Ailanthus's 400-unit Gowanus filing is an entitlement option

Ailanthus, the affordable and mixed-income housing developer, has filed a rezoning application with the New York City Department of City Planning to allow a 17-story, 175-foot-tall building at 424 Hoyt Street in Gowanus, Commercial Observer reported. The filing, made on land Ailanthus leases from Two Trees, envisions 400 apartments — 100 to 120 of them affordable — plus a 46,000-square-foot public school and 14,000 square feet of retail. Several approval stages still separate the application from construction, but the mixed-income program marks Gowanus as a proving ground for the city's next housing push.

Two Trees Management acquired 424 Hoyt in July 2008 for $7.7 million, property records show, and Ailanthus — led by Ofer Cohen, Vivian Liao and Tucker Reed — holds a ground lease from Two Trees. The property currently holds a one-story automotive repair building and vehicle storage, with 91,800 square feet of buildable space under existing zoning, and the filing asks for a density of a different order.

The neighborhood has already absorbed one major rezoning: the 82-block Gowanus plan passed in November 2021, and projects including Gowanus Wharf, 544 Carroll Street and 499 President Street have been delivered since. Yet the Ailanthus application responds to a stubborn affordability gap. The company's spokesperson pointed to the Mamdani administration's housing report, which identified Community Board 6 — the district that includes Gowanus — as one of three Brooklyn districts with the least access to affordable homes, and set a target for thousands more units there. Mayor Zohran Mamdani has called for roughly 700,000 new housing units citywide over the next decade.

The ground lease gives the filing its option-like character: Ailanthus is seeking permission to build on land it does not own, and the rezoning process will determine whether its leasehold becomes the vehicle for a 400-unit development or remains tied to a one-story repair-and-storage site. That structure suggests a developer willing to carry approval risk and planning costs while Two Trees keeps the land position, and it also suggests the binding constraint on this project is the city's entitlement calendar, not construction equity.

This filing will not move the 700,000-unit count by itself, but it is exactly the kind of early-stage pipeline that has to clear if that target is real. New York's multifamily shortage has been described in this publication's pages as a shortage of buildings to buy. At 424 Hoyt, the scarcer asset is the entitled site, and Ailanthus is spending planning-stage money to claim one.