Two Trees Gets $80M Loan for Domino Sugar Project in Brooklyn
M&T financing to complete conversion of 19th century Brooklyn refinery into office campus.
Two Trees Management has secured a finance package totaling $80M from M&T Bank to complete the redevelopment of the landmark Domino Sugar Refinery in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn,
M&T will provide a $43.6M project loan and a $36M construction loan for the adaptive-reuse project, which is converting the 19th century refinery into a new 460K SF office campus.
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, now under construction, Tall Trees had completed a 3,000-unit multifamily tower on the site, which also will include a new public park.
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 handling the leasing, with asking rents expected to range from $55 to $85 per square foot.