How one of Brooklyn’s most expensive neighborhoods became home base for the creative class

When international architecture firm Snøhetta found its New York City lease was coming up last year, a search kicked off for a new workspace. The firm, which had been located in Manhattan for 21 years, scoured neighborhoods near and far, such as the Brooklyn Navy Yards. 

But in the end, the choice was one many such firms had been making recently, according to partner and managing director Elaine Molinar. They wanted a building with character that was conducive to creative work, and found it within a 25,000 square feet space at 55 Washington Street in Brooklyn’s Dumbo neighborhood, where about 70 workers will move in later this year. 

“The space is on the ninth floor, with a large, beautiful skylight, a big, open elevated area, a private terrace, a wonderful quality of light, and some odd geometry on one end,” Molinar says. “They’re the kind of quirks that architects love. It just kind of feels like home.”

Snøhetta became the latest in a long line of more than 150 architecture and design firms, showrooms and studios that now call Dumbo home. An historic warehouse district that’s been redeveloped and restored by development firm Two Trees for the last 40-plus years, Dumbo has become an almost default destination for architecture and design tenants. In the last year, a dozen such architecture and design leases have been signed, with roughly 40 signed in the last two years. Firms such as Post Company, Henry Built,  Brooklyn Studio and architecture powerhouse BIG—which first moved there in 2019—have relocated Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass. 

In the last three years, there’s been a push by design and architecture firms to co-locate in the neighborhood, says Alyssa Zahler, Managing Director of Commercial Leasing at Two Trees Management Co., one of Dumbo’s dominant property owners, and Snøhetta’s future landlord. 

Dumbo’s transformation

Dumbo remains far from a newly rediscovered area. For decades, it’s been a destination of sorts (and subject of gentrification discourse), with its highly Instagrammable bridge view, proximity to Brooklyn’s new waterfront parkland, and restored warehouse buildings. It’s not even necessarily cheaper; Snøhetta will pay more for their new space in Dumbo than they are now, though they will be getting a longer lease and a lower cost per square foot. The area’s residential real estate is some of the city’s most expensive, with the median home listing for $2.3 million, and median rent over $6,000. 

But the continued and even renewed popularity within the design world speaks to its continued appeal, certain real estate realities, and deliberate real estate strategies by property owners. 

Two Trees founder David Walentas has made it a priority to try and attract more creative tenants. Walentas had previously been converting property in SoHo for artists. He first came across Dumbo in 1979, after driving over to Dumbo in a red Mercedes convertible to scout out the mostly empty post-industrial collection of abandoned buildings. He saw potential for a similar transformation and purchased a number of buildings in 1981. 

Jared Della Valle, CEO and Founder of Alloy Development, who has lived in Dumbo since 1998 (there were wild dogs in the neighborhood at the time), says it’s always been a neighborhood that attracted the arts. Preserving lofts and warehouses here have maintained desirable spaces for creative firms. 

“It’s not like there’s any special infrastructure for architects here,” says Della Valle. “I think it’s the  size of the spaces that Two Trees have marketed that have been compelling for the architectural industry.”

Two Trees remains the most dominant landlord in the neighborhood, with three properties 45 Main Street, 55 Washington Street and 20 Jay Street. The firm has always prioritized creative class clients, says Zahler, and saw a mini-boom of tech tenants in the early 2000s. Part of that was preservation and conversions of the original building stock, keeping the original building intact and leaving interiors more raw, to give tenants the opportunities to make it their own. Architecture critic Paul Goldberger, who wrote a book on the neighborhood, said of Dumbo that “the combination of raw materials, so to speak, and a developer with Walentas’s sensitivity might just be a once-in-a-lifetime combination.” 

A certain vibe

When the Norwegian firm Snøhetta expanded to New York City in 2004, it was working on the World Trade center site, and financial incentives to locate in Lower Manhattan made the choice of office location an easy one. The firm initially worked out of the Cunard Building in the Financial District, in a mezzanine office that looked down into the great hall, a former cruise line boarding area lined with preserved murals. About a decade ago, they moved nearby to Pine Street, a 1961 tower designed by architect Emory Roth Jr. The firm was happy, but the neighborhood had taken on a very commercial vibe, which “is not quite exactly us,” says Molinar. The space, streetscape, and surroundings in Dumbo were a better fit, she says. 

That includes what’s called Gair buildings, old brick warehouses built by Robert Gair, a Scottish-American industrialist that boast soaring ceilings and wide-open floor plans that give architects plenty of room to work/play (a neighborhood bar in Dumbo, Gair, is actually owned by architects). In addition to building preservation, Two Trees has also focused on new lobbies and amenities, and direct marketing and outreach to these firms. It’s currently marketing new spaces under 10,000 square feet with private terraces to attract smaller companies and firms, and is chasing a formal design district designation from the city. But it maintains an authentic, 

industrial version of Brooklyn and New York City that’s hard to replicate. 

In addition to smaller spaces, these renovated warehouse spaces also offer more ease for tenants. Snøhetta’s Molinar noted that in Manhattan, as other new buildings, offices tend to have lots of security, including turnstiles, badges, and restrictions. Their Dumbo space on 55 Washington has much easier access, including freight elevators for moving materials and models. Snøhetta will get a few tenant improvements, but the firm mostly wants the space as-is. 

“It’s not pristine, it’s not precious, it’s okay if we need to mark something up on the floor and tape or paint the patch of color on the wall to test it out,” Molinar says. “That’s what we’re looking for, a place that’s a little more rough and tumble.”

Having like-minded neighbors helps, as well as Brooklyn Bridge Park nearby, certainly helps. Within the neighborhood, design and architecture tenants have found common cause and collaborated. JAM Architecture collaborated with Mark Jupiter on custom furniture for projects in the areas, Six Penny and Post Company collaborated on Inness, a luxury upstate hotel, and MARCH interior design collaborated with architecture firm Young Projects. Many of the workers at these firms—especially executives—live in Brooklyn, and in neighboring areas, making a move from Manhattan an easier sell. 

“In a post 2020 world, people are looking at what the office means,” says Zahler. “Firms are being really intentional, and we see it in the data over and over. Principals of these firms, who live in brownstone Brooklyn, have leases for offices coming due or are starting a new firm, and have an opportunity to pick a new location, and they no longer need to be in Manhattan to meet with their clients.”

Dumbo maintains an older type of charm and style that can’t be remade. Della Valle also adds that in other so-called hip neighborhoods in New York, such as Williamsburg, there’s a lot of newer architecture that takes away from that kind of continuity.

“Who wants to be in a place that shows off other people’s work?” he says. “When clients come to Dumbo, they can just appreciate the neighborhood.”