Like any mature industry in NYC, Brooklyn tech is a real estate play

Technology business and entrepreneurship communities are shaping real estate in a borough already crazy with it. There’s the test kitchen at 1000 Dean Street, for example, and expectations there will be an early stage community in the final iteration of the new Empire Stores.

Some fear developers aren’t even coming close to keeping up with demand. That’s prompting efforts to open up the second stories along the Fulton Street Mall, though we’ve heard the process hasn’t gained much ground. The upstairs along Fulton Street, we are told, would need a lot of work that no one appears willing to do so far.

In a recent new-year run-down of big borough real estate projects by the Daily Eagle, two would have direct tech implications:

• 19 Kent Street. Right on the water, the story describes this as the first new-from-the-ground up big office building in the borough in some time. The developer describes it as a high tech office park. It’s surprising that there aren’t more tech ventures in endlessly hip Williamsburg, but maybe it’s for lack of space? This site will be very near neighbors with the Amazon Photo facility and the Vice HQ.
• 66 Boerum Place. Midtown Equities is heading up this 160,000 square foot mixed use project. It’s relevant not just because it’s got office space in the mix. Midtown Equities leadership connects this to Empire Stores and the “geek for mayor,” Jack Hidary. It’s a bet but a safe one that this project would be an expansion and deepening of the Brooklyn Tech Triangle.