29-Story Apartment Tower Replacing Hot Bird Clears Final Hurdle

CLINTON HILL, BROOKLYN — It's official — a 29-story apartment tower on Atlantic Avenue will replace beloved neighborhood bar Hot Bird, which closed its doors in December.

A final letter of approval for the 809 Atlantic Ave. rezoning that will allow for the high-rise development was sent on Tuesday after Mayor Bill de Blasio signed off on the project in April, records show. The mayor's approval is the final step in the review process for the project, which also got the OK from the borough president, the community board and the city's planning commission.

The new apartment building — which has frontage on Clinton, Atlantic and Vanderbuilt avenues — calls for a 312-foot-tall concrete and glass tower with a rooftop-tower overlooking Atlantic Avenue. It was originally known as 550 Clinton Ave.

It will be designed by Morris Adjmi Architects and includes 284 apartments, 30 percent of them affordable units.

Hot Bird, which held its goodbye party on Dec. 8, is just one of the spaces on the block that the developers will get a facelift.

Developers will also restore the historic Italian Romanesque-style Church of St. Luke and St. Matthew at 520 Atlantic Ave., which was damaged in a "suspicious" 2012 fire, according to reports.

This was the trade-off that let developers Hope Street Capital build a bulkier structure than existing zoning rules, the Brooklyn Eagle reported.

Church members told the Eagle they needed the developer’s money for critical repairs to their Northern Italian Romanesque-style church building.

Hot Bird ran in the space at 546 Clinton Ave. and quickly became a neighborhood favorite since opening in 2010. Its name belongs to a local joint that left behind only a bold yellow sign promising "the best B-B-Q in New York," but without clear instructions where exactly to find it, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Developers initially got the OK from the Landmark Preservation Commission to take over the Hot Bird space back in May 2018.