19 Rockwell Place (Credit: Daniel Goldner Architects)
The jumble of streets at the junction of Downtown Brooklyn and Fort Greene are on a vertical growth spurt with just about every corner sprouting new residential towers. Some of these new builds are thoughtfully designed, others...not so much. But taken together, they’re thousands of units will add much-needed housing stock and may ease some of the pressure on Brooklyn’s surrounding rowhouse neighborhoods, where rapid displacement and soaring rents are at crises levels.
To sate the relentless demand for housing, both 'affordable' and market-rate, 19 Rockwell Place will join a booming cast of neighbors that include soon-to-open The Brook, The Rocklyn, Fulton Greene, 89 Dekalb Avenue, and 98 Dekalb Avenue (yes, that’s a lot of projects to keep up with).
The tower will host 174 rental apartments, ranging from studios to two-bedrooms. It’s being developed by Chesky Rosen, with New York Developers & Management handling construction. The building was designed by Daniel Goldner Architects, who’ve given it a distinctive look: a saw-toothed façade of folded aluminum panels and staggered trapezoidal balconies, ensuring that 90% of units have outdoor space.
Renderings show the building inside and out will sport clean lines, calming neutral palettes, and touches of greenery, including a green wall at the at the entrance. The apartments promise to be on the more efficient size, considering it is packing 174 units across 120,000 square feet of residential floor area.
The 304-foot tower quietly topped out last fall (as first reported by YIMBY) and has since been wrapped in netting as crews work to enclose the concrete frame. Move-ins are likely to begin in late 2025 or early 2026.
Amenities will include a rooftop lounge and on-site parking, soon to be a rarer amenity in the wake of the City of Yes zoning overhaul that scrapped parking mandates in Downtown Brooklyn.
All renderings credit to Daniel Goldner Architects
The surrounding stretch of Rockwell Place, from the LIU campus at Dekalb to Flatbush Avenue, has become Brooklyn's mightiest urban canyon. This two-block corridor will be flanked by eight towers rising 40+ stories, creating a dramatic and slightly intimidating corridor of density.
Most of the new buildings in this area are rentals, though Charney Companies’ 45-story condo at 95 Rockwell Place is set to start foundation work soon, bringing some ownership options into the mix.
If there’s any spot in the borough that can handle this kind of density, Fulton and Flatbush Avenue Ext. might be it. Below ground, it’s a tangle of subway lines: the B, Q, R at Dekalb Avenue and the 2, 3, 4, 5 at Nevins Street, making for easy commutes to Manhattan and other parts of the city. Above ground, a growing ecosystem of amenities includes City Point, Atlantic Center Mall, and the borough's famous mix of small mom and pop businesses.
The hope is that the thousands of incoming residents will patronize the small businesses in area, including along Fulton Street Mall, where an increasing number of retail vacancies. With reasonable rents, a new influx of neighbors will bring the kind of foot traffic that keeps this vital commercial corridor humming.
Construction as of May 2025 (CityRealty)
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