Posted Jan 22, 2014, 7:19 AM
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New Yorker for life
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Join Date: Jul 2001
Location: Borough of Jersey
Posts: 51,869
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http://stream.wsj.com/story/latest-h...9/SS-2-432299/
Brooklyn High Note, for Now
New Tower Is First Big Condominium Development Since 2008
Quote:
It costs up to $67 a ticket for a ride to the top of the Empire State Building. But the view from the highest point in Brooklyn atop a sleek glass-and-aluminum apartment building is free—at least with purchase or rental of an apartment in Downtown Brooklyn’s newest tower.
The new building, the first big condominium development in Downtown Brooklyn to come on the market since the financial crisis in 2008, is part of a second wave of residential development that is also bringing high-end groceries and retail stores to the borough’s once-faded central business district.
“We are in the middle of a building boom,” said Tucker Reed, president of the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership. He said 3,300 apartments were now under development in the area.
The tower at 388 Bridge St. will have an illuminated crown at the top with a residents-only observatory bathed in a changing-color light display, like the other tall buildings across the river. The lights will be powered by two 17-foot-high, curved wind turbines that look like large globes from windows in nearby buildings.
It is 53 stories and 590 feet high from the curb, according to Roger Fortune, a vice president at the Stahl Organization, which is developing the project. It is listed at 575 feet in plans submitted to the Department of Buildings, but both figures are tall enough to take the title of the tallest building in Brooklyn—at least for the next year or so.
The new building, known as 388 Bridge, eclipsed the Brooklyner, a 531-foot building in Downtown Brooklyn that opened at the end of 2009. The Brooklyner in turn took the title from the Williamsburgh Savings Bank Tower at 512 feet, which held the record since the 1920s. The bank building was converted condominiums in 2007.
Now just across Bridge Street, construction crews are working on the foundation for a rental project that could top 388 Bridge by a few feet. The new building, being built by AvalonBay Communities Inc., is due to rise to 596 feet and have 826 apartments. It is due to open in 2015.
The 388 Bridge building is part condo, part market-rate rental and part low-income rental, and is due to open in a few weeks. The project is a test of the strength of the condo market in Downtown Brooklyn, after years in which banks were reluctant to bankroll condominium development, especially in less established, more risky markets.
The 144 condos on high floors with the best views at 388 Bridge will go on the market at prices ranging from about $730,000 for a smaller one-bedroom with a view to nearly $6 million a four-bedroom penthouse.
The project was designed by SLCE Architects, and has 9½-foot ceilings for most condos and floors made of wide white-oak panels. It will have a gym for residents and a branch of Manhattan Athletic Club on lower floors.
During a recent tour, on a drizzly, cloudy afternoon of the resident’s rooftop viewing terrace, most of the five bridges stretching from the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge to the Ed Koch Queensboro Bridge were visible.
With few condos on the market Downtown Brooklyn, and a low vacancy rate for rentals, demand was strong for new buildings such as 388 bridge, Mr. Fortune said. “There is a drought of apartments,” he said.
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