A demolition permit issued on August 13 has cleared the way for a 95-year-old commercial building on Varet Street in East Williamsburg to come down, opening the site for a new five-story, 27-unit condominium building that will include income-restricted apartments. The predecessor structure, a 7,200-square-foot retail building constructed in 1931, most recently served as a storefront for the regional urban apparel and footwear chain V.I.M.
According to New York YIMBY, the new building at 85 Varet Street will span 17,184 square feet with an average unit size of 636 square feet and rise 57 feet between Humboldt Street and Avenue of Puerto Rico. The project was designed by architect Manuel Zarate of MZ Architecture, with engineer Peter J. Stroh of Stroh Engineering Services PC handling the demolition filing for the predecessor building back in February. A new building application for the site was filed on March 5, and subsequent filings, including the demolition permit and a sidewalk shed permit, were approved in late July and early August, per DOB NOW records cited by the outlet.
The project is being developed by T85 Trading LLC, which has held corporate ownership of the lot since at least 2015, according to New York City Tax Commission records. Public property records indicate the parcel last sold in 2006 for $496,000, suggesting the developer is a long-standing owner on the block rather than a recent speculator.
How the City's New Zoning Rules Make the Project Possible
The development is set to reserve part of its residential inventory for affordable housing, utilizing what New York YIMBY describes as Universal Affordability Preference floor area incentives, coordinated with the city's Department of Housing Preservation and Development. That program traces back to December 2024, when the City Council adopted the “City of Yes for Housing Opportunity” zoning text amendment, which established the UAP across medium- and high-density residential districts, according to Cozen O'Connor. The measure replaced the former Voluntary Inclusionary Housing framework in an effort to incentivize affordable density citywide.
Under the UAP framework, developers can expand a building's floor area by up to 20% if the extra space is permanently restricted to households earning a weighted average of 60% Area Median Income, per the Department of Housing Preservation and Development. Akerman LLP notes that projects with more than 10,000 square feet of affordable space must also designate at least 20% of those units to households at or below 40% AMI. It remains unclear exactly how many of the 27 units at 85 Varet Street will be set aside as affordable or which specific AMI tiers will apply.
A Corridor Rooted in East Williamsburg's Latino History
The site borders Graham Avenue, a commercial corridor co-named Avenue of Puerto Rico that has served as a cultural anchor for East Williamsburg's Latino community since the mid-20th century, according to the Graham Avenue Business Improvement District, which manages the corridor. Residents in the area will also have access to the L train's Montrose Avenue station, as well as the J and M trains serving the Flushing Avenue station, per New York YIMBY's reporting.
Demolition filings were also submitted in July for the adjacent parcel at 89 Varet Street, according to Sinra.ai, though it remains unclear whether that filing points to a coordinated multi-parcel assemblage or a separate, unrelated redevelopment. Neighboring commercial lots along Varet Street feature similar multi-story structures dating to the early 1930s, similar in age to the building being razed at 85 Varet Street.
Pricey Market Backdrop Fuels Demand for New Units
The new condos are arriving amid a tight East Williamsburg housing market. As of June, the median listing price for residential properties in the neighborhood reached $1,225,000, a 22.6% increase year-over-year, with active market listings dropping by more than 15%, according to Realtor.com. The median price per square foot for listed homes in the area stood at $1,224.
Across Brooklyn more broadly, the median monthly residential rent stood at $4,257 in July, while boroughwide rental inventory decreased by 8.6% year-over-year, per a report from the Corcoran Group. That squeeze on supply mirrors a citywide pattern: a December 2025 analysis by the Real Estate Board of New York found that New York City faces an overall housing supply deficit exceeding 400,000 units, a gap the Bipartisan Policy Center says helped motivate the city's 2024 density incentives.
Zarate's architecture firm has stayed active elsewhere in Brooklyn, having also filed plans in March for a four-story, five-unit residential building at 60 Madison Street in Bedford-Stuyvesant, according to Marketproof. Back on Varet Street, the two-story store building that once anchored the block for nearly a century is now set to give way to a taller, denser structure built under the city's newest playbook for adding affordable housing to high-demand neighborhoods.
