Eight-story residential building planned between Newswalk and site for 272-foot Atlantic Yards tower, opposite railyard

Spalding Building in background demolished for arena site

Here's a follow-up to my February 2009 post about three properties on Pacific Street just east of Sixth Avenue--two low-rise industrial buildings and a vacant lot to the east--put up for sale in February 2009.

As Brownstoner reported yesterday, Rheingold Developer Planning 86-Unit Building Near Barclays Center:

Developer Read Property is planning a eight-story apartment building just a block from the Barclays Center at 670 Pacific Street, according to a plan exam filed last week. The development will have 86 units and 61,058 square feet of residential space. Kutnicki Bernstein Architects is designing the building.
Planned amenities include a roof deck, storage for 43 bicycles, valet parking, recreation space and 65 underground parking spaces. Read is combining three properties at 670, 674 and 678 Pacific, but no sale has hit public records yet. ... If Read Property sounds familiar, it’s because they’re planning to build 10 eight-story buildings on the former Rheingold Brewery site in Bushwick.

It's actually less than half a block from the Barclays Center. It's next to the site for Building 15, a 272-foot residential tower stretching from Pacific Street to Dean Street just east of Sixth Avenue but also across the street from the Vanderbilt Yard and the site for a tower.

There could be some noisy construction for a while. And neighbors in the Newswalk condos to the east still report arena bass in their living rooms.

The two existing two-story buildings on the site totaling 15,400 total square feet. The current development rights allow for 61,600 square feet, with a Floor Area Ratio of 4, meaning four times the lot coverage or, if built to eight stories, half the lot coverage.

As Brownstoner noted, we don't know yet how much the new owner paid. It's a good bet the units will be all market-rate, since the project is as of right.

Larger neighbors

The three-story building at right in the photo above right, would be demolished for Building 15. That tower, left of the three plots shaded in red (670-674 Pacific Street) at left, may be one of the last built.

To build it, Forest City Ratner would have to purchase, under threat or use of eminent domain, three existing residential houses on Dean Street.

As shown in the photo at right, to the east of the new building is Newswalk, the condo building converted from a former Daily News printing plant that is ten stories and--my estimate--120+ feet high in its central section.

The blight irony

As I've pointed out, the state passed on the opportunity to declare the vacant lot blighted, since it wasn't included in the Atlantic Yards footprint, even though elsewhere in the footprint a vacant lot was designated as per se blighted.

That's because, as far as I can tell, Forest City only needed a plot of land 100 feet east of Sixth Avenue--the width of the existing dark gray building at left, and associated properties on Dean Street--to serve as a staging area.

But that was for a plan, later abandoned, to build four towers will building the arena.

The original ad

When Ingram & Hebron Realty marketed the three contiguous properties at 670-674-678 Pacific Street, it was billed as "[d]irectly across the street from $4 billion Atlantic Yards/Nets Arena project."

At that point, Atlantic Yards had been approved but was still in court.

The project has been approved by now, of course, though Phase 2 still faces a much-delayed Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS).