Commercial brokerage firm CPEX Real Estate last month designated six Brooklyn corridors as the borough’s next retail hot spots. No. 1 on the list? The intersection of Lafayette Avenue and Fulton Street, which sits at the crossroads of the growing Brooklyn Cultural District and Fort Greene.
CPEX’s reasoning was simple: The nearby blocks are teeming with new development, including 3,800 residential units, 900 hotel rooms and highly anticipated retail locations such as Apple’s second Brooklyn store and the first city outpost of Whole Foods’ 365, a new chain of lower-priced stores. All are interwoven into the booming cultural district, anchored by the Brooklyn Academy of Music, that includes new public plazas and parks.
The area’s commercial appeal has been a long time coming. The city rezoned a huge swath of downtown Brooklyn a dozen years ago to spur commercial development. But instead of new offices, a hot condo market led to residential towers. Many of those towers are now nearing completion, finally bolstering the case for new retail and office space.
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Among the many new projects is an approximately 180,000-square-foot building set to house medical facilities for members of the city’s hotel workers union plus offices for outside tenants. Developer JEMB is planning a 600-foot office tower at nearby 420 Albee Square.
The former Williamsburgh Savings Bank Building’s 512-foot tower still looms large. It was converted to condos starting in 2007, and last month developers received permission to alter the interior retail space to make it more appealing to prospective tenants.
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Commercial brokerage firm CPEX Real Estate last month designated six Brooklyn corridors as the borough’s next retail hot spots. No. 1 on the list? The intersection of Lafayette Avenue and Fulton Street, which sits at the crossroads of the growing Brooklyn Cultural District and Fort Greene.
CPEX’s reasoning was simple: The nearby blocks are teeming with new development, including 3,800 residential units, 900 hotel rooms and highly anticipated retail locations such as Apple’s second Brooklyn store and the first city outpost of Whole Foods’ 365, a new chain of lower-priced stores. All are interwoven into the booming cultural district, anchored by the Brooklyn Academy of Music, that includes new public plazas and parks.
The area’s commercial appeal has been a long time coming. The city rezoned a huge swath of downtown Brooklyn a dozen years ago to spur commercial development. But instead of new offices, a hot condo market led to residential towers. Many of those towers are now nearing completion, finally bolstering the case for new retail and office space.
Among the many new projects is an approximately 180,000-square-foot building set to house medical facilities for members of the city’s hotel workers union plus offices for outside tenants. Developer JEMB is planning a 600-foot office tower at nearby 420 Albee Square.
The former Williamsburgh Savings Bank Building’s 512-foot tower still looms large. It was converted to condos starting in 2007, and last month developers received permission to alter the interior retail space to make it more appealing to prospective tenants.
A version of this article appears in the February 13, 2017, print issue of Crain’s New York Business.
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