NEW YORK | Brooklyn Music School Expansion (130 St. Felix St) | 285 FT | 24 FLOORS

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Plans Revealed for Brooklyn Music School Expansion in Historic District

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Spread across four townhouses on St Felix Street, the school plans to expand into a new headquarters on the lot next door.

"The project is going to result in doubling the available performing space,” says Shelby Green, who’s on the Brooklyn Music School Board of Trustees. “It’s going to enable the school to offer electronic music instruction, which is really popular with young people today.”

The state-of-the-art music space would cost $15 million and take up two floors of a 24-story building proposed by the Gotham Organization. The complex also would have 120 condominiums with a third of them sold at below-market prices. The site has been a loading area for the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Developers see the school space as adding to the local cultural district.

"We would have a primary entrance for the Brooklyn Music School along here on St. Felix, with the concept of having an additional entrance on Ashland Place to really create an extension of the civic role of cultural institutions”, says Bryan Kelly, the executive vice president of development at the Gotham Organization.

However, at 24 stories, the building would be out of scale for St. Felix Street, which is part of a historic landmark district. It would rise alongside the iconic former Williamsburg Savings Bank and a historic church. It would need a city rezoning and Landmarks Preservation Commission approval to move forward. Preservationists have not yet weighed in on the plan.

"We recall some of the art deco language of those buildings and sort of interpret that in a more modern way that helps to tie all three of those buildings together. And then provides a great street level pedestrian scale here on St. Felix,” says FXCollaborative Architect Jim Bushong.

The developers have not yet submitted their plans for the required city reviews. But developers hope they can break ground by 2021. $7 million of the school’s cost would come from selling air rights over its townhouses to Gotham.

The application for the new headquarters is expected to be submitted to the City Planning Commission next week.

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Yeah, baby!

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Nice to see another Art Deco inspired building for downtown Brooklyn.

You gotta like how 9 Dekalb looks in that illustration.

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Plans to construct a 24-story tower at 130 St. Felix St. in Fort Greene were green-lighted by Community Board 2 on May 26, marking the first hurdle cleared by developers looking to begin construction.

During a virtual meeting, the board’s executive committee issued a 7-2 purely advisory vote to approve a certificate of appropriateness, which real estate firm Gotham Organization will need to build in the Brooklyn Academy of Music Historic District. Their application will now go before the Landmark Preservation Commission, before it begins the Uniform Land Use Review Process, which developers say they do not expect to start until 2021.

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Proposal For 24-Story Tower At 130 St. Felix Street Heads To LPC In Fort Greene, Brooklyn

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Late last year, Gotham Organization announced plans to construct a 24-story residential building and a partial expansion of the century-old Brooklyn Music School at 130 Saint Felix Street in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. With the help of architects FXCollaborative, the developers are now ready to present proposals to the Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC).

The panhandled through-block site is wedged between the Brooklyn Music School, a landmarked high-rise known as One Hanson Place, and the Hanson Place Central United Methodist Church originally completed in 1931. The Gotham Organization acquired the empty lot for $5.5 million in 2015 and since that time has worked alongside the Brooklyn Music School and FXCollaborative to conceive a project that both creates the opportunity for quality mixed-income home ownership and expands the school’s existing facilities.

That expansion could yield an additional 20,000 square feet, which would more than double the school’s existing instructional space. New facilities will include a digital music lab and recording studio for at-risk youth and vocational training spaces for recent graduates. The expanded facilities would occupy the two base levels of the proposed tower.

The residential component would comprise 120 units, 30 percent of which would be reserved for Mandatory Inclusionary Housing. This portion of income restricted households will range from 70 percent to 100 percent of area median income adjusted per household size.

Current proposals specify that the tower will comprise 164,000 square feet and will top out at 285 feet above ground. Above the first three floors, the structure incorporates a series of setback levels to both maintain a harmonious streetscape and to reduce its visual impact on One Hanson Place.

The façade on the upper levels is composed of brown brick, gray metal window frames, and floor-to-ceiling glass windows. The building is crowned by a metal-finned louver system painted in a similarly-hued bronze color.

Considering the development’s location in the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) Historic District, the LPC must decide if the proposed design is appropriate regarding scale, material use, and its potential effect on neighboring properties. A public hearing for the project is scheduled for Tuesday, June 23.

The project’s existing timeline anticipates groundbreaking in 2021. The marketing launch for the residences is scheduled early to mid-2023 in alignment with the grand opening of the Brooklyn Music School Community Art Center.

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NYY

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alleges that the landmarks agency shirked its duty to disapprove the building, which it characterizes as “devastating” to the historic district.

Moronic drama queens.

The complaint acknowledges that many project opponents wish to preserve views from their condos in One Hanson Place, which until a few years ago had been the tallest building in Brooklyn for decades.

I’m shocked! Shocked, I tell you!

The structure would also replace a parking lot next to the bank building, which, the suit notes, residents of the condo use. “Continuation of that use might be deemed most appropriate, at least by some,” it reads.

Parking lots are detrimental to healthy cities.

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Preservation of parking lots is not part of the Landmarks Preservation Commission’s mission, however.

Love that little dig at the end haha

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