of tower by CityRealty