Condo builders clean up on Flatbush
Residential towers to replace car washes, gas stations
Erik Engquist
Published on February 13, 2006
Say this for Flatbush Avenue in downtown Brooklyn: It offers plenty of opportunities to get your vehicle cleaned, lubed and gassed up. Car washes, oil-change garages and filling stations predominate along the gritty east side of the famed thoroughfare, because for decades that's what the zoning allowed.
Last summer, the area was rezoned to encourage developers to erect residential and commercial towers up to 400 feet high. Less than a year later, builders are about to do exactly that. They plan to add several thousand new housing units. Every parcel along Flatbush from Tillary Street to Myrtle Avenue is spoken for, and projects are in various stages of development, according to builders, real estate brokers and advocates for the area.
"It looks promising," says Michael Burke, director of the Downtown Brooklyn Council. "That entire area is on the verge of moving forward." Subsurface work began last week at 167 Johnson Place, where developers Ron Hershco and Dean Palin will construct a 40-story tower with 304 units and a 35-story building with 208 units. Both buildings will have commercial space on the ground level and 110-car garages underneath. The second one will include a pool, gym and squash court. "You're getting all the amenities and lifestyle of Manhattan, for two-thirds of the price," says Mr. Hershco, who anticipates that the $200 million project will produce $400 million in sales. Units will range from studios to three-bedroom penthouses. Prices haven't been set, but high-end condos nearby are fetching $800 to $900 per square foot.
The luxury condominium apartments will be just two subway stops from Wall Street and offer unobstructed 360-degree views." You can see all the way to the ocean, to the Verrazano Bridge," Mr. Hershco says. "There's nothing to interfere with the views."
But they won't be downtown Brooklyn's only residential towers for long. Isaac Hager plans what could be a 400-foot-tall apartment building at Flatbush Avenue and Tillary Street, near the entrance to the Manhattan Bridge. Another developer, Isaac Katan, will construct several buildings, perhaps 28 to 32 stories each, on Myrtle Avenue just east of Flatbush. BFC Construction Corp. plans a 500-unit building at the corner of Flatbush and Myrtle.
Mr. Hershco, realizing the potential of the less-than-glamorous area, converted an old toy factory at Gold and Johnson streets into luxurious loft apartments and saw them snapped up by eager buyers. "From $75, prices have doubled to $150 per buildable square foot in the last three years," says Brian Leary, managing partner of Massey Knakal Realty Services' Brooklyn office, referring to land acquisition costs.
The result will be an aesthetic and functional transformation of the neighborhood, not to mention a longer wait for motorists at the remaining local car washes, at Atlantic Avenue and Boerum Place. But word is those businesses will soon give way to housing as well.
©2006 Crain Communications Inc.
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