Former 58th Street Gambling Den May Become Eight Story Mixed-Use Tower

Sean Egan -
816 58th Street. Courtesy of Google Maps.

Eastern Sunset Park might be going through a growth spurt pretty soon if developers get approved on their plans, reports Yimby.

A permit was filed to the Department of Buildings (DOB) yesterday to build an 22,688-square-foot, eight-story mixed use building at 816 58th Street, between 8th Avenue and 9th Avenue. The plans for the 96-foot building include apartments, a day care, and a retail space.

Last year, a stop work order was placed on the building currently on the property because the private home was illegally being used as a hotel, and there was illegal gambling taking place in the basement, according to the DOB.

The developer of the property, William Chou, who has owned the building since 1996, envisions a 5,200-square-foot retail space to take the ground floor and the cellar, with a 6,000-square-foot day care occupying the second and third floors with the remaining five floors being dedicated to apartments. The nine units would take up 11,488 square feet, with each one averaging about 1,276 square feet, suggesting three-bedroom apartments are likely.

Sunset Park Voice tried to obtain renderings of the plan, but none were available because the permit hasn’t been approved yet.

The buildings in the surrounding neighborhood don’t exceed three stories, so this building will be a tower in comparison. In March, the New York Times deemed “Sunset Park West” one of the city’s hottest up-and-coming neighborhoods, and this new development could signal a different kind of expansion to the east.

As we reported on our sister site Bensonhurst Bean, a real estate development boom has been happening in Southwest Brooklyn for several years now. In 2014 Chinese developers proposed to change the landscape of Sunset Park’s Eighth Avenue with a massive commercial complex four blocks away from where this tower is supposed to be built. The futuristic metropolis, which is to include a pre-kindergarten school, a bookless library, a shopping mall, and high rise apartments, is supposedly still in Sunset Park’s future. In the past, it has faced opposition in the community.