A Dumbo-based developer opened a massive new office tower — officially called “Ten Grand” — on the former Domino Sugar site at the Williamsburg waterfront Thursday, according to the company’s head.
“Ten Grand brings a singular elevated office experience to Brooklyn, adding to the borough’s growing global destination for creative businesses,” said Jed Walentas, the principal of developer Two Trees.
Two Trees
The 24-floor new office tower is one leg of the larger 45-story mixed-use residential, office, and retail building, called “One South First” — which opened in September at the northern edge of the former sugar manufacturing site.
Manhattan-based designers with the firm Cookfox Architects designed the building’s white exterior to “invoke the structure of sugar crystals” and offer a wraparound view of the Brooklyn waterfront and the distant skyline of Manhattan, according to the developer.
In addition to the workspace, the building hosts a string of amenities — such as a 45-seat theater, lounges and conference rooms, rooftop cabanas, gyms, and a bike lobby to store two-wheelers.
Two Trees
The ground floor of the development complex will also feature a number of well-known retailers — including Bushwick pizzeria Roberta’s, Other Half Brewing, Oddfellows Ice Cream, and Two Hands Café.
The new space is the most recent in an impressive list of developments that Two Trees has erected in recent years — including their six-acre privately-funded public green space Domino Park that opened in June 2018, and their doughnut-shaped 16-story residential building 325 Kent that opened its doors in 2017.
Two Trees is also working to repurpose the 19th-century sugar refinery building into an office campus, while maintaining its facade.
The company plans to expand its portfolio further north along the East River by possibly seeking a rezoning to build a waterfront park and residential development on three lots owned by Con Edison on River Street between Grand and N. Third streets, according to a Brownstoner report.
That site would be separated from the Domino Park properties only by the small 1.7-acre city-owned Grand Ferry Park.
The city also tapped Two Trees — a big donor to Mayor Bill de Blasio — to co-develop below-market-rate apartments on the parking lot of Boerum Hill’s Wyckoff Gardens in 2018, after scooping up two next-door lots along the Gowanus Canal ahead of that neighborhood’s upcoming rezoning.
