Refined Domino sweeter than ever
IT’S not work from home, it’s work from weird. Construction has just been completed on a $250 million project that transforms the 167year-old Domino Sugar Refinery on the Williamsburg waterfront into what has to be the city’s — if not the world’s — most unlikely, strangely enchanting venue from to which to earn a living or make a fortune.
“Office building” is too prosaic a description for the Refinery at Domino, a 15-story, 460,000square-foot masterpiece of what’s called adaptive reuse.
Developer Two Trees and architect Vishaan Chakrabarti of his firm Practice for Architecture and Urbanism have imagined the venue as a glass box inside the old structure. The glass is set back 15 feet from the outer walls, with a jungle of trees and plants created by design firm Field Works softening the void.
Panoramic possibilities
Beyond the glass, 548 churchlike, uncovered arched windows in the original façade offer views of the Manhattan and Brooklyn skylines, the East River and trains snaking over the Williamsburg Bridge. The empty outer windows don’t consistently line up with the floor plates, a quirky touch that gives each floor its own special character.
A glass-dome penthouse called Skylight sits at the top of the revamped structure and provides gathering space for future tenants. A lovingly-crafted replica of the original Domino Sugar sign attached to the outer wall powerfully evokes the past.
Two Trees did little to “clean up” the façade, which still bears the imperfections and discolorations of a century and a half ’s exposure to the elements.
It’s the city’s most audacious architectural transformation since the High Line Park, which Field Works also designed.
Opened in 1884, the original Domino Sugar plant was built by the family of three-term Mayor Henry Havemeyer. It was a beacon of the city’s industrial age, an eye-catching icon representing a trade that employed tens of thousands and helped make Wall Street fortunes. It produced as much as 1 million pounds of sugar per day, every day.
Over time, the brick-and-masonry exterior of the landmark building, which boasts a 214-foottall chimney, became weatherbeaten — but it was nevertheless an arresting site on the East River waterfront.
The plant closed in 2004 when Domino moved operations to Yonkers. In 2015, Two Trees, known also for developing Dumbo, broke ground with plans to turn the industrial relic into the heart of a fun-filled residential and commercial complex.
Seriously sugary
It was no easy task. More than 100 30-foot-high vats used to process sugar had to be removed from inside the space.
“Your feet stuck to the floor from the sugar residue. It was black, icky and rancid,” Mary Ann Tighe, the head of the project’s leasing team at CBRE tristate, told The Post.
Two Trees head Jed Walentas recalled, ”You could see remnants of urban explorers before us. Footprints in the sticky molasses. The sugar plant was so hot, they had to keep kegs of beer to cool off.”
The Refinery is the centerpiece of Two Trees’ 11-acre, $3-billion Domino complex on the Williamsburg waterfront. The development also includes an all-new office building; three apartment towers; 60,000 square-feet of stores; a river esplanade and a five-acre park.
The whole place has an optimistic, party-time feel with its pretty landscaping, Danny Meyer taco stand, steel drums and other salvaged artifacts.