SEE: Long-Awaited Fort Greene Library, Culture Center On Its Way

FORT GREENE, BROOKLYN — A long-awaited cultural center planned for the massive tower at 300 Ashland Pl. is officially on its way, city officials announced Wednesday.

The city's Economic Development Corporation and Department of Cultural Affairs started construction on the 50,000-square-foot culture center this week that has been promised for the bottom of the residential tower since plans for the tower were filed in 2013.

The center will bring a new library, three movie theaters and room for several arts organizations, including new space for the Brooklyn Academy of Music, to the building, which already houses a Whole Foods and Apple Store in addition to its condominiums.

Officials said the center will finish creating a new cultural hub for the once-underused intersection, which housed a parking lot before the city partnered with developers to create the "BAM South Tower" project.

“The new L10 Arts and Cultural Center serves as further confirmation that Brooklyn is the epicenter for culture in our city," Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams said. "...These kinds of institutions enrich our borough and make it a better place to live, work, and raise healthy children and families, and I thank EDC and the Department for Cultural Affairs for their partnership.”

The new culture center will be operated by the city and include space for the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Brooklyn Public Library, the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts (MoCADA) and 651 ARTS.

For 651 ARTS, it will be the organization's first dedicated permanent space.

BAM President Katy Clark said the space will expand the organization's cinema options, create a home for its historical and cultural collections through a new reading room and create an education center.

The center will take up part of the 460,000-square-foot building developed by Two Trees Management, which opened in 2016. The building includes 76 units of affordable housing, a public plaza and parking in the center of Lafayette, Flatbush avenues and Ashland Place, an intersection which sits just blocks from the arts organizations' other spaces and the Barclays Center.

Check out renderings of the new space, provided by the city: