Plans for Norman Foster’s Red Hook office complex may be kaput
According to sources close to the project, plans for Norman Foster’s Red Hoek Point, a 7.7-acre commercial campus at the former Revere Sugar Factory on the Red Hook shoreline, appear to be getting scrapped, The Real Deal reports. The website still advertises the “revolutionary office campus on the Brooklyn waterfront,” but Thor Equities is reportedly going to abandon the 800,000-square-foot complex and replace it with warehousing, a change of course that Thor’s founder Joseph Sitt may have been considering as early as last October, as new renderings for Red Hoek Point were being developed.
First unveiled by Thor Equities in 2016, the project was designed by Foster + Partners with SCAPE Landscape Architecture. The complex would have been composed of two five-story buildings with 795,000 square feet of office space on three levels and 23,000 square feet of retail and restaurant space on the ground level. Inspired by its maritime location, the project featured unique shoreline parks and 3.6 acres of green roofs including running tracks. It would have been the first modern, heavy-timber-frame office building in the city.
Spokespeople for Thor have yet to comment, but according to The Real Deal this pivot from office space to warehouses is in line with a number of firms who are “placing big bets on the demand brought by e-commerce.” RXR Realty, in partnership with Los Angeles-based LBA Logistics, has plans to build a multi-story warehouse in Maspeth on a property they bought for more than $70 million in 2018. Blackstone Group bought a $55.5 million two-story industrial building near LaGuardia Airport, and Dov Hertz, formerly of Extell Development, is planning a 1.3 million-square-foot distribution center in Sunset Park at 75-81 20th Street.
Thor bought the vacant 7.7 acre Red Hook site at 280 Richards Street for $40 million in 2005.
[Via The Real Deal]
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