The pool of big-time developers vying to build a luxury hotel at Brooklyn Bridge Park’s Pier 1 is down to the final three, says a source familiar with the deal.
The Dermot Company, Toll Brothers and Starwood Capital Group are still in the running for a mixed-use complex that will include a 10-story hotel, condos, and a restaurant near the park’s primary entrance at the foot of Old Fulton Street, a development insider told The Brooklyn Paper.
Extell Development, RAL Companies, SDS Procida, and Two Trees Management were apparently left in the dust.
“It was a matter of deduction — everyone knows each other,” said the source, who asked not to be identified by name over concerns it would impact negotiations.
Park spokeswoman Ellen Ryan wouldn’t confirm the short list, but said that officials would select a developer by spring.
Whoever wins will construct a 170- to 225-room hotel, a 150- to 180-unit residential building, a restaurant, and at least 300 parking spaces, according to city’s plan. Officials say construction could begin in 2013.
Community stakeholders were relieved to hear the news — first reported by Crain’s New York — that their favorite designs remained.
“They were the superior three schemes, and a lot of people felt that way,” said Jane McGroarty, president of the Brooklyn Heights Association and member of the park’s community advisory council. “We wanted something open, so there wasn’t a bulky, unwelcoming wall between the park and the development.”
The Pier 1 hotel site is part of the park’s unique and controversial funding arrangement — which stems from a 2002 agreement that requires the $350-million green space and development to raise its own maintenance budget so it would not become a drain on city and state coffers.
As part of that funding plan, the city will collect rent and property taxes earmarked for the 85-acre green space from Pier 1 and future high-rises at John Street in DUMBO and the southern leg of the park at Pier 6.
Here’s a look at the possible finalists:
• Manhattan-based Dermot led in The Brooklyn Paper’s poll in November for its cantilevered Hyatt hotel made of aluminum panels and space for St. Ann’s Warehouse, a DUMBO theater that’s searching for a permanent home. Dermot already owns Downtown’s One Hanson Place, the former Williamsburgh Savings Bank that was turned into a luxury condo, and has designed a high-rise for Flatbush Avenue near Fulton Street.
• Starwood Capital Group, a global investment firm that owns the Carlyle hotel overlooking Central Park, proposed two structures with copper fins lining the facades that would move with the wind to create a kinetic sculpture. A hotel would be in the lower floors of a larger building with apartments above it.
• Toll Brothers, a national real-estate group behind the Northside Piers luxury condos in Williamsburg, is proposing a glass, limestone and mahogany tiered complex that would include a Dream Hotel by Hampshire Hotels, condos and ground-floor retail.
Reach Kate Briquelet at [email protected] or by calling her at (718) 260-2511.
