LIU Brooklyn to fund expansion with sky-high playing fields

What do you do if you’re a small university with a playing field in the middle of rapidly developing Downtown Brooklyn? Well, if you’re LIU Brooklyn, you let a developer put 34 floors of glassy apartment building underneath it.

According to Newsday, LIU Brooklyn has made a deal with RXR Realty, a real estate developer, to build a 34-story residential tower where its playing fields currently reside, by 161 Ashland St., and put playing fields on top of the building.

The developer will pay the university $76 million for the rights to build on its land, reports Curbed. LIU plans to spend $35 million of that on the new field, which should be an upgrade from the existing field. The university will spend the rest of the money on scholarships and other capital upgrades, including: a new food court, classrooms for a digital-game-design program, a center for media arts, expanded laboratories and computer-science curriculum, erecting two additional floors atop the school’s Health Sciences and Pharmacy buildings and creating new space within its library, according to Brooklyn Paper.

Work is expected to commence shortly and should be completed by 2021 for the fields and 2022 for RXR’s residential space.