A new modernist neighborhood is rising around the hulking brick remains of the 19th century Domino Sugar plant just north of the Williamsburg Bridge in Brooklyn.
The first building in the long-delayed $3 billion Domino project, a 16-story residential rental building clad in perforated copper and zinc panels, is due to open in July on a site set back from the former riverfront refinery. It resembles a stack of wide, flat cardboard boxes.
Work is poised to begin on a second building, a 42-story mixed-use waterfront tower, faced with deep white-cast concrete panels that frame the windows. The design loosely was based on the structure of sugar crystals, according to Rick Cook, a founder of COOKFOX Architects, which designed the building.
Both buildings are composed of strong geometric shapes, with large open rectangular donut-holes in the center, a design intended to maintain a visual connection between the waterfront and the lower-rise Williamsburg neighborhood farther inland.
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Two more planned waterfront towers could rise up to 55 stories on the 11-acre refinery site, which dates to the 1850s. Plant operations continued until 2004, when the refinery was sold.
The interior of the main refinery, a designated city landmark, is being gutted, in preparation for reuse as office space. Ideally, it would be custom-built for a single tenant, said Jed Walentas, chief executive of Two Trees Management Inc., which is redeveloping the site.
Three stories will be added to the top of the 155-foot-high factory, not counting the much taller smokestack. A 40-foot-high Domino Sugar sign long visible from Manhattan will be reinstalled on the roof.
Outside, 6 acres of parkland are under construction, including a new East River esplanade. The new "Domino Park" will include industrial artifacts from the site, such as steel columns from a demolished sugar warehouse, two 80-foot-high cranes, 585 feet of elevated crane tracks, and 36-foot-tall syrup-collection tanks.
James Corner Field Operations, the lead designer of the High Line in Manhattan, designed the park. New streets will be created as well.
The waterfront building at the north end of the Domino site will be known as 260 Kent Ave. It consists of a residential tower shaped liked an upside-down letter L, attached to another, fatter 22-story leg, that will house offices, with retail below.
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Rendering of new buildings at the former site of the Domino Sugar plant in Brooklyn.
PHOTO: COOK FOX ARCHITECTS/TWO TREES MANAGEMENTNewly released renderings show the office space and apartments are designed to look distinctly different, with big sugar crystals on the commercial side—where windows will be typically nearly 10-feet high—and much smaller ones on the residential side.
The idea is to connect the building to the site’s industrial past, without literally re-creating the bricks and mortar of the old refinery, Mr. Cook said.
In all, the 435-foot-high building will have about 330 rental apartments, with 20% set aside for low-income households, 150,000 square feet of commercial office space and 13,000 square feet of retail.
To bring the apartment dwellers and office workers together, they will share a fourth-floor landscaped sun deck, Mr. Cook said. Amenities include shared lounges and a shared fitness center. There will be a pool and a commercial conference center. Dencityworks architecture also worked on the design.
The refinery site was sold in 2004 to CPC Resources Inc., which planned to redevelop it, but progress was slowed by the economic downturn, and eventually stalled. Two Trees bought the site in 2012, and brought in SHoP Architects to develop a new master plan. It was approved by the city in 2014.
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Overall, the project includes more than 2.9 million square feet of space, 2,800 rental apartments in four buildings, including 700 affordable to low-income households, about 480,000 square feet of commercial office space, and a public school.
The building about to come on the rental market, 325 Kent Ave., will have 522 apartments, including 104 affordable units. It was designed by SHoP Architects to be 16-stories tall facing the East River, but steps down in a series of terraces on the opposite side.
Mr. Walentas said that by blending commercial, retail and residential uses at the Domino refinery site, and adding parks and streets, Two Trees is trying to "replicate the energy and sense of a community of a real New York neighborhood." Though the new modernist buildings next to the refinery standout, he said, "we want to knit it back to the existing social fabric of Williamsburg."