The Bushwick Starr Breaks Ground On Their New Theater June 2, 2023

The Bushwick Starr has announced its Groundbreaking event to celebrate the start of construction on its permanent new home in Bushwick. The new venue, slated to open in early 2024, will create an accessible cultural space for our community and an improved venue for artists and audiences.

The Starr purchased a single-story 5000 sq ft warehouse at 419 Eldert Street in May 2021 and is working with award-winning architectural firm Bureau V Architecture (designer of Williamsburg Brooklyn's non-profit music venue National Sawdust) to transform it into a cutting edge performing arts facility. The project is being managed by About the Work and the contractor is Richter + Ratner. Located just one block from the L train, the new Starr will become a permanent cultural asset for the neighborhood to which we're dedicated.

Celebrating the start of construction on The Bushwick Starr's new permanent home
Friday, June 2 (rain or shine)

3:30pm at 419 Eldert Street, Brooklyn, NY 11237 (L to Halsey)
Speeches, photo ops, and special guests

5-7pm at NOWADAYS (short walk to 56-06 Cooper Avenue)
A Happy Hour celebration

At the new Starr, audiences will enjoy an expanded venue with improved access and comfort, while artists will benefit from larger, functional spaces on-site that support all the ways they work.

The new venue will feature:

Street-level, open lobby with box office, hospitality station, seating area, and gallery (seasonal outdoor area for gatherings and events)

90 seat Blackbox with flexible configurations and cutting-edge equipment

Private rehearsal studio / multi-purpose facility

Dedicated scenic workshop, green room, office, meeting room, and storage spaces

Our new lobby will bring the Starr's mission to the streets of Brooklyn. For the first time, passersby can freely enter throughout the day to an accessible space of community gathering - to interact with neighbors, find out what's happening onstage and in classrooms, and enjoy the cultural life of Bushwick. Our garage door facade design will allow for events and festivals to spill out onto our sidewalk and charming cul-de-sac street. We're excited to offer a new model for what a lobby space can be- a classroom, screening room, lively gathering space, quiet meeting space- a place where people always feel welcome to meet, mix, connect, and get inspired.

We continue to run The Starr Campaign for a Permanent Home & Flourishing Future to support this big move. With a working goal of $10m, the Campaign encompasses a three-year scope from 2021-2024 to raise the funds necessary for security, sustainability, and growth. It is designed to support not only our space acquisition and construction project, but also strategic growth to take full advantage of this expansion. With major public investment from the City of New York ($2.59M) from the Mayor's Office, City Council, and Brooklyn Borough President's office through the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, New York State Council on the Arts ($900K), and New York State Empire State Development Corporation ($500K), and private funders including the Howard Gilman Foundation, the Booth Ferris Foundation, Dorothy Strelsin Foundation, Revada Foundation, and Prospect Hill Foundation among others, and hundreds of individual donors, we have so far raised $9.3M (93% to our goal). The Campaign website is: thebushwickstarr.org/campaign

The Starr's Permanent Home was acquired with Matt Hopkins and Jane Brody of Vicus Partners with financing from The New York Pooled PRI Fund managed by SeaChange Capital Partners and LISC NY, legal services from Blank Rome LLP, Ken Gordon Esq., Stewart G. Einwohner, Esq., and guidance from Randi Berry and Paul Leibowitz of IndieSpace, and will be designed and constructed by architect Peter Zuspan of Bureau V and project managers About The Work. The Starr Campaign for a Permanent Home & Flourishing Future was developed with support from P.S.314 and Andy Hamingson & Associates.

The Bushwick Starr is an Obie Award winning non profit theater that presents an annual Season of new performance work. We are an organization defined by both our artists and our community, and since 2007, we have grown into a thriving theatrical venue, a vital neighborhood arts center, and a destination for exciting and engaging performance. We provide a springboard for emerging professional artists to make career-defining leaps, and we are a sanctuary where established performance companies come to experiment and innovate. We are also a neighborhood playhouse, serving our Bushwick, Brooklyn community's diverse artistic needs and impulses. Our past Seasons have included new work from groundbreaking artists such as Ryan J. Haddad, Whitney White, Jeremy O. Harris, Heather Christian, Diana Oh, The Mad Ones, Clare Barron, Daniel Fish, Haruna Lee, and the TEAM.

Founded in 2007 and led by Peter Zuspan, AIA, Bureau V Architecture's expertise lies in understanding the roles that space and design play in both the creation and exhibition of arts and culture. Trained as both an architect and a musician, Zuspan's work has spanned from performance, sculpture, and installation to the architecture that houses and supports them.

The studio's recent clients range from arts and culture organizations, such as National Sawdust, Creative Time, the Goat Farm Arts Center, Chapter NY, JTT Gallery, the San Francisco Opera, and the Brooklyn Public Library, to governmental institutions such as Miami-Dade Arts in Public Places, to artists and designers, such as Assume Vivid Astro Focus, Slow and Steady Wins the Race, and Tyler Coburn.

Bureau V Architecture's design of National Sawdust, the nonprofit chamber music hall in Brooklyn, NY, was described by the New York Times as "the city's most vital new-music hall." The project has won national and international awards including AIA Honor and Merit awards, the AR Culture Award Commended, AN's Best Adaptive Reuse, was listed in Architectural Record's global list of the Top 10 Arts Centers of the Year, and was nominated for the Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize.

Zuspan has taught architecture and design at Columbia University, Barnard College, Syracuse University, and the University of Pennsylvania. His research project entitled The Performance of Shame: The Desegregation Renovations of Downtown Atlanta, recently won the AIA Arnold W. Brunner Grant for Architectural Research.

Kam Chiu, Leed AP, P.E. has more than thirty years of diversified consulting engineering experience in the design of mechanical systems, equipment selection, energy management, building infrastructure upgrade, quality control, and project coordination. Kam Chiu has personally designed HVAC systems for corporate facilities, financial institutions, health care facilities, educational institutions, retails, and residential buildings. In addition, he has extensive background working with facility managers, interior designers, architects, and the construction trades.

Since the firm's founding in 1966, Silman has served as structural engineering consultant on over 23,000 projects, bringing a collaborative and creative energy to the design of public spaces, new buildings, and renovations. Silman's engineers are trained to be effective listeners, creative problem solvers, and knowledgeable about all facets of the construction process. Silman employs 160 people, with offices in New York, NY, Washington, DC, Boston, MA, Ann Arbor, Ml, Chicago, IL, and Los Angeles, CA.

Sara Steele joined Silman in 2001 and became a principal of the firm in 2017. Her project experience has included new construction, adaptive reuse, and historic preservation. A few notable projects in her portfolio are the addition and renovation of the Harvard Art Museums in Cambridge, MA; the addition and renovation of the Morgan Library Museum in New York City; and the Milstein Teaching and Learning Center at Barnard College in New York City. She is currently principal in charge for the design of a new residence hall at Carnegie Mellon University; the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University; and the renovation of an existing office building for the non-profit Vital Voices Global Partnership in Washington, DC.

Adept at working on projects of all scales, Sara's diverse project experience also includes fire houses, libraries, recreation centers, places of worship, retail spaces, townhouse renovations, and single-family private residences in upstate New York and the Hamptons.

Sara is a Past President of the Structural Engineers Association of New York (SEAoNY). Additionally, she is a former Grant Review Panelist for the New York State Council on the Arts and has written articles published in SEAoNY, Cross Sections and Modern Steel Construction.
Sara is currently a member of the Board of Directors of the Salvadori Center, a not-for-profit organization that uses the built environment as a motivational tool to teach math and science to K-12 students in New York City. www.silman.com

About the Work is a New York City-based woman-owned and woman-led project management firm. Since its inception in 2016 About the Work has sought to bring energy and excellence to the owner's representation sector. Striving for planning, design, and construction excellence through driving a collaborative process, executing strategic management, and establishing project budget and schedule control.

About the Work partners with organizations to develop capital projects from idea to occupancy. Forming and delineating achievable development strategies while providing "wrap-around", not bolt-on, project management expertise.

About the Work's clients are diverse in their missions, project types, and funding sources. The About the Work team leverages this diversity to strengthen the services and expertise it provides. About the Work is proud to name The Bushwick Starr, Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival, Green-wood Cemetery Education and Welcome Center, and CPC One among their active projects.

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