Downtown Brooklyns Transformation Continues With an Apple
Suddenly, a Brooklyn Skyline
THE view north across the East River from a high floor at Oro, a new 40-story condominium tower at 306 Gold Street in Downtown Brooklyn, is eye-popping, a panorama of clouds, bridges, water and skyscrapers in Manhattan. But gazing to the south and west from the same perch reveals a more traditional Brooklyn landscape: here a cluster of bank offices, there a line of cars at a Flatbush Avenue traffic light, set against a distant backdrop of low-rises and brownstones.
Oro is part of a recent wave of downtown development, much of it residential, that looks to high-rise Manhattan rather than brownstone Brooklyn as a model. It is changing the borough's face and bringing thousands of new residents to a once mostly commercial area.
In addition to Oro, which started selling in 2007, at least half a dozen high-rises have recently opened or broken ground downtown, a sprawling area broadly defined by Cadman Plaza on the west, Atlantic Avenue to the south, Flatbush Avenue and Fort Greene to the east and the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway to the north. They are drawing Manhattanites lured by low rents as well as locals who want modern amenities and a change from brownstones and low-rises.
Yet the swift pace of development — abetted by a 2004 rezoning — has worked in tandem with the recent recession to produce growing pains. Many of the new buildings, hobbled by slow sales in 2008 and 2009, had to reduce prices drastically. And some new residents bemoan the lack of a supermarket, among other services.
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The Brooklyner, a 51-story fully occupied rental building at 111 Lawrence Street, is now the tallest building in the borough. On or just off nearby Flatbush Avenue are: Avalon Fort Greene, a 650-unit, 42-story behemoth whose rents range from $2,132, for a studio, to $4,241 for a three-bedroom penthouse; DKLB BKLN, a 36-story rental building at 80 DeKalb Avenue; and Toren, a 38-story glass tower at 150 Myrtle Avenue, where a one-bedroom is available for $475,000 and two-bedrooms can be found from $695,000 to $1.2 million. And all around the neighborhood, recent additions that languished half empty as recently as last year are steadily filling up.
Even Flatbush Avenue itself, at its worst a river of traffic flowing onto and off of the Manhattan Bridge, is looking better: Freshly planted islands in its median were part of $100 million in city-financed streetscape improvements.
One of downtown's new residents, Skip Mooney, bought a unit in Toren last year after 16 years of renting in the West Village. Living in a new building has been good for his allergies, Mr. Mooney, 50, said in an interview. And he called the two-bedroom two-bath apartment, where he lives with his partner Kevin Guyer, a good deal: around $600,000, in a real estate climate that included low interest rates and a 25-year tax abatement.
Still, Mr. Mooney, who 25 years ago lived a few blocks away in pregentrification Fort Greene, says he has stood at his 22nd-story window and entertained some misgivings.
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"I just said to myself, 'After 25 years, am I coming full circle and moving back to this neighborhood that I really hated when I lived there?' " he recalled.
The anxiety mostly passed, he said, when he considered the building's amenities, the abundant public transportation options and the ways that Fort Greene, to his east, has changed. To the west, he said, he still wishes there were more neighborhood services, like restaurants, a dry cleaner and a supermarket.
Even so, Mr. Mooney added: "I think everyone understands that at some point it's going to come; it's only a matter of time. There's a lot of retail spaces in the ground floors of those buildings that are going to be filled."
Not long ago, the fate of Downtown Brooklyn's newest buildings was far from a foregone conclusion, as many opened just before the recession hit.
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Oro opened for sales in 2007 and did brisk business. It was more than 50 percent sold (a figure that includes closed sales and sales in contract) well before the building was finished. "People were purchasing as they were pouring the floors," said Edward Azria, the manager of sales at Rose Associates, the building's marketing and sales agent.
When the financial crisis hit, though, buyers fled. By September 2009, the building was only 28 percent sold. That was when the building's sponsor, Greenfield Partners, replaced its original marketing agents at Prudential Douglas Elliman with Rose. The new agents re-evaluated the empty apartments, unit by unit, and lowered prices by an average of about 16 percent, Mr. Azria said, though some were reduced far less and others, like a studio, were cut 28 percent. Studios start at $365,000, one-bedrooms at $465,000 and two-bedrooms at $538,000, according to the Rose Web site. A three-bedroom is available for $1.225 million.
Buyers responded, and a little over a year later, about 70 percent of the building's 303 units have been sold, Mr. Azria said.
Other buildings around the neighborhood also took out the scissors. At Be@Schermerhorn, a 246-unit condominium building at 189 Schermerhorn Street, the building's original sponsor refunded early buyers' deposits in the fall of 2009, after early sales momentum flagged. The following spring Jamestown Properties bought the building and, in consultation with marketing agents at the Corcoran Group, overhauled its sales strategy. Seeing price reductions of 20 to 25 percent or more, buyers returned.
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"As soon as we opened the doors, it was like gangbusters," said Aaron Lemma, a vice president of Corcoran. Six months after the price cuts, Mr. Lemma said, the building is now almost 80 percent sold, with sales on half its units closed.
The sharpest turnaround may have been at the Forte, a 30-story, 107-unit condo three blocks west of Flatbush Avenue on Fulton Street. There, after a bank takeover and a rebranding assisted by Corcoran — the building is now known by its address, 230 Ashland — prices were reduced by an average of 40 percent. A high-floor two-bedroom, in particular, was cut to $585,000 from $975,000. That was just after Thanksgiving 2009, and the building is now 100 percent sold, said Adam Pacelli, a senior associate salesman at Corcoran.
Among the buyers are Mr. Pacelli's mother and stepfather, who bought a two-bedroom two-bath unit in July, moving from a poorly lighted one-bedroom on East 46th Street in Manhattan. Much of the new building's appeal has to do with its being on the edge of Fort Greene, according to David Woodrow, Mr. Pacelli's stepfather. He said that when he walked downtown it was usually to pick up something at Duane Reade or to catch a bus to nearby Dumbo. Still, he added, the area's work-in-progress feel makes it an interesting place to explore.
"It's been a very pleasant discovering experience," Mr. Woodrow said.
With so many new residents in place, planners and officials hope a more well-rounded neighborhood will soon coalesce. The goal of the 2004 rezoning that made much of the new construction possible was to create a mixed-use environment with thriving office and retail components in addition to residences, said Joe Chan, the president of the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership, a not-for-profit development corporation.
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The area, Mr. Chan said, has not had as much commercial development as he would have liked. But, he added, "having thousands of talented, highly educated people living in Downtown Brooklyn makes a compelling case for more companies to move to the area."
Some new tenants in creative industries have already moved in, he said, including the architect Michael Van Valkenburgh and the literary agent Jill Grinberg. Similarly, the area's retail districts are seeing new life, with a branch of H & M and a Shake Shack outpost preparing to join a recently opened Aéropostale apparel store on the Fulton Mall, and a wine store close to opening on the ground floor of Oro.
Mr. Chan says his neighborhood wish list also includes a home furnishings store, an Apple computer store and more mundane neighborhood retail services, like coffee shops, groceries and pharmacies. There is good news, at least, for residents craving a supermarket: A deal to bring a grocery store to the ground floor of Toren has been resurrected after falling through in the spring. Don Capoccia, a principal of BFC Partners, that building's developer, said the store was now set to open late next summer.
Finally, the area's already strong transportation infrastructure is improving. Most of the city's subway lines pass underneath, and in December the Metropolitan Transportation Authority completed a project of many years to connect two major stops, Jay Street and Lawrence Street.
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There is even talk of new buildings: In December, plans became public for a 234-unit, 49-story tower on Bridge Street, and a 327-unit, 42-story building by the Dermot Company broke ground last month at 29 Flatbush Avenue. Both are to be rentals, and combined, they will receive nearly $200 million in state money in exchange for including affordable-housing components.
So much residential growth is occurring, in fact, that some people in the neighborhood worry it may be too much. Robert Perris, the district manager of Community Board 2, which represents the area, said the benefits of residences along Flatbush Avenue were clear. But, he added, so are the benefits of a strong commercial district — and strengthening the commercial district was one of the chief goals of the rezoning. When residential buildings are erected in commercial zones, he said, their lots are lost for commercial purposes.
"There are only so many development sites," Mr. Perris said. "If these sites get developed for residential, they're gone forever."
Mr. Chan urged patience about the arrival of nonresidential development.
"Has everything been realized in the six years since the rezoning?" he asked. "No, but that was never the plan." He said what was most important was that "over the last year, we have seen Downtown Brooklyn hit critical mass as a residential community."
Mr. Capoccia, of BFC Partners, said the Downtown Brooklyn experience had been a net positive one — though not one, he said, that his company had plans to repeat. Toren was not exempt from price cuts, he said, but did well by entering the market slightly later than its neighbors, with prices set accordingly. The result, Mr. Capoccia added, was that the company made an average of just over $690 per square foot on the units it sold, less than 10 percent off its initial projections of around $750 per square foot.
"Our plan, of course, was to have been sold out here a long time ago and moved on to our next project," he said. Still, it is some consolation to have the best-selling building in the city in terms of units sold, at least according to a Crain's New York Business analysis of numbers from PropertyShark.
"I think the thought and planning that went into it is paying off today," Mr. Capoccia added. "Not paying off like I expected it to pay off, but it's not a burden."
Meanwhile Mr. Mooney, one of his buyers, was happy to hear plans for a supermarket were back on track.
"People are going to be thrilled — I'm going to be thrilled — when that's there," he said. "If it's there."
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/realestate/09cov.html
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