DOB Approves Building Plans for Tower at Brooklyn Heights Library Site

By on December 30, 2016 9:23 am in Architecture, Brooklyn Heights, Development, Real Estate

Mary Frost of the Brooklyn Eagle reports that the Department of Buildings approved Hudson Companies’ plans for construction of a new 36-story tower at the site of the Brooklyn Heights Library. The plans include a smaller library branch, retail space on the ground floor, and 34 floors of luxury apartments. The tower’s future residents will have a new address and entrance at 1 Clinton St.

Hudson has yet to close the deal with Brooklyn Public Library for the site and DOB has yet to approve plans to demolish the existing building. However, BPL and Hudson signed a license agreement to allow pre-demo work, including asbestos removal, to start. Should the project be scrapped for any reason, Hudson must restore the site to the pre‐demo state (except Hudson can keep the asbestos). Once demo plans are approved by DOB, interior demolition will take approximately four to six weeks and exterior demolition will take four to eight weeks. The new building is expected to be finished in three to four years.

What about those classic stone friezes on the library façade? Hudson’s spokesperson told the Eagle that the company will carefully remove the reliefs and store them during the construction period. BPL will make the decision for how they are reused, but the spokesperson stated that BPL is “committed to making sure the reliefs are preserved either at the new branch or another location.”

 

Share this Story:

  • Cranberry Beret

    They should’ve just given the retail space to the library. I’m curious what type of tenant they expect for there. It’s pretty much a dead commercial zone, not a huge amount of foot traffic relative to the various nearby residential/office/park populations, because of the horrible pedestrian crossings at Tillary. Even the cell phone store at the corner of Pierrepont couldn’t make a go of it, and that’s closer to Montague and Borough Hall.

  • Andrew Porter

    205 Montague was put on sale a while ago. See this:

    http://tinyurl.com/jgfkqhm

    Then there’s a new WeWork space on Pierrepont, where the Bklyn Union Gas office used to be; also the new building coming, and renovated place on Pierrepont. Major changes coming to that corner of the Heights.

  • JUSTINE SWARTZ

    ppy New Year.. last day for a 2016.. tax deduction .. give to the ONLY lawsuit stopping this debacle http://www.lovebrooklynlibrariesinc. org…. also on facebook.. WE ARE IN APPEALS COURT NOW.. Contribute to our legal fund.. We will prevail.

  • B.

    As to “giving the retail space to the library”: That would be the intelligent, honorable, even gracious thing to have done — that is, if the library had to be sold, which was not the case.

    But remember that a stupid public is an easily led one. Lots of politicians and power brokers benefit when the rest of us don’t exercise our brains.

    For my generation and that of my parents and grandparents, gaining knowledge was the thing, and our libraries were the gateways to bettering ourselves. That is still true. The Cadman Plaza library was a crowded one. People came from all over, beyond the immediate neighborhood. People of all hues and economic statuses.

    Why would anyone want to stop that? And yet here we are. Who could have imagined, years ago, having to launch a lawsuit to protect a library?

  • PUFFS

    BRAVO

  • PUFFS

    Strongly recommend readers click on the Mary Frost
    article for complete details on the Eagle as well
    as attached comments on that site.
    One item missing in the cute Mary #2 rehash is the
    “minor detail” of WHERE IS THE MONEY?

  • Dalvec

    I thought they were planning on putting a school there. How is PS 8 going to accommodate all of the new Bk Heights residents?

  • Andrew Porter

    Initial plans called for a facilty linked to St. Ann’s but nothing came of this.

  • MaryT

    I seem to recall that any school would have been housed in a ‘below grade’ windowless basement area that was uninhabitable? Argh.

  • Andrew Porter

    You can’t go too far below grade, because the subway lines pass below this area.