The owner of a wholesale goods importing business based in Williamsburg is looking to radically transform the area by knocking down more than half a dozen 1-story buildings near Berry Street to make way for a massive, L-shaped commercial and industrial complex, according to documents that appeared in the city’s zoning application portal this week.
Hadi Hajjar, president of Mirtex Trading Corp. and Mihata Corp. — both of which list their address as 20 Berry St. — filed an application with the Department of City Planning to allow for a 10-story building that would rise across eight lots owned by Hajjar’s corporations, including on Berry Street and North 12th and North 13th streets, records show.
A 1-story warehouse currently sits on seven of the eight lots, and the last is occupied by a 2-story building with offices on the second floor; each is about 23 feet high. In their place, Hajjar is proposing to erect a 192,000-square-foot building that would accommodate both retail and manufacturing uses because the site falls within an industrial business area created in 2016 to encourage the construction of commercial and industrial spaces, the application says.
The first floor of the proposed 10-story building would contain retail with an adjoining 4,800 square feet of open space. The second and third floors would be slated for retail and light manufacturing. The fourth through ninth floors would be occupied by commercial offices, and the 10th floor would contain an 11,632-square-foot restaurant with outdoor dining on the roof level.
The open space would divide the development into two sections — the 10-story L-shaped structure and an adjacent 2-story retail pavilion at the corner of North 12th and Berry streets. Renderings drawn up by Manhattan-based design team Studio V Architecture, which are included in the application, show a brewery and cafe in the 2-story pavilion. Attorney Howard Goldman of the Manhattan-based firm GoldmanHarris, who is representing Mihata Corp., said the renderings are so far just illustrative, but a brewery is certainly one of the restaurants that would work well in the space.
A redeveloped 20 Berry St. is just one of the several changes planned for the few blocks of the north Brooklyn neighborhood that sits between McCarren and Bushwick Inlet parks on the edge of the East River. The proposed building would rise just east of the ritzy William Vale Hotel, which is slated to come under new ownership after a bitter bankruptcy battle, Crain’s recently reported. And it would be about two blocks from the Bathhouse — a spa, restaurant and wellness space at 103 N. 10th St. — where the owners are looking to expand into an adjacent 3-story building at 56 Berry St.
Goldman said Hajjar, who did not respond to a request for comment, has been working on this project since 2021 and is hoping to kick off the lengthy rezoning process this fall.
Julianne Cuba , 2024-06-06 18:50:57
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