Century 21 has agreed to open a store at the Fulton Mall in Downtown Brooklyn, the Wall Street Journal reported, expediting the groundbreaking of the long-awaited City Point development. The discount retailer is the first new traditional department store to open in Downtown Brooklyn since the 1970s and will serve as the anchor tenant for City Point, a planned development of 675,000 square feet of retail and commercial space and 690 housing units at Dekalb and Flatbush avenues.
With the tenant in hand, Acadia Realty Trust and Washington Square Partners plan to break ground on the project this summer and have pushed forward the ground breaking date for the last phase of the complex, a 680-foot residential tower, to 2017.
“We would not have moved forward without an anchor. Century 21 was what we really needed to make this project a reality,” said Washington Square President Paul Travis.
Century 21 is the latest retailer to arrive in Downtown Brooklyn, as Gap, Aldo and H&M have all opened or signed agreements to open on the Fulton Mall in recent months. The store also represents a compromise between long time residents who fear they’ll be priced out of the new shopping corridor, and advocates for gentrification, the Journal said. [WSJ]