Proposal revealed for 942-foot Downtown Brooklyn tower, would be the borough's 2nd-tallest

625 Fulton Street, Brooklyn. Source: The City of New York

Friday, Jun 28, 2019 By Vitali Ogorodnikov

The booming Brooklyn skyline is poised to get another near-supertall tower in the coming years. At a recent Community Board 2 meeting, developer Rabsky Group unveiled a proposal for a 942-foot, mixed-use tower, designed by the firm of Skidmore Owings & Merrill, at 625 Fulton Street. The nearly 80-story proposal would require a rezoning in order to surpass the current 821-foot limit.

The skyscraper would decisively anchor the Downtown Brooklyn skyline, together with 1,066-foot 9 DeKalb, under construction a few blocks west. Until further proposals inevitably surface, the pair would dominate the high-rise cluster, where the next-tallest building, the recently topped out Brooklyn Point, stands 720 feet tall, followed by 620-foot 11 Hoyt (also recently topped out), Hub (611 feet), and AVA DoBro (596 feet), all built in the past few years. Contenders such as 80 Flatbush (840 feet) and 205 Montague Street (700 feet) are also currently proposed.

The telescoping tower at 625 Fulton would feature 739,000 square feet of office space, 50,547 square feet of retail, and an 82,500-square-foot, 640-seat public elementary school. The residential portion would weigh in at 843,346 square feet, where a quarter of the 902 planned units would be affordable.

The balanced split of commercial, residential, and public space works in the spirit of Downtown Brooklyn’s ongoing mixing of uses. This environment stands in drastic contrast to the 1990’s, when the near-exclusive office district around the Metrotech Center emptied out every night, creating a desolate pedestrian gap in the midst of surrounding residential neighborhoods, such as Brooklyn Heights and Fort Greene.

625 Fulton Street, Brooklyn. Source: The City of New York

A 10,913-square-foot public plaza would provide much-needed breathing room at congested Fulton Street, while a 2,410-square-foot “enclosed publicly accessible area” would bring the action indoors.

Developers plan to break ground by 2020, and open the building’s doors in 2023.

The team behind the project makes its case for upzoning via an extensive rezoning proposal (PDF). A land use application has been filed with Brooklyn’s Community District 2 at the City Planning website.

625 Fulton Street, Brooklyn. Source: The City of New York

In a city rife with “subway deserts,” where numerous neighborhoods lack subway access, and racked with an acute housing crisis, dense development at transit-rich, commute-proximate nodes is crucial. Downtown Brooklyn’s tight tangle of subway lines, which put Manhattan within a five-minute ride, justifies the development’s ambitions scope and extensive program. The persistent drive to build bigger and denser testifies to the neighborhood’s enduring promise.

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Proposal revealed for 942-foot Downtown Brooklyn tower, would be the borough's 2nd-tallest

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