Developers of the Domino Sugar Refinery residential project are betting that condo buyers will want to pay top dollar to live next door to the iconic Domino Sugar sign in the shadow of the Williamsburg Bridge.
They’ll be neighbors with a remnant of Brooklyn’s industrial past because parts of the Domino factory, which processed sugar for 123 years before closing in 2004, will live on after the building was declared a historic landmark in September. The old refinery will be part of an ambitious $1.2 billion, 10-year residential development project that includes a grouping of more than six buildings of various heights, about four acres of new parkland and 220,000 square feet of new retail and community space.
Domino may well become the model for combining historic preservation with affordable housing and the development of parkland on a scale that hasn’t been seen since the last project of owner CPC Resources — the upgrade of the Parkchester, Bronx, housing complex in 1998.
A model for industrial Brooklyn
If it is successful, Domino could become the de facto standard for developments in other industrial Brooklyn neighborhoods (such as Greenpoint and Williamsburg) where hundreds of 19th century manufacturing buildings dominate the landscape. On Oct. 30, for example, the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission declared the 12 structures that comprise the former Eberhard Faber Pencil Company complex in Greenpoint historic landmarks. Developer Isaac Katan (who often works in conjunction with CPC Resources and is a silent partner on the Domino project) bought the 61 Greenpoint Avenue structure and two other Eberhard buildings on Kent and West streets, which were built in the Federal style and date back to 1820.
Preservation of the buildings in CPC Resources’ final plans was certainly a battleground for the Domino project. While the company compromised and agreed to retain “the Refinery,” a complex of three Romanesque Revival buildings that were landmarked, preservationists are disappointed that other buildings in the vast complex will not be saved, including the 1884 brick Adant House at the corner of Kent Avenue and South 5th Street; the brick Powerhouse, which was built about the same time as the refinery; and the 1962 concrete-and-glass Bin Structure on the northwest corner of the block, known for its distinctive blue-and-white square glass windows. Those buildings are not under consideration for preservation status, according to Elisabeth de Bourbon, a spokesperson for the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission.
Some of the urgency stems from a sense that too much has already been lost. Organizations like the Waterfront Alliance say that the Domino site is one of the last testaments to an incredible age of sugar processing in the 19th century, when the City of Brooklyn was the greatest sugar-manufacturing city in the United States, and the original Domino refinery (then run by Havemeyers & Elder) was the largest sugar refinery in the world.
There are other reminders of the refinery’s glory days. Standing below the imposing façade of the building, one can still smell the burnt sugar that permeates the structure. It’s possible to see faint outlines where new equipment, imported to accommodate changes in production, was incorporated into the building by simply removing large sections of the brick wall and then bricking up again around the new machines.
Architects are working to preserve and display some of the old machinery that was left behind in the building, partly at the request of Mary Habstritt, preservation chair of the Roebling chapter of the Society for Industrial Archaeology.
“The problem for us is to figure out a way that the industrial use is honored, and the brickwork is left intact,” said Fred Bland of Beyer Blinder Belle, the architectural firm that is handling the rebuild of the refinery buildings.
Large-scale building
Massive undertakings are nothing new for CPC Resources. The company made a name for itself when it helped resuscitate one of the city’s largest housing complexes — the Parkchester, a 12,271-unit Stuyvesant Town-like complex originally built by MetLife that had fallen into disrepair. CPC Resources bought 6,000 of the units in 1998 from Harry Helmsley in a complex financing effort to provide $220 million in funding to renovate all the units, said Dunn.
“The buildings had deteriorated, and they needed work,” said Kathleen Dunn, CPC Resources’ executive vice president of development. Many of the condo units sold to individuals were then financed by CPC Resources for about four years.
In keeping with CPC Resources’ mission to develop affordable housing, at Domino 30 percent of the 2,400 planned units are being offered to families whose earnings are 30 percent of the area’s median income (AMI). Additional units will be set aside for those who earn more moderate incomes at 50 and 60 percent AMI, and at approximately 130 percent AMI.
Those are terms that exceed the recently revised 421-a requirements, said Susan Pollock, senior vice president and project director for CPC Resources.
Still, there is some grumbling. “CPC Resources is pro-affordable housing; their record speaks for itself. But this is far from an affordable housing project,” said Simeon Bankoff, executive director of the Historic Districts Council, which helped fight to save the old Domino buildings. Although CPC Resources has not released the price of the market-rate units yet, the average per-square-foot price of condos in Brooklyn has risen to $531 per square foot, according to Ryan Slack, CEO of PropertyShark.com.
The developer is working to win residents’ approval. After conducting a poll among Williamsburg residents and promoting the results in an ad in a community newspaper recently, CPC Resources and Isaac Katan reported that a majority of respondents are in favor of affordable housing — a more pressing concern in their eyes than overdevelopment.
Concerns about context
Still, many residents objected to the planned complex for a number of other reasons, including concerns about preservation and the buildings’ planned height. The design will come from Rafael Viñoly Architects, purveyors of a modern, monumental style. Viñoly works include the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center in Boston and the Jazz at Lincoln Center complex in the Time Warner Center in New York.
Habstritt criticized the planned buildings, some of which are 300 and 400 feet tall, for being out of character and “dwarfing” the refinery building, the centerpiece of the site.
“One of the things that is critical about the design is taking the module and extruding it to various heights,” countered Viñoly’s project director, Trevor Atwell.
“We feel that we have worked very hard on the Kent Avenue buildings that will have that urban up-and-down modulation of buildings, as if they have been there for a long time,” added Pollock, who said they chose Viñoly for its empathy for the neighborhood’s concerns, and its inventiveness.
Included in the plans for the 11.2-acre residential, retail and community development are a 1,300-foot-long park space along the water and a 40-foot-wide esplanade. All of the streets leading down from Kent Avenue will have clear cut-throughs for access and visual beauty, said Atwell.
CPC Resources will still have to go through ULURP, the Uniform Land Use Review Process, which involves a certain degree of community approval, before the complex can move forward. But once the waterfront park space is completed, it will be the biggest swath of open parkland in Williamsburg, confirmed Warner Johnston, a spokesperson for the city’s Department of Parks and Recreation.