City Council approves 72-story Downtown Brooklyn tower with 1,200+ apartments
All renderings courtesy of Binyan Studio and TenBerke Architects
The New York City Council on Tuesday approved a plan to transform a Downtown Brooklyn office building into a massive mixed-use tower with over 1,200 new homes. The existing city-owned seven-story office tower at 385 Flatbush Avenue Extension will be replaced with a 72-story building, set to become the second-tallest building in the borough after The Brooklyn Tower. The project includes 1,263 new housing units, including 325 affordable apartments for households earning an average of 60 percent of the area median income (AMI).
Developed by Rabina and Park Tower Group and designed by TenBerke Architects, the project will replace the 1970s commercial building with an 840-foot-tall skyscraper containing roughly 1.23 million square feet of residential space and 210,000 square feet of office, retail, and community facilities, as 6sqft previously reported.
Plans also include 10,000 square feet of streetscape improvements, including the reconfiguration of one of the neighborhood’s busiest intersections and upgrades that complement the recently redesigned Fulton Mall.
The development will feature a 4,750-square-foot privately maintained public plaza with landscaping and seating, providing much-needed open space in the area. The project will also widen sidewalks along key corridors and improve access to the heavily trafficked DeKalb Avenue subway station.
As part of negotiations with the Council, the 325 affordable units will be offered under Mandatory Inclusionary Housing (MIH) Option 1, which requires 25 percent of units set aside for residents averaging 60 percent of the AMI, which translates to $97,200 annually for a family of four. The development will include a mix of studios, one-bedrooms, two-bedrooms, and three-bedrooms, with 25 percent (nearly 350 units) expected to be “family-sized” two- and three-bedroom units.
According to Council Member Crystal Hudson, who represents the district, the Council also secured a $1 million investment in Fort Greene Park over 10 years.
Additionally, the project will add 66,000 square feet of retail space and approximately 75,000 square feet of commercial office or community facility space, designed for use by the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene as offices, clinics, and community facilities.
The land is owned by the city and subject to a ground lease with Rabina and Park Tower Group through February 2072. The project will be among the first to take advantage of the recently lifted cap on residential density, increasing its floor area ratio from the previous limit of 12 to 21.8.
The developers also plan to apply for the 485x property tax incentive, which, because of the project’s size and location, requires them to pay higher wages to construction workers. They have committed to a 25 percent Minority and Women-owned Business Enterprise (MWBE) participation, meeting the city’s HireNYC labor standards for building operations, and are incorporating an all-electric design.
Former Mayor Eric Adams first unveiled the project last May, lauding it as a new benchmark for urban design and development across the five boroughs. The proposal entered public review in August.
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