What’s Changing at 85 Fourth Avenue? Inside the Solace Lottery and the Numbers That Don’t Add Up
A mixed-income rental building marketed as Solace is under construction at 85 Fourth Avenue in Park Slope, with an affordable-housing lottery already open and a summer 2026 completion target. But ask how big the building actually is and you’ll get three different answers — the developer’s own marketing count runs 54 units higher than the figure in permit-era reporting, and three separate sources describe three different heights for the same address.
What It Is
The building sits at 85 Fourth Avenue, also addressed as 74 St. Marks Place, on a stretch of the corridor that’s seen a wave of new residential construction in recent years. Developers Stretke Corp. and Harry Einhorn are building on a site that was demolished to make way for the current project.
By the permit-era figures, the building totals roughly 176,757 square feet — about 124,998 sq ft residential, 5,415 sq ft commercial, and 1,996 sq ft of community facility space — plus 79 enclosed parking spaces. No rezoning was involved; the project is going up as-of-right under existing zoning, so there’s no public land-use review to track.
An affordable-housing lottery is open now for units set aside for households earning 40%, 60%, and 130% of area median income, through NYC Housing Connect. Studios start at $992 a month; two-bedrooms run up to $4,518.
Why It Matters
Solace is the largest unit count of any project in Hush Street’s Park Slope tracker — bigger than Arrow Linen Rezoning, 67-75 Fourth Avenue, or any other building on the corridor’s current construction wave. For a stretch of Fourth Avenue absorbing a lot of new residential density at once, that scale matters on its own.
It’s also one of the few Park Slope projects right now where a reader can act immediately. The lottery is open, the price points are public, and completion is targeted for summer 2026 — not a multi-year approval process still working through city review.
Solace isn’t arriving in isolation. Two other Fourth Avenue-area buildings have completed nearby in the same recent window: Paseo on Fifth, a 180-unit, two-building project anchored by a new Lidl, and Kay’s Place, a 44-unit affordable building at 487 Fourth Avenue. Together with Solace, they’re a concrete sign of how much new housing this corridor is absorbing at once — whichever unit count for Solace itself turns out to be right.
The Numbers That Don’t Add Up
Permit-era reporting from New York YIMBY, which cites detailed square-footage breakdowns, puts the building at 193 units across 13 stories. The building’s own marketing for “Solace” advertises 247 “thoughtfully crafted residences” — 54 more than the permit figure.
The story count is even less settled. A 2019 permit filing described an earlier version of the same address as 12 stories; the 13-story figure comes from more detailed 2024 permit-derived reporting; a 2026 lottery-announcement headline called it 18 stories.
None of these numbers reconciles cleanly to a single primary Department of Buildings record we could find. It’s plausible the project was genuinely revised more than once between 2019 and now — permits get amended, marketing rounds up, and a mixed-income building’s final unit count can shift as affordability set-asides get finalized late.
We’re not picking a winner. This piece uses the 193-unit, 13-story figures because they carry the most detailed sourcing among the three, not because they’re confirmed as final.
The gap is worth pausing on. Fifty-four units is a meaningful share of a building this size — the difference between a 193-unit and a 247-unit project isn’t a rounding error, it’s closer to a quarter more housing than the permit-era count accounts for. And a spread from 12 to 18 stories isn’t a minor filing update either; it’s the difference between a mid-rise and a genuinely tall building on a corridor where height has already been a fought-over question at other sites nearby.
What’s Next
Construction continues toward a targeted summer 2026 completion. The affordable-housing lottery is open now.
85 Fourth Avenue is one of five full sections in Hush Street’s Park Slope Development Tracker, which covers the block-by-block wave of new construction reshaping Fourth Avenue alongside Grand Army Plaza’s redesign and a streetscape plan for Fifth Avenue.
Sources: New York YIMBY; New York YIMBY (2019 permit filing); New York YIMBY (demolition); Patch; 6sqft.
Hush Street Editorial researches and reports on the projects, permits, and physical changes reshaping Brooklyn — and, more broadly, New York City. Reporting draws on primary-source city records — Department of Buildings filings, land-use and planning applications, agency and community-board documents — verified and cross-checked against independent reporting where it exists. Coverage is continuously updated as new filings and decisions are recorded, and confirmed facts are distinguished from open questions.
