Developer Jed Walentas has dreamed of turning sugar into gold on the Williamsburg waterfront for six years. Today, the true moment of the former Domino Sugar Plant on 300 Kent Avenue is approaching. Designated in 1865, the landmark was transformed into a unique office building behind a weathered brick facade.
Starting this month, we will find tenants for TwoTrees developers 460,000 square feet of office blocks. This is a glass-enclosed building inside a building that is the centerpiece of TwoTrees' $ 3 billion. Dominosite complex for apartments, stores, offices and popular parks. The
refinery is different from other adaptive reuse in the city, as it is called. The arrest structure evokes a time of hardship and loss of sweat more visceral than the regular remodeling of a downtown warehouse into an office.
Whenfirst toured the place with Valentas in 2016, it was the most eerie emptiness I have ever seen. Past generations of labor appeared to be buried in aerial pipes, girders, 30-foot-high tubs, and catwalk cattle graveyards.
Sugar was refined there until Domino moved to Yonkers in 2004. However, the grunge of the industrial era remained. Mary Ann Tighe, CEO of CBRE Tristate, head of the office leasing team, recalls: It was black, annoying and stinking.
Today, after $ 250 million restoration and internal reimagination, a 15-story brick facade and a large domino sign There is nothing left in the past except. Take the "Cool Factor" to a new level The office building is inserted inside the outer wall of the brick, like a ship in a bottle, and the perimeter of the glass wall recedes 15 feet from the facade. ..
Valentas' vision for the refinery reminded Thailand of the lines from Pope Alexander. (Tighe is certainly the only deal maker to bring 18th century poetry to the table.)
"What Walentases does is bring the neighborhood closer to what is essentially there," says Tighe. "This building couldn't exist anywhere but in New York, but it was in Williamsburg."
Natural light through arched windows like churches, ceiling heights up to 14 feet It falls on a floor with almost no pillars, 27,269-33,257 square feet. A green landscape of hanging vines, plants and 30-foot-high sweet gum trees is set up between the inner wall of the glass curtain and the outside of the masonry.
Amenities include a shared amenity floor with a fitness center, a retail store on the ground floor, a three-story atrium lobby, and operable windows. This is almost unprecedented in modern buildings. By next year, a 27,000-square-foot glass-covered penthouse dome with spectacular river and skyline views will rise above the roof.
Desired rents are expected to range from $ 55 to $ 85 per square foot. Tighe said the site has no commercial rent tax and that companies moving from Manhattan have tax incentives.
Walentas has developed a refinery entirely by specification, that is, without pre-signed tenants. I asked Tighe that even state-of-the-art creative tenants would hesitate to move to a 250-foot-high, 150-year-old chimney in front of a very creepy-looking building. (Architecture is by the practice of architecture and urbanism and Dencityworks. James Corner Field Operations of High Line Fame is a landscape architect. Bonetti / Kozerski is recognized for his interior design.)
But Tighe is such a pioneering approach Said to be typical of the Walentas family. Jed's father, David Walentas, created most of his own neighborhood, now called DUMBO.
Like his father, "Jed has absolute clarity about what he wants," Thai said. "He doesn't have a partner, so he can do this. His company spends only his money.
" If successful, Jed's success cannot be reproduced. "Tighe said. "I can't say'let's build another refinery'."