Developer tweaks design for Pavilion Theater condo conversion

What will the Landmarks Preservation Commission decide about the project?

August 18, 2015 By Lore Croghan Brooklyn Daily Eagle

Here's a look at the revised design for the proposed condo conversion of Park Slope's Pavilion Theater. Rendering by Morris Adjmi Architects via the Landmarks Preservation Commission

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Tweak, tweak.

Hidrock Realty ordered up changes to its plan to convert Park Slope’s Pavilion Theater into a condo development with a small movie theater inside it and a big new building alongside it.

The developer asked the project’s designer, Morris Adjmi Architects, to make the changes in response to objections by Community Board 6 and Park Slope residents, according to an email from publicist Ethan Geto that was forwarded to news media.

Community activists and people who live near the neo-Renaissance-style movie theater at 188 Prospect Park West will find out today, Aug. 18, how the city Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) reacts to the amended design plan.

A public hearing on the proposed project — which is referred to as Pavilion on the Park in materials Hidrock Realty submitted to the LPC — is scheduled for late this afternoon at the preservation agency’s Lower Manhattan headquarters.

Public testimony is invited. The hearing room is on the 9th Floor of 1 Centre St.

Morris Adjmi Architects’ original design, which was unveiled at a Community Board 6 meeting on July 23, generated criticism from many attendees.

It called for the construction of an additional floor on the roof of the 1920s-vintage theater and the demolition of a shuttered single-story restaurant property at 190 Prospect Park West, which would be replaced with a six-story building with a curved façade on Bartel-Pritchard Square.

Altogether, there would be a total of 24 condos and 16 indoor parking spaces plus the small movie theater in the two buildings.

On July 28, Community Board 6’s Executive Committee gave its conditional approval of the project proposal and called for numerous changes to it.

The architecture firm has made some of the design changes the community board recommended, judging from Geto’s email and from design drawings that Morris Adjmi Architects recently submitted to the LPC.

The height and size of the amended design appear to be the same as in the original design. The design changes appear to be rather subtle.

For instance, in both the original and amended designs, the new building proposed at 190 Prospect Park West has rows of tall, slim windows placed close together on four floors of the property.

In the amended design, there are three windows per row on the Prospect Park West side of the building, one less than in the original design, according to Geto’s email and the original and amended design drawings.

Also in the amended design, there are 12 windows per row on the Bartel-Pritchard Square side of the building, two less than in the original design.

And the height of 190 Prospect Park West’s windows has been reduced by one foot, Geto said in his email.

Through LLCs, Hidrock Realty bought the Pavilion building for $16 million in 2006 and adjacent 190 Prospect Park West for $3,090,750 in 2012, city Finance Department records show.