Columbia University Colvin Case Study Fall 2020

Team # 13 Empire Stores is built 1869 Table of Contents as a raw goods warehouse Executive Summary 1885 2 Neighborhood Overview 3 1960s Opportunity Empire Stores abandoned 4 Development Vision 6 Market Analysis 8 Financing 11 Planning & Entitlements 2013 13 Midtown Equities wins RFP Building Analysis 15 2017 Empire Stores reopens Operational Issues 19 Development Impacts 20 Appendix 22 1 Executive Summary Empire Stores is an adaptive-reuse 1869 Empire Stores is built complex located in Brooklyn, New York. Project Overview as a raw goods warehouse This former warehouse re-opened in 2016 and is now 476,642 SF of Class A retail, office, and cultural space. This six- 1885 Name: story development is located on the East Empire Stores River waterfront at 55 Water Street in the DUMBO (Down Under the Manhattan Location: Bridge Overpass) section of Brooklyn. To 55 Water Street, DUMBO honor the 150-year history of the Empire Brooklyn, New York 1960s Stores, the development team proposed Empire Stores abandoned an innovative vision for reinvigorating Project Type: the empty coffee warehouses through Mixed Use contemporary design. The redevelopment prioritizes public space with views looking Programs: across the river at the Manhattan skyline. Retail Office The idea for the redevelopment of the Museum Empire Stores has a storied history of multiple failed RFPs. When the final Project Area: RFP was issued by the Brooklyn Bridge 476,642 SF Park Development Corporation in 2012, it was a final attempt to preserve a 2013 Development Cost: seminal landmark of Brooklyn’s industrial Midtown Equities wins RFP $137,700,000 waterfront. Plagued by multiple fires and extensive structural damage from Development Team: Hurricane Sandy in late 2012, the 2017 Midtown Equities Empire Stores reopens Empire Stores desperately needed HK Organization capital investment and community Rockwood Capital support to prevent its demolishment. The transformation of the Empire Stores Architects: into a successful anchor for and its Studio V Architecture location as one of the few waterfront S9 Architecture office spaces primes development as a Perkins Eastman key driver of economic growth in New York City. The Empire Stores is a credit Leasing: to the collaboration of the Private-Public JLL Partnership between the Brooklyn Bridge Park Development Corporation and the development team that has reimagined the site as a creative community hub. 2 Neighborhood Overview of Brooklyn’s bustling commercial and industrial waterfront in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. After manufacturing and shipping declined in the 1970s, DUMBO’s vacant warehouses attracted “People used to call Brooklyn a artists drawn by cheap rents and large walled city because warehouses open floor plates. Sensing potential, formed a wall along the Brooklyn developer David Walentas of Two Trees waterfront. Now, all that’s left are Management Co. purchased a large Empire Stores and the Red Hook swath of DUMBO’s building stock in building where Fairway used to be” the 1980s, transforming the industrial David Lowin, waterfront into an upscale residential Brooklyn Bridge Corporation and commercial neighborhood. DUMBO has become one of the most dense arts districts in New York City, filled with non-profit institutions and art galleries DUMBO, an acronym for Down Under the attracted by its industrial era authenticity Manhattan Bridge Overpass, is bounded and architecture. The DUMBO Archway, by the Brooklyn Bridge, Brooklyn Heights, a traditional connection between and Vinegar Hill neighborhoods. As its warehouses and the waterfront, has name suggests, the Manhattan Bridge become a popular location for film shoots, towers above the neighborhood. It is no art exhibitions and live music. In 2007, coincidence that two major bridges cross DUMBO’s historic district status was over DUMBO; because of its strategic officially awarded by the New York City location for importing goods to New York Landmarks Preservation Commission. City, the neighborhood was at the heart This district spans between John Street 3 on the north, York Street on the south, 8 minute walk from the York Street F Bridge Street on the east, and Main station, 9 minutes from the High Street/ Street on the west. 95 of the buildings in Brooklyn Bridge A and C lines, and a this district also received landmark status. 5 minute walk from the convenient but underutilized East River Ferry. Compared More recently, the neighborhood has to the planning of neighborhoods like attracted a tech workforce as part of the Hudson Yards formed around major larger Brooklyn Tech Triangle Plan that transportation arteries, DUMBO’s lack of encompasses DUMBO, the Brooklyn convenient transportation has made its Navy Yard, and Downtown Brooklyn. office supply less attractive than that of Incentivized by government initiatives other areas. such as New York City’s Relocation and Employment Program (REAP), tech firms have both relocated to and sprouted in DUMBO. With companies in the TAMI Opportunity sectors (Technology, Advertising, Media The history of Empire Stores reflects and Information), DUMBO now offers the coming of age of Brooklyn, New many of the same development and York City’s largest borough. Built on employment opportunities as Manhattan. a late-18th century landfill, the site on Waters Street contained ship outfitting However, DUMBO suffers from a lack of industries in the 1830s. In 1869, James pedestrian accessibility due to the two Nesmith, a merchant, replaced the bridges and major transportation networks early onsite warehouses with the large cutting through the neighborhood. For Empire Stores building, which was example, the route from the subway to used for storing raw products including Empire Stores requires navigating heavily spices and coffee; “stores” referred to trafficked streets. Empire Stores is an 4 the building’s storehouses. Though it Ever since, many have recognized appears to be a single, monumental Empire Stores’ redevelopment potential, building, the Empire Stores are in fact with the 1977 Fulton Ferry report noting seven warehouses separated by solid that since the 1960s, it was “considered schist walls, framed with lumber sourced ideal by a developer for... a complex from America’s primordial forests. The including a restaurant and an arcade building, which had originally included a with stores, similar to Ghirardelli Square dock, is representative of the waterfront in San Francisco.” Since then, many landscape that gave Brooklyn its redevelopment proposals have come and nickname as the “walled city.” gone, including plans in 1991 and 1999. The buildings sat vacant for another thirty years. “People had been talking about doing something here for decades. If this one hadn’t worked, I’m not sure there would have been another one. I think it might’ve been headed into becoming… a ruin. This might’ve been its last chance at a new life.” - In the early 20th century, the coffee- Pat Arnett, Silman magnate Arbuckle brothers purchased Empire Stores to serve as a storage facility for their unroasted beans, part of a In 2002, it seemed like things were sprawling 11-block complex. With the rise finally turning around. Developer Shaya of trucking and the decline of shipping, Boymelgreen, a fixture of New York real the structure became abandoned in the estate, had taken on Empire Stores’ 1950’s, and after brief ownership by redevelopment with a $140mm plan to Consolidated Edison Electrical Company, convert the derelict warehouse into an Empire Stores was designated a historic office and retail mecca. Boymelgreen landmark in 1977 as part of the Fulton brought on Jay Valgora, a preeminent Ferry Historic District. waterfront architect in New York City, who proposed a sensitive glass and steel rehabilitation that celebrated and “The Empire Stores are superb modernized the historic complex. David examples of the vernacular and Walentas of Two Trees Management functional architecture of the third Co, who vied for development rights but quarter of the 19th century” was ultimately outbid, did not believe Fulton Ferry Historic Report, 1977 Boymelgreen could achieve the rents to justify his vision, and he was right: in 2006, the Empire State Development One year later, it came under the purview Corporation ended their partnership of the New York State Office of Parks, with Boymelgreen after the project had Recreation and Historic Preservation. languished for years. 5 When the final RFP was issued in 2012, to the waterfront - recalling Brooklyn’s it seemed like a make or break moment “walled city” - and would benefit from to preserve a seminal piece of Brooklyn some public access across the length of waterfront history. That year, Hurricane the site. BBP translated these concerns Sandy had severely compromised into program requirements including the structural integrity of the complex, 3,000 SF of public rooftop access, and combined with years of sinking public access across the building, public foundations and tilting walls, Empire restrooms, and designated park storage Stores was on its last legs. Although space. A glass rooftop addition was also Boymelgreen had failed, his mixed-use considered, and after receiving approval program was lauded by the community from the State Historical Preservation and became written into the park’s 2005 Office, was indicated as a possibility in General Project Plan, drafted while his the RFP. development was in its initial stages. The GPP cemented a mixed-use office and Development Vision & Team retail concept into any

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