Commercial Observer

Boston Properties and Rudin Management Company are collaborating with WeWork in erecting a Class A ground-up office building called Dock 72 in Brooklyn Navy Yard, which will have the most extensive array of amenities for tenants in the borough. Michael Rudin, a vice president at Rudin Management, said at Dock 72, in the city-owned Brooklyn Navy Yard, there will be a 13,000-square-foot food hall (for all Navy Yard tenants), a 15,000-square-foot health and wellness center (for building tenants only) with a gym, studio rooms, spa treatment rooms and a locker room (no vendors have yet been selected, Mr. Rudin said). On the rooftop, there will be a conferencing and event facility. Plus, on the ground floor there is planned 10,000 square feet of outdoor space with a half-court basketball court, bicycle valet, outdoor game tables and an open lawn (available to Navy Yard tenants). “Our research indicates that TAMI [or technology, advertising, media and information] tenants want to provide these services to their employees so they don’t have to leave the space,” Mr. Rudin said. “If we can provide that in our base building package and then allow tenants to dedicate more space to their specific space needs and to drive efficiencies we think it’ll be a big attractor.” After years of decline, the Brooklyn office market is poised to get bigger than any time in its history (Graph: JLL). Rudin Management and Boston Properties assumed a 99-year ground-lease from WeWork and are developing the site into a 16-story Class A office building with the coworking giant acting as a consultant on the building design and amenities. WeWork will even help with the operation of all of the building amenities. “We’ve always wanted to expand outside of Manhattan, and the opportunity presented itself,” Mr. Rudin said. “We think Brooklyn is ripe for ground-up new development.” When it opens in two years, the 675,000-square-foot Dock 72 will serve modern-day manufacturing or modern-day industrial creative-type tenants, Mr. Rudin said. Asking rents will start in the low-$60s per square foot—which is certainly a figure you hear more often in Manhattan than Brooklyn. And a $60-plus-rent seems to be the new normal for some of these office projects. (Overall asking rents in Brooklyn average $32.26 per square foot, according to CBRE’s fourth-quarter 2015 Brooklyn market report; but that’s nowhere near the figure Commercial Observer saw at some of these buildings.) “WeWork is curating the amenity package at Dock 72 at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, which will include a health and wellness center, specialty food and beverage offerings and a rooftop conference, among other offerings,” Mark Lapidus, WeWork’s head of global real estate, said in prepared remarks. “We have the benefit of incorporating feedback from our community of over 45,000 members to offer services that will empower them to connect with each other in new ways, in beautifully designed spaces.”