Stay tuned for “Bushwick Beyond Thunderdome.”
Architecture firm ODA New York last week revealed designs for a massive housing development at the old Rheingold brewery site in Bushwick, which the building’s developer has dubbed “Bushwick II” — as first reported by the Real Deal.
The giant property, bounded by Stanwix and Melrose streets and Evergreen and Flushing avenues, won’t just be another luxury Bushwick apartment complex, the design firm claims. It will be the “Desperado” to Bushwick’s “El Mariachi,” the “Wrath of Khan” to its “Star Trek: The Motion Picture” — an entirely new and improved “city” of plazas, playgrounds, art galleries, and coffee shops for all to enjoy.
“A whole host of communal spaces open to the neighborhood, spread over 1 million gross square feet, will render this much more than a housing complex,” said the company in a release. “Bushwick II is a veritable city within the city.”
Much like the writers of “Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo,” the architects say they looked to the Old World for inspiration when designing the 911-unit Bushwick II, creating “meandering courtyards” throughout the property that locals will be able to wander around like a European village.
For residents, the complex will feature connected rooftops spanning the size of a football field that will include a pool, mini-golf course, rock-climbing wall, and an “urban farm” — where tenants can grow their own food and relive the pastoral scenes from “Babe: Pig in the City” before Babe goes to the city.
Developer All Year Management says 20 percent of Bushwick II’s units will be below-market-rate — upholding a promise the site’s previous owner Read Property Group made when it convinced the city to rezone the land in 2013.
All Year bought its share of the Rheingold site from Read for $72.2 million in October last year — almost the amount “Jackass: Number Two” made at the box office.
Read sold another part of the old brewery to real estate firm the Rabsky Group the year before for $53 million — a little more than “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps” took in — whose honchos plan to build a 400-unit complex also designed by ODA.
Construction on Bushwick II is already underway, and is expected to wrap in fall 2017, according to a spokeswoman for the architect — around the same time “Blade Runner 2,” “Creed 2,” and “Thor: Ragnarok” hit cinemas.
