Feast Your Eyes on This Rooftop Cornfield in Bushwick's Rheingold Mega-Development

It’s like Kansas landed on a Brooklyn rooftop.

These stunning conceptual renderings for Bushwick’s controversial Rheingold Brewery mega-development depict almost everything you could want in a Brooklyn building: a luxe hotel, retail and residential space, swimming pool and, of course, the city’s — possibly the world’s — largest urban farm.

The design is bonkers.

The look of the structure’s street-facing exterior seems to take its cue from the boxy warehouse currently on the site. A residential and hotel tower would rise nearer the Noll Street side of the block, with dedicated cultural space beyond.

“Guests relaxing in the rooftop pool will be regaled by a rare experience: views of the skyscrapers of Manhattan — and cornfields,” reads a brief description of the development.

Designed by the ambitious and imaginative architecture firm Raad (creators of Manhattan’s proposed Lowline underground park), the proposal for 930 Flushing Avenue is about as mixed-use as you can get: office, retail, residential, cultural, agricultural.

Just shy of 165,000 square feet, the rooftop farm would have been New York City’s largest, according to Raad’s description. (Brooklyn Grange’s two locations total 108,000 square feet.) Presumably, the produce would have been served in the restaurant imagined for the site.

The rooftop farm space is interrupted by a large rectangular skylight ringed with rusted steel that brings natural light to the floor below. A reveal beneath the roof makes it look as though it’s floating.

The ground floor is dramatically more open than the site’s current building, with an edgier, textured facade.

The site is a part of the controversial Rheingold Brewery development.

Dubbed 1 Bushwick, the enormous 605,500-square-foot development is located smack in the heart of the sprawling, 10-block Rheingold Brewery development, which received an upzoning from the city in 2013.

Read Property Group is the owner of the site, according to a source familiar with the matter. The 10-block project has attracted controversy because locals fret other developers involved will not honor Read’s promise to set aside 30 percent of the apartments for affordable housing.

Permits have been filed for two other Rheingold sites — 123 Melrose Street and 10 Monteith Street — but construction has yet to kick off.

A high-concept design.

The renderings are merely conceptual and will not be built. Thus far, the developer has not yet released any actual renderings or filed an application for building permits or demolition at the site, according to Department of Building records.

Raad has also created remarkable interior renderings for another sprawling mixed-use complex in nearby Williamsburg. Developed by Chetrit, the M500 hotel will have retail and apartments at the corner of Metropolitan and Union avenues.

The smoldering designs could have been inspired by a nightclub at Burning Man and feature low lighting, hammocks, concrete sinks and a fire pit.

Read Property Group is a large Brooklyn-based developer known for a millions-making 2014 deal in which it sold a Bushwick development for $58 million after buying it for just $6 million. The developer spearheaded plans for developing the Rheingold brewery blocks, and sold some of the upzoned sites to Rabsky Group for $53 million in 2014.

What do you think of the cornfield concept?

Related Stories
Rabsky Picks up Bushwick Development Property Near Rheingold for $53 Million
Developer Read Sells More of Rheingold Mega-Project, Community Organizers Cry Foul
Councilman Reynoso Calls for Affordable Housing at Rheingold Brewery Protest

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