To-Be Culinary Incubator in Crown Heights Boasts Pop-up Space

3rd Ward's new project plans a venue for aspiring chefs and established restaurants.

Rendered image of the new culinary project in Crown Heights. [Image by: 3rd Ward]

Since announcing a new culinary wing to his successful design incubator 3rd Ward in February, founder Jason Goodman has been running from meeting to meeting. Unlike his 30,000 square-foot space in Bushwick which hosts creative types from budding furniture designers to fashion photographers in need of stark white studio sets, the building in Crown Heights will hold commercial kitchens, curated retail space for products, and a nine-thousand square foot beer hall operated by Brooklyn Flea founders Jonathan Butler and Eric Demby.

While Goodman said the site will be focused on developing distributable and sellable products like Whole Food’s familiars McClure’s Pickles and Sweet Loren’s cookie dough, that doesn’t mean chef hopefuls are excluded from the incubator. “There’s a huge amount of work that goes into opening a restaurant and finding the right space,” Goodman said. After a friend pitched the idea, he decided to develop a rotating pop-up restaurant space for the incubator, where either emerging chefs or those established in the industry a chance to do something new.

“There’s a cultural desire for pop-ups and we enjoy that experience where food and entertainment meet fulfillment of life,” he said. “You can’t replicate the overall experience.” With the incubator set to open in fall 2013, his team is “way far away” from setting rental quotes, but Goodman said he wants the environment inside the $6 million project, which receives funding from grants, Economic Development Corporation, and Borough President Marty Markowitz’s office, to be innovative and spectacular. “It will be something for professionals and the audience,” he said.

In addition for providing a platform for restaurants, like culinary members within the incubator, he plans to provide resources to enrich their businesses like lectures on supply chain issues, food technology and urban farming, and artisanal production. “We want to be a resource for the entire community,” Goodman said, likening 3^rd Ward’s vision more to the integrated model of Harlem’s incubator Hot Bread Kitchen.

Though Flea founder Butler is renovating, Goodman said the direct partnership between the gourmet superstarters stops there. “Without Brooklyn Flea it probably wouldn’t have happened this way,” he said describing the overwhelming support for the community development project. “But he’s my landlord and we have different models.”