The New York City Council has approved Monitor Point, a three-tower mixed-income development at 40 and 56 Quay Street in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Designed by FXCollaborative and developed by the Gotham Organization in partnership with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development, and the Greenpoint Monitor Museum, the project will yield 1,324 homes, 662 of which will be permanently affordable. The plan will also include more than 52,500 square feet of publicly accessible waterfront open space, a permanent home for the Greenpoint Monitor Museum, and shoreline restoration, environmental remediation, and climate resiliency improvements. The project sits on the Bushwick Inlet along the North Brooklyn waterfront.
The Monitor Point complex will consist of three towers standing 600, 450, and 230 feet tall. The taller two, pictured above, will rise from a shared podium at 40 Quay Street, while the remaining building will rise 108 feet to the east at 56 Quay Street. The above rendering shows 40 Quay Street’s towers clad in floor-to-ceiling glass framed by staggered grids of green-hued paneling with rounded corners. Numerous setbacks topped with large-scale landscaping are depicted scattered across the height of both buildings. The towers culminate in bulkheads with curved edges, matching the aesthetics of the building forms below.
40 Quay Street. Designed by FXCollaborative.
Rendering courtesy of Monitor Point.
The larger building at 40 Quay Street will yield 958 units, including 296 affordable apartments. The tower at 56 Quay Street is being financed in partnership with HPD and will yield 366 all-affordable units. Within the affordable component, 161 apartments will be set aside as deeply affordable senior housing at 30 to 50 percent of the area median income (AMI), and 110 homes will be dedicated to formerly homeless New Yorkers, with supportive housing services. The 50 percent affordability share reflects an increase secured over the course of the public review process, though the plan’s prior commitment was not disclosed.
Rendering courtesy of Monitor Point.
The project site was assembled from MTA property at 40 Quay Street and privately owned museum land at 56 Quay Street. Motiva Enterprises donated the latter parcel to the Greenpoint Monitor Museum in 2003, in recognition of the museum’s educational programming and its effort to establish a home at the launch site of the USS Monitor, the Civil War ironclad built and launched in Greenpoint in 1862. The museum has pursued a permanent home for roughly 30 years, according to co-founders George Weinmann and Janice Lauletta-Weinmann.
Rendering courtesy of Monitor Point.
Two outdated MTA facilities housing three functions will be relocated to a new turnkey facility in the North Brooklyn Industrial Business Zone. The relocation of the authority’s Emergency Response Unit will additionally unlock 25,000 square feet of parkland at Box Street Park. The MTA will invest $60 million to upgrade the Nassau Avenue G station, adding an elevator and rendering the station fully ADA accessible, and the project will fund new public bathrooms and $300,000 in annual support for Bushwick Inlet Park.
Rendering courtesy of Monitor Point.
The site is currently an underutilized industrial property, and no residents will be displaced by the redevelopment. The plan was approved following the standard land use review process, with the Council vote representing the final discretionary approval. In essence, the affordability increase was the price of that vote.
Subscribe to YIMBY’s daily e-mail
Follow YIMBYgram for real-time photo updates
Like YIMBY on Facebook
Follow YIMBY’s Twitter for the latest in YIMBYnews
Problem is that when they finish these buildings, the studios are 300 feet and the one bedrooms are 480 feet or 450 feet. They’re very tiny..