A Striped 22-Story Hotel With Beer Garden Is Rising on Livingston in Downtown Brooklyn

A hotel rising on Livingston Street in Downtown Brooklyn will have an unusual striped facade. Plans for the 22-story building at 291 Livingston Street, a thin lot that stretches between Livingston and Grove Place, were filed in 2017 and approved in 2018. Building records show there will be 103 hotel rooms and a beer garden on the ground floor.

A rendering posted on the construction fence around the site is quite striking. It shows a thin, angled tower whose facade is covered in black and white stripes intersecting and converging, as if pieces of cloth were stitched together at angles, folded and wrapped around the building.

The building that was there, a two-story commercial building last home to fast-food retailer Wendy’s, was demolished in 2017. Since then, walls have risen about two stories and are visible over the top of the green construction fence on the Grove Street side of the property.

The development is set back from the street and is not flush with adjacent buildings so it’s hard to see.

Eli Karp of Hello Living, the brand-happy developer who favors bold, colorful designs and uniform building names, is the owner. The firm purchased the property from developer John Catsimatidis in 2017 for $11.1 million. Hello Living is developing the property in partnership with Aview Equities.

Representatives from Hello Living did not provide comment for this story in time for publication. Buildings with geometric patterns such as stripes and zig zags have also appeared in Bushwick.

Gene Kaufman is the architect of record. He has designed a number of buildings in Brooklyn, including a long list of Williamsburg buildings such as The Decora, The Lucent, The Residences at The Williamsburg and Schaefer Landing.

Interior renderings found on the architect’s website show a ground floor beer garden, which appears to be open to Livingston Street.

Additional interior renderings of the hotel rooms show a focus on glossy, pop aesthetics

The back of the hotel, which looks on Grove Place, borders two other current developments. The first, a mixed-use tower at 540 Fulton Street that will soon reach 43 stories, while the second is The Brooklyn Grove, a 27-story condo building designed by ODA.

On Livingston Street, it is almost directly across from the terra-cotta ornamented brick building at 308-310 Livingston Street, which is currently being demolished.

[Photos by Susan De Vries unless noted otherwise]

Update: Aview Equities reached out to say Hello Living is no longer involved in the development.

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