By Stephen Jacob Smith 3/21 1:46pm

Sugar Coated

Enjoy some interim community uses while you wait!

Two Trees Drops Buzzword Bonanza on Vacant Domino Lot

Last week, when Domino Sugar Refinery owner Jed Walentas made his first community meeting appearance after announcing SHoP Architect’s revamped plan for the site, he was greeted by—as The Brooklyn Paper put it—”snark, derision, and anger” (otherwise known as the Williamsburg welcome).

“He comes across like Jesse Eisenberg with his tennis shoes and his hoodie,” said community activist Susan Pelligrino, presumably referring to Mark Zuckerberg, “but he’s a total capitalist.” (Last we checked, the multibillionaire Facebook founder is also a total capitalist.)

Two Trees has worked hard to soften that image, with promises of an accessible waterfront and over half a million square feet of office space, to be let at half the going rate of luxury housing in the neighborhood, and today they unveiled their first offering to the community: “interim community uses for Domino site E,” as their announcement so fondly put it. Read More

By Stephen Jacob Smith 3/05 4:51pm

Planes Trains & Automobiles

The Bedford Avenue L is about to get some new, non-formstone-faced neighbors.

How Much More Williamsburg Development Can the L Train Handle?

In the midst of yesterday’s frenzy of Domino Sugar Refinery-themed press coverage, squished L train riders could be forgiven for asking: how much more development can Williamsburg handle? With only two tracks in a largely quad-tracked system, the L is not as well-endowed as some lines—so how much more Williamsburg can the L really take?

As it turns out, quite a bit. Read More

By Stephen Jacob Smith 3/03 10:18pm

Sugar High

A bird's eye view of the Domino Sugar site, as Two Trees would like to develop it.

Jed Walentas Plants a Tree (or Two) in Williamsburg

When Two Trees Management bought the old Domino Sugar site from CPC Resources and a reluctant Katan Group, a local developer told The Observer that Jed Walentas would be “crazy to go back to ULURP” for a rezoning of the site, which had already been approved for thousands of high-rise apartments.

But going back to to everyone’s favorite acronym (to pronounce, at least) is exactly what Mr. Walentas intends to do. He and SHoP, the New York-based architecture firm that Bruce Ratner tapped to design the Barclays Center and Atlantic Yards after Frank Gehry proved too expensive, called a group of reporters to SHoP’s offices near City Hall on Friday to show off their plans for the site.

The first thing Mr. Walentas spoke about was Two Trees’ desire to expand the amount of parkland included in the project—adding two new acres—and to make it more accessible to the public.

He criticized the open space in the old site plan as something that “felt very much like a privatized front lawn for people who lived there,” and spoke about his desire to pull the buildings back inland to make more space for the quarter-mile-long waterfront park, as well as add a new public street between his buildings and the waterfront. Read More

By Stephen J. Smith 2/04 5:23pm

Sugar Coated

And commercial, too. (CPC Resources)

Two Trees Wants to More Than Double Williamsburg’s Office Space

Union Square too expensive for your tech start-up? DUMBO too full? Downtown Brooklyn too… Downtown Brooklyn? Jed Walentas has a new suggestion: how about the Williamsburg waterfront?

Two Trees is looking to return to its commercial roots at the old Domino Sugar factory site, The Wall Street Journal reports. Jed wants to convert the 11-acre site’s signature structure into office space and throw up a new office building, for a total of 630,000 square feet. If successful, that would be nearly twice Williamsburg’s paltry existing stock of 350,000 square feet of large-block space. Read More

By Matt Chaban 6/28/12 8:25am

Sugar Coated

The old—and in the way—plan. (CPC Resources)

Knocking Over Domino: Two Trees Mulls Overhauling Massive Williamsburg Development, Including Reducing Affordable Units

Exactly two years ago tomorrow, the City Council approved a sweeping $1.4 billion redevelopment plan for the Domino Sugar refinery on the Williamsburg waterfront. One of the biggest concerns at the time (of which there were many) was that the grand promise made by developer CPC Resources to make 30 percent of the project’s 2,200 units would never be realized.

Nowhere in the zoning resolution was this mandated, even though it was the marquee feature of the 11-acre development, along with promises of waterfront access, top-notch open space and a school. The developer could build no affordable housing, though this would mean a smaller project, or use the city’s inclusionary housing program to gain a bonus for bigger buildings in exchange for a promise to make 20 percent of any units affordable. Anything beyond that was a promise, one even CPC Resources did not have to keep. The firm had signed a memorandum of understanding saying it would follow through on this promise, but in no why was it legally binding.

That is why when it was announced last week that Jed Walentas and his Two Trees development company is in contract the Domino site for about $180 million (three-times what CPC had paid for it in 2004, but also less an arduous and contentious public approval process), there were widespread concerns that Mr. Walentas would not live up to the promises of his predecessors. In a recent interview, the developer admitted as much.

“Basically, that analysis is correct,” Mr. Walentas told The Observer. Read More

By Matt Chaban 6/21/12 6:41pm

on the waterfront

Jed Walentas is ready to set up his Domino. (Getty)

Two Trees Takes Root in Williamsburg: $160 M. Deal for Domino Complex Closes

So much for those other bidders.

Two Trees has indeed taken over the sprawling Domino Sugar site in South Williamsburg, a deal said to be worth $160 million. CPC Resources, the for-profit arm of non-profit builders CPC that had been developing the site since 2006, announced the deal closed this evening.

“CPCR’s goal for Domino Sugar has always been to bring to the project a well established, reputable real estate company that knows New York and is committed to building neighborhoods and creating communities,” CPC’s President & CEO Rafael Cestero said in a release. “Two Trees is just that, and this deal is a great opportunity to realize our vision for Domino as a vibrant, mixed-income, mixed-use waterfront community and to maximize the economic benefit to CPCR and our partners.” Read More

By Matt Chaban 5/22/12 8:30am

Checking in

wythe-exterior-21

No Vacancies Til Brooklyn: How Three Kings of Kings County Conquered Williamsburg, and Gentrification Itself

At the end of April, Vice magazine, the Williamsburg house organ, threw a party in the neighborhood. The party was inside 80 Wythe Street, a giant old factory building, a redbrick behemoth that was built in 1901 as a cooperage. Those bricks used to be covered in graffiti and wheat paste and other street art ephemera from some of the genre’s best practioners. On this occasion, they were gathered inside, to celebrate an installation around the corner by Faile, the local artistic duo known for their psychotropic collages, a mix of comic books, B-movie posters and indigenous art from Asia to Iroquois.

“When we were young artists just getting by, scraping together enough money for that next project, this was the place to be,” said Patrick Miller, one half of Faile. “Williamsburg was it.”

Nearby, two blonde cherubs, the children of Patrick McNeil, Mr. Miller’s artistic partner, spun themselves silly around three stylized Tibetan prayer wheels in the middle of the room. The elder child, a boy of about five wearing the skinniest of black jeans, kiddie Converse and a jean jacket with a giant Tiger patch on the back bigger than the boy’s head head, came to an abrupt stop in his dance. His sister, maybe three, in engineers overalls, a step behind, jumped just then into his arms, and they embraced in a hug. The whole jaded room was watching.

It was the cutest, coolest thing in all of Brooklyn.

A decade, even five years ago, it would have been impossible to imagine this scene. “Look at the lineage here, it’s somebody who cares a lot about making Brooklyn cool,” Mr. Miller said, gesturing around the space.

This was not some swanky, skanky loft party on the edgy edge of New York’s social periphery. This was the unofficial opening party for the Wythe Hotel, the kind of establishment that thinks of itself as above opening parties, above press, above hype, even as a line forms out the door. This is, the work of three Brooklyn tastemakers in their prime.

This was, is and will be the greatest thing Williamsburg has ever seen. It is the pinnacle, the acme, the end. Read More

By Matt Chaban 5/22/12 8:30am

Checking in

Watch the throne. (Courtesy Wythe Hotel)

No Vacancies Til Brooklyn: How Three Kings of Kings County Conquered Williamsburg, and Gentrification Itself

At the end of April, Vice magazine, the Williamsburg house organ, threw a party in the neighborhood. The party was inside 80 Wythe Street, a giant old factory building, a redbrick behemoth that was built in 1901 as a cooperage. Those bricks used to be covered in graffiti and wheat paste and other street art ephemera from some of the genre’s best practioners. On this occasion, they were gathered inside, to celebrate an installation around the corner by Faile, the local artistic duo known for their psychotropic collages, a mix of comic books, B-movie posters and indigenous art from Asia to Iroquois.

“When we were young artists just getting by, scraping together enough money for that next project, this was the place to be,” said Patrick Miller, one half of Faile. “Williamsburg was it.”

Nearby, two blonde cherubs, the children of Patrick McNeil, Mr. Miller’s artistic partner, spun themselves silly around three stylized Tibetan prayer wheels in the middle of the room. The elder child, a boy of about five wearing the skinniest of black jeans, kiddie Converse and a jean jacket with a giant Tiger patch on the back bigger than the boy’s head head, came to an abrupt stop in his dance. His sister, maybe three, in engineers overalls, a step behind, jumped just then into his arms, and they embraced in a hug. The whole jaded room was watching.

It was the cutest, coolest thing in all of Brooklyn.

A decade, even five years ago, it would have been impossible to imagine this scene. “Look at the lineage here, it’s somebody who cares a lot about making Brooklyn cool,” Mr. Miller said, gesturing around the space.

This was not some swanky, skanky loft party on the edgy edge of New York’s social periphery. This was the unofficial opening party for the Wythe Hotel, the kind of establishment that thinks of itself as above opening parties, above press, above hype, even as a line forms out the door. This is, the work of three Brooklyn tastemakers in their prime.

This was, is and will be the greatest thing Williamsburg has ever seen. It is the pinnacle, the acme, the end. Read More

By Matt Chaban 1/02/12 12:38pm

Machers

When you're smilin'... (BFANY)

Jed Walentas, Champion of New York and Occupy Wall Street

The Sunday Times had a city-straddling profile of Big Real Estate’s prince charming, Jed Walentas and his ascension into the realm of the famous families, Durst, Trump, LeFrak et al.

The delightfully disheveled Mr. Walentas, “whose daily uniform usually consists of a hoodie and jeans,”  speaks on topics ranging from his domains in Dumbo and Hells Kitchen to art and air hockey. The most striking passage, though, is his staunch defense of development as a social good for New York. Read More