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BAM! Housing project is out of the cultural district

By Mike McLaughlin
The Brooklyn Paper
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When this map was made last year, only one of the projects was stalled. Now, they all are.

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A major mixed-income apartment tower planned for the BAM Cultural District is off the table due to the convulsions of the real-estate market, The Brooklyn Paper has learned.

The 187-unit tower, which would contain 100 sub-market-rate rentals, was planned for the corner of Fulton Street and Ashland Place, but will not happen anytime soon — the latest troubles inside the Fort Greene enclave targeted to become the so-called Lincoln Center of Brooklyn.

“This is our most difficult project,” said Kate Dixon, director of planning and development for the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership, a quasi-governmental group overseeing development in the area. “The mixed-use developments are feeling the most from the current economic situation,” she said during a panel discussion on Monday night.

The city Department of Housing Preservation and Development confirmed that this joint construction effort with Studio MDA and the Gotham Group is on hold due to a “shaky market,” said a department spokesman.

The centerpiece to the whole artsy area is also off-track. Starchitect Enrique Norten’s design for a glass-walled complex adjacent to a grand public plaza is on a backburner because the Brooklyn Public Library, which planned an iconic performing arts library for the building, backed out of the $135-million project last year.

And the public plaza itself can’t be built until Norten’s building goes up because a parking lot, which is part of the Norten plan, would sit below it.

The renovations of the Strand Theater are also slightly behind schedule. The city-owned building was scheduled to be complete in 2010, but now, according to architect Thomas Leeser, construction will only begin this fall and take up to two years to finish.

©2009 The Brooklyn Paper

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