New York City’s most populous borough has many crowd-pleasing attractions: the Brooklyn Bridge, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, the Brooklyn Nets.

Now there’s Brooklyn Commons. It’s better known as the MetroTech Center, a dull and insular back-office hub for financial firms and city agencies in Downtown Brooklyn that many New Yorkers have largely ignored — unless they’ve worked or studied there — since the early 1990s. Now, a $50 million renovation aims to transform it into a leisure destination, with trendy cafes, cultural programming and refreshed green spaces.

New York Times

Photo: Brookfield Properties