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Downtown Brooklyn’s gloomiest office building is growing up.
The City Council on Tuesday night approved plans for a lofty mixed-use tower at 395 Flatbush Ave. to take the place of a squat building once dubbed “one of the biggest eyesores in downtown Brooklyn.”
Its 840-foot-tall, 72-story replacement, developed by Rabina and Park Tower Group in a public-private partnership, will be second only in height to nearby Brooklyn Tower, the very tallest in the borough. That latter edifice rises 93 stories into the sky.
The team expects to begin construction in 2028.
The city-owned site sits at one of Downtown Brooklyn’s busiest intersections. Its future tower is slated to span 1.5 million square feet with a 1,263 mixed-income rental apartments. In accordance with zoning requirements, 325 of the apartments are aside as permanently affordable. Those will be made available to renters earning 60% or less of the area median income, without using loans or grants from the city.
If successful, the plan will deliver the local district the most affordable housing in any single construction project within the last decade, according to a spokesperson for the development team.
“395 Flatbush is poised to transform one of the most important blocks in Brooklyn with a state-of-the-art mixed-use development that is responsive to the City’s urgent need for new housing at all income levels, including homes serving low- and very low-income populations,” said Josh Rabina, president and CEO of Rabina, in a statement shared with The Post.
The 53-year-old building remains occupied by a Verizon call center and ground-floor retail, including a 7-Eleven and a McDonald’s. It rises seven pitch-black stories above one the central business district’s main transit hubs, DeKalb Avenue Station, which is served by the Q, R, B, D and N trains. The triangular building’s long awning is often crowded with commuters and homeless encampments.
A spokesperson for the developers said the the 350,000-square-foot office building is “no longer meeting the needs of the community.”
The Rabina and Park Tower Group plans promise a significant facelift to the area, including a landscaped public plaza, widened sidewalks, an expanded subway entrance and a commitment to contribute $1 million “to support the maintenance and improvement of Fort Greene Park” over the next decade.
The development team forsees no disruption to subway lines throughout construction, according to a spokesperson.
In addition to housing, the tower will deliver 66,000 square feet of retail and 75,000 square feet of commercial office or community facility space. The latter space may be taken up by the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, according to a spokesperson for the development team.
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