The 75,000-square-foot project, which would include a low-slung new creek-facing structure alongside a renovated, prewar former lightbulb factory, also wouldn’t take up enough shoreline to require a special access point for boaters, according to the filing from Masluf President Timothy Fulton.
Indeed, the property, squeezed between a NYCHA warehouse and a small city park, measures 93 feet across on the creek side. Under zoning rules, anything 100 feet or wider built on the water must provide a waterfront access point, the filing says.
The development site, made up of tax lots 1200 Manhattan, a windswept parking lot, and 1164 Manhattan, the ex-light factory, was purchased in 1994 for an undetermined price by Henry Fulton, a civil engineer who held a management job at the Department of Transportation under former Mayor Ed Koch from 1978 and 1985, according to the city register.
For years the parcel at Ash Street was part of one of Brooklyn’s most industrial edges, but a residential development push that began in the mid-2000s has dramatically remade the neighborhood, especially on nearby Commercial Street.
Fulton said he had received “many” offers to buy the 54,000-square-foot site over the years, but “I waited and waited and waited,” he told Crain’s. “And I’m glad I did, because these are real people, and for them it’s all about the community,” he said of the team.
Fulton added that he has leased the site long term to the Liberty’s owners, a group led by Alibaba Group chairman and billionaire Joe Tsai, and his wife, movie producer and philanthropist Clara Wu, who also own the Brooklyn Nets.
The Liberty’s proposed mixed-use mega gym, with a contemporary design from the architecture firm Populous, would feature three courts, a broadcast studio and a retail storefront when it opens in 2027. One of the courts would be outdoors and facing Newtown Creek, a waterway separating Brooklyn and Queens whose heavy amounts of pollution from refineries, coal yards and sewage dumping qualifies it as a federal Superfund site.
After years of delays, the Environmental Protection Agency took concrete steps toward cleaning up the creek earlier this year.
Offices for team executives would be added to the light factory structures, which are planned to feature exposed brick walls and original wood flooring and beams to “pay homage to Brooklyn’s history,” according to a press release announcing the new facility in March.
In May the Tsais sold a $450 million stake in the 18-year-old Liberty to help finance the training facility, the first for the team, which has been practicing at Barclays Center. One of the eight original teams of the Women’s National Basketball Association, the Liberty won its first championship in October 2024 when it beat the Minnesota Lynx. The team lost this past season in the first round of the playoffs.
“[The facility] would be more than a development project,” the filing says. “It would contribute to the Liberty’s ability to attract and retain high-caliber athletes, grow its fanbase and achieve continued success in the WNBA.”
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