Even 1,000-Foot Skyscrapers Want to Move to Brooklyn

There goes the neighborhood. Photo: SHoP Architects

Brooklyn’s real-estate prices are going up and up, and the Feds are going to start tracking who’s pouring cash into those ultraluxury pads. So it sounds like the perfect time for Brooklyn to decide to construct an ultratall building to rival the sky-high scrapers across the river in Manhattan.

New York Yimby obtained the permit plans for an already-announced development at 340 Flatbush Avenue Extension in downtown Brooklyn. But the newly filed documents reveal the 775-foot building slated for the site will now be a couple hundred feet taller: 1,066-feet, to be exact. The 73-floor structure was already going to be the borough’s tallest, but it will now dwarf the next highest (the 610-foot “The Hub” in downtown Brooklyn) by almost half. There goes the neighborhood.

According to Curbed, the developers snagged an adjacent building last December — the just-about century-old landmark Dime Savings Bank — which gave them the air rights (it’s a thing) to really go for it and build a massive skyscraper that probably lots of people moved to Brooklyn to get away from, anyway. At least the Dime bank is landmarked, so it will have to be incorporated into the skyscraper, likely as retail space, and probably house a Chipotle or something. The new proposal will also reduce the number of residential units from 495 to 417, but they’ll probably have more square footage for all the people who snatch up these apartments and never live there.

Of course all these permits still need to be approved, but if they are, expect to see the tower around 2019. Take the intervening years to move to Queens, before it’s too late. 

Brooklyn Is Going to Get a 1,066-Foot Skyscraper