Bed-Stuy Restoration Plaza Rendering, Details Revealed

BED-STUY, BROOKLYN — Restoration Plaza is about to get a major upgrade. And, the Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation hopes, so will Brooklyn.

The Restoration Corporation announced on Thursday their plans to build a 840,000 square-foot multi-purpose site they're calling the Restoration Innovation Campus at the current site of Restoration Plaza on Fulton Street, as first reported by THE CITY.

Designed by heralded British architect Sir David Adjaye, who recently designed the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C., the campus will consist of a 16 and 13-story towers abutting the plaza, an expanded Billie Holiday Theatre and a four-story cultural center and an expanded restoration plaza.

And the campus has a goal — to be a global hub dedicated to closing Brooklyn's racial wealth gap.

“Central Brooklyn is a microcosm of racial inequities reflected nationwide across our cities. With its focus on Black wealth creation, the Innovation Campus offers a new, replicable model for closing the wealth gap in communities across the United States,” said Blondel Pinnock, president & CEO of the Restoration Corporation, in a release.

Part of that goal will be archived through a focus on technology and job training, Pinnock told THE CITY last month.

“We want this to be the tech hub of Central Brooklyn that’s very similar to downtown Brooklyn, that’s very similar to the Navy Yard,” Pinnock said in the interview.

The purpose-built campus will also include new offices to house the Restoration Corporation's financial inclusion and asset-building programs to help Brooklyn residents build wealth as well as centers for software engineering, business and personal financial health.

Mission-aligned partners in the public, private and nonprofit centers will have access to more than 600,000 square-feet of Class-A office space.

The Billie Holiday Theatre will undergo a major expansion and renovation, in addition to an upgraded four-story Restoration Cultural Center featuring a public rooftop.

There will also be 190,000 square-feet of retail space.

According to THE CITY, the Super FoodTown on Brooklyn Avenue will remain open during construction and will move to the 13-story New York Avenue building upon its completion.

The campus will require the lots to be rezoned to fit the two towers, which means a long approval process, but local leaders seem to be in favor of the longtime community nonprofit.

"We look forward to working with Restoration towards our shared goal to disrupt Brooklyn’s growing wealth gap,” said chair of Brooklyn Community Board 3, Anthony Buissereth.

CB3's District Manager and Democratic Party District Leader Henry Butler shared Buissereth thoughts, adding in the announcement that "Restoration’s public space, cultural center, and financial inclusion programs continue to make a transformative impact in Bed-Stuy."

“For 55 years, Restoration has helped lift thousands of local residents out of poverty and created countless opportunities right here in our community," Pinnock said. "Now, the nation’s staggering racial wealth gap requires a bold, new approach—to harness Brooklyn’s economic growth to support wealth creation for our neighbors, particularly longtime residents and people of color."