Brooklyn Cultural District
The Brooklyn Cultural District is a $100 million development project that focuses on the arts, public spaces and affordable housing in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, New York. The project reflected the joint efforts of New York City's Economic Development Corporation, the Department of Cultural Affairs, the Department of Housing Preservation and Development, the Department of City Planning, and the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership to continue to develop the Brooklyn neighborhood area. Joining the area's longtime institutional stakeholders are new homes for Mark Morris Dance Group, Theatre for a New Audience, UrbanGlass and BRIC Arts and the BAM's Fisher Building.
The district, roughly bounded by Flatbush Avenue, Fulton Street and Hanson Place, has been the focus of development since 2004 when 80 Arts/the James E. Davis Arts Building was renovated to be home to twelve nonprofit arts groups. After a series of stops and starts during which the district's future was uncertain, this was followed in 2008 by the opening of the Irondale Center for Theater, Education and Outreach in the historic Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church. Performing arts spaces, ISSUE Project Room at 22 Boerum Place, and BAM Fisher at 321 Ashland Place, followed in 2012 and TFANA's new building opened for performances in 2014.
As of 2017, plans remain underway for an additional theater space that would be home to Bang on a Can, Cool Culture, and the reopening of BAM Park, which remains closed despite 2014 funding to restore it. BAM South, also known as 300 Ashland, developed by Two Trees provides affordable housing and an additional cultural component with homes for the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts, a Brooklyn Public Library branch and an expansion of BAM Cinemas to be known as BAM Karen.
