The Plan: It’s Time to Get With the Program in Greenpoint

Entrepreneur Griffin Taylor’s latest Brooklyn project is a slam dunk for the next generation of basketball greats coming out of New York City. 

In September, Griffin and business partner Jared Effron opened training facility the Program at 255 Java Street in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. The 12,500-square-foot converted warehouse is about a 10-minute walk from the G train, and has been backed by some of basketball’s biggest names, including Carmelo Anthony, Sue Bird, Miles McBride and 1992 Olympic “Dream Team” member Chris Mullin — whose son Chris Mullin Jr. is the head of memberships at The Program. 

“I’ve been a basketball junkie for as long as I can remember, and I realized that if it was going to be a part of my career, it was going to have to be an impact I made off the court,” Taylor said. “I’d been working in grassroots in my 20s. I noticed two things. One, there’s  a narrative that in New York City we just weren’t producing as many high-level basketball players as we used to and, two, that in New York, consumer-facing, accessible, state-of-the-art basketball facilities, especially for youth, really didn’t exist.” 

So Taylor and his co-founder decided to fill that void and provide a place where kids between the ages of 6 and 17 could come and get the extra training and coaching needed to hone their skills and earn those high school championships or collegiate scholarships, and maybe even pursue pro careers. (There are also programs at the Program for adults. The organic breakdown among the kids has turned out to be 65 percent boys and 35 percent girls.) 

The founders connected with Spectorgroup, a New York-based architecture firm that helped the Program find the right space and convert it into a professional-grade basketball training facility. 

“I’m friends with Jared Effron, so that’s what brought us all together,” said Scott Spector, principal of Spectorgroup. “This facility was probably one of five different sites we studied together. We did a lot of due diligence on a lot of different spaces. One space didn’t work because it was too small, and another was too big. One we would have had to knock down, and that was just not going to work for us.”

Eventually they chose the space at 255 Java Street, and together built a facility with a full court plus a half-court training space (so group and private sessions can take place simultaneously), a weight room for extra workouts, conference and office space for the staff, and a recovery room that will soon feature a cold plunge. There is a small retail area as well. 

Surrounding the enormous basketball court — which was made to NBA and NCAA standards — is a wall of jerseys highlighting some of the sport’s most celebrated and influential players. 

“The jersey wall is really unique in that it’s sort of a historical library of all the players, or mostly all the players, that made contributions to New York City basketball,” Taylor said. 

The outside of the once-unassuming storage space is now adorned with a bright, colorful and energetic mural designed by local street artist Sandro “Sen2” Figueroa. 

“This space is such an amazing example of adaptive reuse,” Spector said. “It’s just one of those perfect fits for a space. … They invested proper dollars for this to be what it is supposed to be.”

Amanda Schiavo can be reached at aschiavo@commercialobserver.com.