Look out, Brooklyn: Here comes your first 1,000-foot tower.
On Tuesday, the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission approved a proposal for 9 DeKalb Avenue, a 73-story apartment building set to rise this year on Flatbush Avenue next door to Junior’s Restaurant. Though dozens of towers have been built in Downtown Brooklyn over the past decade, the new building, at 1,066 feet, will be almost twice as tall as anything else in the neighborhood.
Until two years ago, only four buildings in New York City surpassed the 1,000-foot mark. Now there are twice as many, with more than two dozen others under construction or in planning.
The Brooklyn tower is being built by JDS Development Group and the Chetrit Group and will have around 500 units. The project, designed by SHoP Architects, will rise in a tapering, hexagonal shape clad in bronze and black metal fins.
The design was inspired in part by the neighboring Dime Savings Bank of Brooklyn, a city landmark on which a portion of the tower will be built. The inclusion of the 1908 bank also affords the project roughly 300,000 square feet of air rights.
Because of this integration, the developers needed city approval to alter the bank, which will house new shops. The commission approved the addition unanimously, though it raised some minor concerns about removing historic teller booths from the bank.
“To me, this project is enlightened urbanism at its best, where old and new are combined, where short and tall are combined in juxtaposition,” Frederick Bland, a landmarks commissioner, said during a hearing at the Municipal Building.
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