Step into Queen One’s Rise and Fly Vision Centre and it feels less like an office and more like a new gallery on the Williamsburg circuit. An animatronic leopard with wings greets visitors, conference rooms are lined in amethyst and sculptures look more like museum pieces than meeting-room decor. The fit-out is deliberately theatrical, built to play as an immersive art exhibit rather than a standard corporate headquarters. Queen One is positioning the site as both a lab for AI-powered e-commerce experiments and a neighborhood hub for classes and events, a bold statement about what a tech office can look like in a creative Brooklyn enclave.
Founder and CEO Ryan Urban says the centre was 22 months in the making and calls it “a beacon for Brooklyn, it’s a beacon for New York.” As reported by News 12 New York, Urban told visitors the hub is meant to inspire “the next generation of innovators” and to feel distinctly local, not like a generic transplant dropped onto the waterfront.
State and city leaders have framed the centre as an economic play as well. The space spans more than 30,000 square feet at 25 Kent Avenue and represents a more than $10 million capital investment, with plans to create roughly 600 high-tech jobs in New York City over the next five years, according to a press release from Empire State Development. The rollout is tied to performance-based tax incentives and an estimated $67 million in research and development spending focused on AI and e-commerce work.
Community programming and local makers
The headquarters will double as a community space, hosting workshops, art classes and a weekend program for adults with autism, including a forthcoming Scepter workshop tailored to adults with severe autism. Urban says the goal is to help participants “feel like themselves,” as reported by News 12 New York. Nearly every curated piece inside the building was designed or crafted by Brooklyn locals, the tour found, a detail Urban has framed as central to the project’s identity.
Why 25 Kent matters
The Rise and Fly Vision Centre sits inside 25 Kent Avenue, the waterfront office complex marketed as a new home for creative and maker tenants. As 25 Kent notes, the development was designed to support a mix of industrial and creative uses, and earlier coverage by Brooklyn Eagle placed the project in the context of long-running efforts to expand commercial space along the Williamsburg waterfront. That setting gives Queen One a visible, factory-meets-studio address right in the middle of the neighborhood’s latest redevelopment push.
Queen One’s centre is the latest example of a company trying to fuse showmanship with engineering, and it arrives with the usual promises: jobs, outreach and local sourcing. The project was first celebrated publicly last November, when earlier coverage highlighted the grand opening and the company’s pledge to expand its New York footprint. Whether the Rise and Fly Vision Centre can turn its theatrical design into sustained hiring and steady neighborhood programming will be the real test over the next few years.
