MODEL BLOCK | REDHOOK

An Innovative Mixed-Use Mixed-Income Residential Complex.

Year: 2020 -

Location: Red Hook, Brooklyn, New York

Project Team: AE Superlab | Architectonica | DRAW Brooklyn | Four Points LLC |

“Housing, jobs, resilience and the environment” are what’s driving Model Block, a 407,000-square-foot mixed-use project being developed by DRAW Brooklyn and D.C.-based Four Points LLC. The proposed 15-story development is slated to rise at 145 Wolcott Street, a disused industrial site in burgeoning Red Hook. The new project will introduce a 210-unit, 160,000-square-foot apartment complex to the area, alongside 65,675 square feet of light manufacturing space, and 74,325 square feet of commercial space.

Commercial space would be developed to support new restaurants and retail while office and manufacturing space would be geared towards “maker” uses such as milling, woodworking, coffee roasting, furniture building, clothing production, and metalworking and electronics prototyping—a mix that has increased its presence in Red Hook over the last decade. The developers expect these new businesses to yield more than 337 jobs—jobs they describe as more meaningful to the community than those provided by the many last-mile warehouses popping up in the neighborhood.

Intensive site remediation will also be undertaken through the state’s Brownfield Cleanup Program, and the developers aim to achieve flood resilience by raising apartments one floor above a ground-floor lobby. The program will also include a courtyard 28 feet above the flood line that could also act as an emergency gathering space.

The 210-unit rental building will designate 61 apartments income-restricted, reserving two-thirds for those earning 130 percent of the AMI, and the other third for those earning 40 or 60 percent AMI, with those living in Community Board 6 receiving priority consideration for at least half the units. This mix stands to be the largest addition of affordable units since the construction of the Red Hook Houses in 1939, which house more than 50 percent of the nearly 11,000 people living in Red Hook across 30 buildings.