WeWork to Anchor New Commercial Project in Brooklyn Navy Yard

WeWork is coming to the Brooklyn Navy Yard in a big way. The dynamic office-sharing company will be the anchor tenant for a 675k SF office building that will be built between two dry docks along Wallabout Bay, it was announced Monday. The $380M project, to be developed by Boston Properties and Rudin Management, will provide creative work space designed to attract tech and creative companies. Construction starts late this year and is expected to wrap up in 2017. Design work, to be handled by S9 Architecture, will include features that have attracted tech tenants at prior projects in Manhattan, Chicago and San Francisco, according to Bloomberg. Think: open spaces that encourage collaboration; special food vendors; a massage room; and a rooftop conference center. Dubbed Dock 72 at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, the project will be one of the largest commercial undertakings to be built outside of Manhattan in decades. It also represents a series of firsts: WeWork is taking 220k SF at the site, which is its first ground-up project and will serve as a model for similar ventures in other parts of the country. For Boston Properties and Rudin, Dock 72 represents the first time either big-name entity has crossed the East River to work in the Borough of Kings. And there's this: All tenants in building have agreed to pay a living wage to their workers, the first time a new development in Brooklyn included such a commitment, according to an announcement by the Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Corp. Dock 72 will house 4,000 jobs once it's fully leased.