Two Trees Secures $364M Loan for Domino Sugar Project
JPMorgan provides financing to complete two apartment towers at redevelopment.
Two Trees Management has secured a $364M loan that will finance the completion of two residential towers next to the renovated historic Domino Sugar refinery in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn.
JPMorgan is providing the financing—$304M in building loans and $60M in project loans—for the two towers at 346 Kent Avenue, where 600 apartment units are under construction.
Two Trees acquired the 11-acre waterfront Domino site in 2012 for $185M from The Community Preservation Corp. In addition to the $250M conversion of the Domino refinery and the two apartment towers, the project also will include a new public park.
The two apartment towers will share a podium and an architectural quirk: both of them are designed as o-shaped rectangular buildings with large open spaces in the middle of each.
The centerpiece of the project is the landmarked refinery building at 300 Kent Ave.—built in 1865—and its famous Domino Sugar sign on the roof next to a huge smokestack that runs down the center of the building.
In what is no doubt the most unique—and challenging—manufacturing-to-office adaptive reuse project undertaken in NYC in recent years, the entire brick shell of the 19th century building has been preserved and incorporated into the new office campus.
In order to clear out the interior of the building, the developers had to use blowtorches to cut up 30-foot-high vats and a catacomb of catwalks and piping in order to remove them from the refinery’s interior, the floor of which was covered by more than a century’s worth of sticky sugar residue.
Sugar was refined at the Williamsburg plant until Domino moved its operation to Yonkers in 2004.
The adapted office building, to be known as the Refinery, has been designed to appear like it has been inserted in its entirety into the brick façade of the ancient sugar plant, like a ship in a bottle.
The glass-wall perimeter of the new Refinery campus has been set back 15 feet from the brick exterior in the design by architects Practice for Architecture and Urbanism (PAU). A greenscape of hanging vines, plantings and 30-foot-tall sweetgum trees is being installed between the outer masonry of the old structure and the interior glass curtain wall.
The Refinery is being topped off with a glass-enclosed, 27K SF penthouse dome that offers spectacular views of the Brooklyn Bridge and the Manhattan skyline. The lobby will feature a three-story atrium.
Other elements of the building design include church-like arched windows that pour natural light onto mostly column-free floors with ceiling heights of up to 14 feet. Unlike most of the NYC office buildings, windows in The Refinery can actually open.
The Refinery is expected to be completed next year. CBRE will be handling the leasing, with asking rents expected to range from $55 to $85 per square foot.