TRD Pro: NYC’s busiest areas for new building work

The following is a preview of one of the hundreds of data sets that will be available on TRD Pro — the one-stop real estate terminal that provides all the data and market information you need.

Brooklyn developers reached for the sky in the first half of the year, with the borough accounting for seven of the city’s 10 busiest neighborhoods for new building filings.

Recently rezoned Gowanus topped the list by a wide margin, combining with neighboring Park Slope for five project filings spanning a total of 1.4 million square feet. Builders were drawn to gentrifying areas surrounding Prospect Park too, with Crown Heights, Fort Greene, Prospect Lefferts Gardens and Prospect Heights also making the top 10.

The Real Deal took a closer look at new building applications filed with the city’s Department of Buildings between Jan. 1, 2022, and June 30, 2022, analyzing initial filings only. Projects filed outside of that timeframe, regardless of whether they were active, were not counted in the tally, nor were any projects smaller than 500 square feet.

The results were broken down by Neighborhood Tabulation Areas — aggregations of Census tracts created by the Department of City Planning. The areas broadly correspond with neighborhoods, though some, like Park Slope and Gowanus, are combined, while others such as Astoria and Crown Heights are divided.

For a complete list of top neighborhoods, visit the TRD Pro dashboard here.

Park Slope and Gowanus overwhelmingly led the rankings as the only area to see over a million total square feet of new building filings. The biggest was at 175 Third Street, where Aby Rosen’s RFR Holding plans a 650,000-square-foot, 21-story building with 450 apartments and 138,000 square feet of commercial space.

Rosen’s RFR bought the site in 2018 from SL Green and Kushner Properties for $115 million. Rosen marketed the assemblage in 2019 for more than $200 million, but decided to build on the land instead. Douglass Alligood’s B.I.G. Architecture is the architect of record.

The second busiest area was Old Astoria, a northwestern subsection of the Queens neighborhood, where developers filed plans for 10 projects totaling 972,000 square feet.

The biggest was at 2-24 26th Avenue, where developer Yizchok Katz plans a six-story building with 137 residential units and a ground-floor art gallery. The application for the 136,000-square-foot project lists an estimated cost of $20.4 million. An entity called Astoria 2 LLC purchased the vacant development site in February for $7.4 million.

For a map view of current top neighborhoods, visit the TRD Pro dashboard here.

At third place was the only Bronx entry in the ranking, West Concourse and Mott Haven, which saw 955,000 square feet of projects across three new building applications.

The largest, at 120 East 144th Street, accounted for nearly half of the area’s output total at 400,000 square feet.

Developer Binyamin Beitel’s Beitel Group filed plans for a 13-story building with 470 residential units. Beitel bought the property from Tori Realty Group for $41.5 million in April. S. Wieder Architect is the architect of record.

At fourth on the list we return to Brooklyn, with Crown Heights North totaling 850,000 square feet across 10 new building filings, including at 953 Dean Street, where Solomon Schwimmer’s Twin Group Associates plans a 230-unit, 250,000-square-foot mixed-use building. Joseph Frankl of JFA Architects is listed as the architect of record.

Rounding out the top five was Fort Greene, Brooklyn, where developers filed plans for 800,000 square feet across four projects. JFA Architects was busy here too, as architect of record on a proposed 300,000-square-foot, 300-unit building.

The Jay Group paid $40 million to acquire the property from the Leser Group near the end of last year and took out a $130 million loan from G4 Capital Partners. More than $100 million of that financing will go toward construction, according to reports.