A vacant stretch of Gowanus long expected to sprout office towers is now on track for hundreds of apartments instead. Ailanthus, a residential development firm, has filed plans for a 17-story, 400-unit building at 424 Hoyt Street, replacing a one-story car repair shop and a vehicle storage facility on the site.
The filing marks a sharp pivot from what city planners once envisioned for the 45,892-square-foot lot. As reported by The Real Deal, Ailanthus is a joint venture formed by TerraCRG executive Ofer Cohen along with Totem executives Vivian Liao and Tucker Reed. Per PincusCo, the September 2 land-use application seeks to rezone the site from M1-4 manufacturing to a mixed-use M1-4/R8X district.
Site owner Two Trees Management bought the property in July 2008 for $7.7 million, according to the same PincusCo filing, and in 2019 floated a roughly 300,000-square-foot commercial office and school project that was never built. That plan sat dormant until Two Trees ground-leased the lot to Ailanthus this year; the terms of that lease were not disclosed, and Two Trees declined to comment to Commercial Observer. Ailanthus signed the ground lease covering the Hoyt Street site as part of its broader push into the neighborhood.
What's Actually Planned for 424 Hoyt Street
Records filed with the NYC Department of City Planning's Zoning Application Portal show the proposed building would stand 175 feet tall and allocate 271,000 square feet to 400 residential units, 46,000 square feet to a public school, and 14,000 square feet to retail. The project would include between 100 and 120 affordable housing units, per Commercial Observer's report that Ailanthus filed the plans. Ailanthus has said it plans to engage heavily with communities and elected officials involved in the project's approvals.
The company argues the timing lines up with City Hall's own housing priorities. An Ailanthus spokesperson noted that a recent report from Mayor Zohran Mamdani's administration identified Gowanus as a target for more affordable housing. Commercial Observer reported that Ailanthus cited figures from that report in discussing affordable housing in Brooklyn Community Board 6.
A Neighborhood Still Rebuilding Under a Superfund Cloud
Gowanus underwent a major rezoning several years ago and has also undergone extensive environmental cleanup, a legacy of the canal's industrial past. As Hoodline previously reported, the Environmental Protection Agency designated the Gowanus Canal a Superfund national priority site in 2010 due to heavy industrial contamination, a designation that has required ongoing sewer and stormwater infrastructure work along the waterway. The rezoning was intended to add housing, including affordable units, according to Gowanus Canal Conservancy documentation.
That construction boom has come as developers navigate the expiration of a federal tax break. Nixon Peabody LLP described the challenges facing Gowanus residential projects after the 421-a tax abatement expired. But the neighborhood's promises haven't all landed on schedule — Hoodline's tracking of rezoning pledges found that the roughly 950-unit Gowanus Green project has faced delays tied to an environmental remediation dispute between National Grid and state regulators. At least half of its units would be targeted at or below 50 percent of area median income.
Ailanthus's Broader Brooklyn Push
The Hoyt Street filing is part of a rapid expansion for the two-year-old firm. Cohen, Liao and Reed launched Ailanthus in May 2024 with roughly 1,500 units already in its pipeline, and the company has since said it targets adding 10,000 housing units over five years. Its portfolio also includes a 456-unit building at 1057 Atlantic Avenue in Crown Heights and a 181-unit building at 737 Fourth Avenue in Sunset Park, according to The Real Deal, meaning the firm has taken on projects at sites that are not shovel-ready and may require city rezoning before construction can begin.
Ailanthus's Gowanus project is in the same neighborhood as another major canalfront development already moving through the same 2021 rezoning framework. Hoodline reported in April that the City Planning Commission approved a 27-story, roughly 1,000-unit mixed-use complex at 175 Third Street, a planned 1.1-million-square-foot property that includes 1,100 residential units, a quarter of them affordable, along with a Life Time fitness center and public waterfront space. That project secured $785 million in financing from Charney Companies, Tavros Capital and Incoco Capital in June, underscoring the scale of capital now flowing into Gowanus even as older rezoning commitments continue to work through delays and environmental review.
