City chooses Toll, Starwood to develop hotel and residence at Brooklyn Bridge Park

Recent press speculations and predictions have been confirmed: Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s office today announced the selection of Toll Brothers and Starwood Capital Group to develop a 550,000-square-foot complex at Pier 1 in Brooklyn Bridge Park, which will include a 200-room luxury hotel and 159 residential units. The hotel and residential complex will rise 10 stories, and there will be a separate five-story residential building, a city press release says.

The team expects to break ground on the site by next summer — with a projected completion date of fall 2015. The hotel will operate under the name 1 Hotel, and its proposals include about 16,000 square feet of restaurant space, another 16,000 square feet of banquet and meeting space, 2,000 square feet of retail, a 6,000-square-foot fitness center and spa, as well as 300 parking spaces, the release said. The joint Toll Brothers and Starwood venture will enter into two 97-year ground leases on the site. When complete, the team’s development will yield a projected total of $3.3 annually from owners of residential units and the hotel operator.

The development is expected to create roughly 210 permanent jobs and 300 construction jobs. As The Real Deal recently reported, the New York City construction industry employed fewer people in the first quarter of this year than it has at any point over the past 13 years.

“Not only will this project create a new hotel and residential complex along Brooklyn’s emerging waterfront,” the city’s Economic Development Corporation president, Seth Pinsky, said,”it will also provide a large portion of the necessary funding for the maintenance and operations for what has already become one of the city’s most desirable open spaces.”

Rogers Marvel Architects is in charge of the hotel and residential building’s design, and the green development hopes to nab LEED Silver Certification, the release said. — Zachary Kussin