We spent last weekend at the Powerhouse Arts Print Fair, surrounded by incredible work and the artists who made it. If you haven't been inside Powerhouse yet, it's a must. Then midweek, we ended up at Mercado Central, eating tapas while shuffleboard teams filed past on their way to Royal Palms for the beginning of their season. Spring is in full swing. This week, the biggest building Gowanus has ever imagined just got the green light.

Now Open / Coming Soon —  High Beam Coffee from the team behind East One, Heatwise Hot Yoga on Court, and Häagen-Dazs in Cobble Hill

The Big Story — 175 Third Street gets CPC approval for 1,000 units

Things to Do — Bell House comedy, Public Records music, Arts Gowanus Tower Show, iBeam jazz, and Aziz Ansari

The Local — Runner & Stone, 13 years on 3rd Avenue

Development Watch — 601 Union cleared, and Society Brooklyn refinanced

Quick Hits — Participatory Budgeting vote closes Sunday, Dae closing

High Beam Coffee Opens on Court Street
398 Court Street, between 1st and 2nd Place, Carroll Gardens
Now Open
High Beam is the Red Hook roastery from Selina Ullrich, who built the wholesale program at the beloved (and now-closed) East One Coffee Roasters before opening her own shop. The Van Brunt flagship debuted last fall with on-site roasting, a heated back patio, and a 4.9-star Google rating already on the books. This Carroll Gardens cafe, in the old Local Roots space, is High Beam's second location.

Heatwise Hot Yoga Is Setting Up on Court Street
317 Court Street, Carroll Gardens
Coming Soon · Opening date TBD
With the success of their studios in Manhattan and Brooklyn Heights, Heatwise is on its way to 317 Court Street, between Sackett and Degraw. No firm opening date yet, but the space is being built out. And when you’re done melting, Häagen-Dazs is opening around the corner at Smith and Warren. The timing could not be better.

Häagen-Dazs Is Coming to Smith and Warren
Smith Street & Warren Street, Cobble Hill
Coming Soon · Opening date TBD
The ice cream chain is taking a corner spot at Smith and Warren in Cobble Hill. Not the most exciting name on this list, but in the dead of summer, it’ll do the trick.

Charney Companies / Tavros Capital
175 Third Street, Gowanus

The City Planning Commission approved plans for 175 Third Street on April 12, clearing the way for a 27-story, 1,000-unit residential tower on the Gowanus Canal. It will be the largest building in the neighborhood by a wide (and tall) margin.

The project comes from Charney Companies and Tavros Capital, who have been methodically assembling what they call Gowanus Wharf: four developments totaling more than 2 million square feet and 2,200 units across the neighborhood. 175 Third Street is the fourth and final piece. The other three (Union Channel at 240 3rd Avenue, Douglass Port at 251 Douglass Street, and Nevins Landing at 310-340 Nevins Street) are already under construction or leasing.

The design is by Bjarke Ingels Group, the Danish architecture firm behind some of the most recognized buildings of the last decade (the zigzag apartment mountain in Copenhagen, the pyramid courtyard at the Smithsonian, VIA 57 West on the Hudson River). Working with dencityworks, they’ve drawn up a U-shaped cluster of stacked concrete volumes with angled corners that open toward the canal, creating cascading terraces and setbacks as the building steps down to the water. It sits between 3rd Street, 3rd Avenue, and the waterfront, directly adjacent to Powerhouse Arts and across the street from Whole Foods.

Roughly 250 of the 1,000-plus units will be permanently affordable housing, 25 percent of the total, as required by the Gowanus Mandatory Inclusionary Zoning. The ground floor will include retail and artist workspaces. A 28,000-square-foot publicly accessible waterfront park, designed by Field Operations with NYC Parks, will line the canal edge.

Life Time, the national fitness brand, signed an 85,000-square-foot lease in December for what they’re calling an “athletic country club” in the building: rooftop pools, saunas, pickleball, and coworking. It will be the anchor commercial tenant.

The estimated project cost, including land, is close to $1 billion. Completion is targeted for the late 2020s, though the exact construction timeline depends on the availability of remaining permits and market conditions. Foundation work is just beginning.

This is what the rezoning was designed to produce. Whether Gowanus is ready for a building this big, next to a 19th-century stone factory, overlooking a canal that’s still technically a Superfund site, is the kind of question this neighborhood will be answering for the next decade.

A Drinking Game NYC: Bridesmaids at Bell House
149 7th Street, Gowanus
Sat April 18 · 7pm
They screen the movie, you drink when they tell you to. It’s Bridesmaids, so the food poisoning scene alone might do you in. Bring friends who can handle their rosé.

Josh Sharp: Crowd Work in the Round at Bell House
149 7th Street, Gowanus
Sun April 19 · 3:30pm
Sharp does an hour of improvised crowd work with the audience seated around him. No set, no script, just whatever happens in the room. Sunday afternoon energy, low stakes, high potential for secondhand embarrassment.

Ballet at Public Records
233 Butler Street, Gowanus
Sat April 18 · 6pm · Sound Room
mu tate, NEXCYIA, Eden Aurelius, and more on the Sound Room stage. If you like your Saturday evenings experimental and a little unpredictable, this is the one.

Arts Gowanus “The Tower Show” Opens at Union Channel
240 3rd Avenue (corner of Union & 3rd), Gowanus
Wed April 23 · Free · Runs through May 17, Sat & Sun noon–6pm
The fifth annual Tower Show returns, and this year nearly 200 artists have submitted their take on the Arts Gowanus water tower using an 11x17 template. Paint, glass, tile, fabric, and found objects. Every piece is $200, every sale goes directly to the artist. It’s one of the most purely Gowanus things that happens all year.

Rob Garcia Jazz at iBeam Brooklyn
168 7th Street, Gowanus
Fri April 24 · 8pm
iBeam continues to be the quiet anchor of Gowanus’s live jazz scene. This week, it’s Rob Garcia, whose work sits somewhere between structured jazz composition and open improvisation. The room holds maybe 50 people. That’s the point.

Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me: Comedy Grab Bag at Bell House
149 7th Street, Gowanus
Fri April 24 · 7:30pm
A variety show featuring comedians from the NPR quiz show. Bell House on a Friday, comedy with a public radio pedigree. You already know if this is for you.

Awesome Tapes From Africa at Public Records
233 Butler Street, Gowanus
Sun April 26 · 4pm · The Atrium
Brian Shimkovitz built a blog, then a label, around cassette tapes from across Africa. Now he DJs sets that pull from decades of music most people have never heard. Sunday afternoon in the Atrium is exactly the right setting for this.|

Aziz Ansari at Bell House
149 7th Street, Gowanus
Sun April 27 + Mon April 28 · 7:30pm
Ansari does two nights at Bell House, which holds maybe 300 people. If you've only seen him in arenas or on Netflix, this is a different thing entirely. Tickets will not last.

Runner & Stone
285 3rd Avenue, Gowanus

In December 2012, two cousins opened a bakery on a stretch of 3rd Avenue that most people drove past without stopping. Chris Pizzulli had cooked at Blue Ribbon Brooklyn. Peter Endriss had baked at Per Se and Bouchon Bakery. They pooled their skills and landed on a space in Gowanus, a geographical compromise between Endriss in Lower Manhattan and Pizzulli in Bay Ridge.

They named it Runner & Stone, after the two grinding stones in a traditional grist mill. The reference was not random: the restaurant sits a few blocks from the site of New York City’s first tidewater grist mill.

There’s a wall near the entrance that looks, at first glance, like exposed brick. It’s not. It’s the first thousand bags of flour the bakery used, filled with concrete and stacked. That kind of detail tells you what kind of place this is.

Thirteen years later, the menu has evolved, but the model hasn’t changed. Endriss still runs the bakery, turning out naturally leavened breads and viennoiseries made with local whole-grain flours. The morning crowd comes for the chocolate almond croissants and the sourdough. Dinner shifts to house-made pastas and seasonal plates. There’s a full bar with a mostly Italian wine list, and the cocktails sometimes include syrups made from lavender and rosemary grown on the roof.

What most people don’t know is how far the bread travels. Runner & Stone wholesales to Whole Foods, the Park Slope Food Coop, Sunday in Brooklyn, and Olmsted. There’s a decent chance you’ve eaten their bread at another restaurant without knowing it.

The neighborhood around them has changed dramatically. When Runner & Stone opened, the Gowanus rezoning was still a planning department hypothetical. Now there are cranes on every other block and a 1,000-unit tower just approved a few blocks south. Runner & Stone has responded to all of this by doing exactly the same thing they’ve been doing since the beginning.

The Michelin Guide noticed in 2015. None of that seems to have changed the vibe, which is still a neighborhood restaurant that happens to be very, very good at what it does.

601 Union Street: Site Cleared
Demolition is complete at 601 Union Street, at the corner of 3rd Avenue and Union, where a former industrial building has been cleared. An eight-story, Morris Adjmi-designed residential building with ground-floor retail is planned for the site by developer Avdoo. No construction timeline announced yet.

Society Brooklyn Closes $370M Refinancing
JLL has closed a $370 million refinancing package for Society Brooklyn, the two-tower, 517-unit residential complex at 500 Degraw Street and 504 Sackett Street on the Gowanus Canal waterfront. The project, developed by Property Markets Group and The Carlyle Group, appeared in Issue #7. This refinancing signals continued financial momentum for one of the larger Gowanus builds.

NYC Participatory Budgeting closes Sunday. Every year, the City Council lets residents vote on how to spend real money on neighborhood capital projects. District 39, which covers the entire Gowanaut coverage area, allocated $1.5 million last cycle. Anyone 11 or older who lives or works in the district can vote. We publish on Saturday. The vote closes Sunday. That’s a tight window. Go to council.nyc.gov/shahana-hanif/pb-d39/ and cast yours.

Dae is closing at the end of April. The cafe, restaurant, and design shop at 385 Smith Street, known for its Korean-inflected drinks, curated homewares, and a no-photography policy that briefly made it internet-famous, will close by month’s end. They plan to relocate, though no new address has been announced. If you’ve been meaning to try the mugwort latte, the clock is ticking.

We mentioned Mercado Central up top and meant it. The Spanish specialty shop at 252 3rd Avenue claims the largest selection of tinned fish in the city, and after browsing the wall, we're not arguing. The back counter serves tapas, Spanish wine by the glass, and Alhambra on tap.

See you next Saturday. If you know someone in Gowanus, Carroll Gardens, Cobble Hill, or Boerum Hill who'd want this in their inbox, send it their way.
And if you spot something worth covering, a sign in a window, a new door going in, a rumor about that empty storefront, send us an email. We read everything.
The Gowanaut
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