171 Calyer Street Development Presented at Community Board Meeting

A presentation at Thursday’s Brooklyn Community Board 1 meeting covered the proposed development of a seven-story mixed-use building with 33 apartments and ground-floor retail at 171 Calyer St., which is within the Greenpoint Historic District.

A representative for the developer of the building, which is owned by Salomon Cojab who purchased the building in 1977, unveiled the renderings of 171 Calyer St. last night.

The proposed development would extend up to Manhattan Avenue where the former RKO Greenpoint Theatre once stood and includes 7,000 – 8,000 square-feet for ground-floor retail space and 17 parking spaces below grade on the Lorimer Street side.

A representative of the owner presented the plan for approximately 30 minutes (complete with an audience Q&A session), watch the full presentation here:

Renderings reveal a red brick building (two shades of brick) with a ground floor retail on the Calyer side of the building that features more glass.

Large-scale apartment buildings- such as the Astral apartment building are rare in the Greenpoint Historic District, and some residents raised concern over the size of the building and the effort to retain the character to match existing buildings.

The proposed building would have a shorter frontage of four stories on the Lorimer side of the street to match the residential buildings.

The ground-floor retail portion would face Calyer Street and have space for up to three businesses.

Due to historic usage of the site as a grocery store, the cellar is large and excavation is not expected according to the developer’s rep.

The community board will make recommendations to the developer based on community feedback and the Landmarks Preservation Commission will have to sign off on the development.