One more longtime industrial holdout in Gowanus is almost history. Demolition at 264 Butler Street is in the home stretch, with crews clearing out a low‑rise industrial parcel that for decades housed light‑manufacturing and wholesale operations. The mid‑block lot between Third Avenue and Nevins Street now sits scraped down and open, with piles of brick and concrete waiting for the last haul‑away.
Work crews clear the lot
Photographs and on‑site observations show most of the former structures have already been knocked down and carted off. The site is “nearing completion,” according to New York YIMBY, which puts the parcel at roughly 63,000 square feet inside the neighborhood’s rezoned interior. The outlet notes that dump trucks and fenced staging areas are still in play as crews finish hauling masonry and concrete from the interior lot.
Who bought the lot
Public records and local reporting show the property changed hands last summer, when an affiliate of Goose Property Management bought the site for about $15.25 million. Brooklyn Eagle covered the sale, and a commercial‑deals listing credits a JLL brokerage team led by Ethan Stanton, Brendan Maddigan, Michael Mazzara and Winfield Clifford with steering the transaction, per Traded.
Assembly expands
The Butler Street parcel sits directly next to a roughly 13,000‑square‑foot vacant lot at 172 Third Avenue that Goose picked up in November 2024 for about $22 million, expanding the company’s footprint for a potential assemblage. PincusCo records the 172 Third Avenue deal and notes that together, the two buys add significant buildable area along that corridor.
Rezoning opened the door
The property sits inside the Special Gowanus Mixed‑Use District, created under the neighborhood’s 2021 rezoning that rewrote local rules to allow more residential and mixed‑use projects on interior blocks. The City Planning Commission’s Final Environmental Impact Statement spells out the Mandatory Inclusionary Housing requirements and bulk controls that will govern any future proposal on the site, according to City Planning.
Plans and timing
For now, what comes next on Butler Street is still a blank. No formal development plans or renderings have been filed for 264 Butler, and there were no public records of a new building permit at the time of a recent visit by New York YIMBY. The outlet reports that demolition permits were submitted earlier this year, and property‑records data show a full‑demolition application dated March 3, 2025, per PincusCo.
For nearby residents and businesses, the newly cleared lot is one more sign that Gowanus’s long‑anticipated construction wave is shifting from paperwork to jackhammers. Neighbors will be watching for the first formal filings that spell out unit counts, affordability requirements and any ground‑floor commercial space. We’ll keep an eye on Department of Buildings and City Planning records for fresh proposals tied to the site.
