It is baked in!
One of the long-empty retail spaces at the bottom of the One Brooklyn Bridge Park luxury condo building will finally get a tenant when a fancy cookie company opens a cafe there early next year, and residents say they can’t wait to see something fill the void.
“I think it’s a good thing, it’s been a long time since things have opened here,” said Vivenne Foley, who has lived in the gargantuan grey building in Brooklyn Bridge Park for five years. “Now there will be a place to go sit and have a beer or sit and have a coffee.”
Vendome Macaron has been building out its eatery inside the structure at the foot of Joralemon Street for years, and is finally nearing completion, with plans to open by mid-January or early February, according to its co-owner.
The store won’t just serve macarons — a type of dainty meringue — it will also offer three meals a day, and beer and wine with a sophisticated touch, she said.
“Everything will be very cultivated, very European, with touches of Americana too,” said Taryn Garcia, who started the business in her Boerum Hill apartment.
Garcia had planned to open the cafe in 2015, but the construction process got bogged down after contractors built some things incorrectly, she said.
Meantime, much of One Brooklyn Bridge Park’s retail space has been sitting empty since the building opened in 2008.
Booze store Waterfront Wine opened near the Joralemon Street entrance in 2011, as did doggy day care the Wag Club around the other side of the building at Furman Street. More recently, the company that operates the park’s marina set up an office in part of the park-front portion of the commercial space.
But the developer’s plans to bring a supermarket and high-end restaurant to the strip never bore fruit.
Foot traffic dies down in that part of the park in the colder months, when few people come to use the nearby soccer fields and beach volleyball courts, but Garcia says she’s confident the 438-unit building’s well-heeled residents will fill her seats.
“The building we’re in is a luxury building so there are people who are aware and traveled and appreciate the produce that we’ll be offering,” she said.
And locals agree.
“Everybody loves macarons,” said Peter Bong, a dog walker for one of the tenants in the building.
