Brooklyn Ascending

Featuring Frank Castelluccio, Maggie Ross & Nicholas Hovsepian's listings and sales at 451 DeGraw Street, Boerum Hill.

 

*****

As Brooklyn's resurgence spreads from the water's edge to revitalized neighborhoods in its interior, its shopworn characterization as an "outer borough" has become hopelessly outdated.

 

The Williamsberry, a 68-residence condominium under construction in a former noodle factory at 338 Berry Street, is capitalizing on the demand for quality living space close to the Williamsburg Bridge. Designer Paris Forino, known for her high-end work at downtown Manhattan's Walker Tower, was brought in by developer Mona Gora to bring a Manhattan sensibility to the project. The 24-hour-attended lobby, bedecked with octagonal Moroccan tiles, will complement the garden with a fire pit and a water feature being planned by the same designer who completed the High Line in Chelsea. There will also be a lounge room that can be rented for parties, a roof deck and a residents' herb garden. The two glass-walled Skyhouse penthouses will be topped with German-engineered solar panels to help power the whole building.

Move-ins are expected by the end of the year, with prices ranging from $575,000 to around $2.5 million. Pricing information for the Skyhouses has yet to be released. "You are getting beautiful design with high-quality finishes, all in the $1,200 per square foot range, which truly is affordable when you compare it to the trendiest parts of Manhattan," said John Gomes, associate broker with Douglas EIliman Real Estate, and director of sales for Williamsberry. "We are embracing the industrial nature of the area, and are making beautiful residential units, with very high ceilings and massive window openings with city skyline and bridge views. We want to create the new standard for condominium living in the south part of Williamsburg."

Cobble Hill is another Brooklyn neighborhood attracting affluent buyers. The landmarked 1902 Beaux Arts-style four-story mansion at 114 Amity Street, listing for $6,950,000, is 30 feet wide and fully renovated with the best contemporary designs and technology, including a Siedle video intercom system with security cameras, Cat 5 wiring, in-ceiling speakers, radiant heat and climate controls for each floor. The entire 1,200-square-foot second floor is a private master suite with a fireplace, built-in closets and custom bookshelves with storage, and tree-lined skyline views.

The original marble staircase complements a second staircase up to the enormous covered roof deck, with Manhattan and water views. "You can screen movies, or host fund-raisers and cocktail parties up there - you don't need a backyard it is so big," said Phyllis Norton-Towers, sales agent with Brown Harris Stevens. "Some Brooklyn buyers who once insisted only on Brooklyn Heights are now demanding Cobble Hill and Carroll Gardens, where you have real. houses, and not so many apartments. The$? two areas are especially popular with young families."

Boerum Hill is often called Hollywood East because of its resident writers, actors and others in the arts. A converted warehouse at nearby 90 Wyckoff, between Smith and Hoyt Streets, is coming back on the market at the reduced price of $6.9 million. The three-story carriage house has a skylit atrium on the first floor, a glass-walled staircase, a two-story floor-to-ceiling window with automatic shade, a landscaped roof deck and a heated parking garage. The second floor has a 50-foot-long terrace - one of three outdoor spaces.

"The street presence is quite discreet, and has been brilliantly sculpted from raw warehouse space by the current owner, an interior designer who was very involved with the renovation," said Mary Ellen

Cashman, associate broker with Striblmg & Associates. "The house reminds me more of a penthouse loft than a traditional townhouse in Boerum Hill, combining the privacy of a single-family home with the aesthetic of light-filled loft living - with lots of light, outdoor space and parking for two cars."

Four new townhouses, on DeGraw Street between Hoyt Street and Bond Streets, at the intersection of Boerum Hill and Carroll Gardens, help bridge the gap between the well-known Smith Street corridor and the more up-and-coming Gowanus neighborhood along Third Avenue. One of the four-story "smart home" radiant-heated townhouses, with 3,800 square feet of living space, is now on the market for just under $5 million. Each of the four has a private roof deck and a backyard garden with a built-in irrigation system and bluestone patio. Said Frank Castelluccio, associate broker with Corcoran Group Real Estate, "The developer thought that there was a real need for larger, one-family homes in the best parts of Brooklyn, and this answers that need."

Move-ins are expected later this summer. "Everyone knows about the popularity of Smith Street - but this is on the other side, where the growth is," added Maggie Ross, also an associate broker with Corcoran Group Real Estate. "There is a blend of old Brooklyn and new Brooklyn here; still very residential, but with an industrial grittiness to certain blocks. DeGraw still has that Brooklyn neighborhood feel, where people sit on the stoops and visit."

In the wake of the Barclays Center's transformation of downtown, Brooklyn's next huge development is the $4.9 billion Pacific Park Brooklyn megaproject, formerly known as Atlantic Yards, a collection of 14 residential buildings connected to eight acres of green space. The first of Pacific Park's four condominium buildings to be built, 550 Vanderbilt, on the northwest corner of Vanderbilt Avenue and Dean Street in Prospect Heights, is a new 17-story luxury condominium with 278 residences featuring studio through four-bedroom homes, and including a limited collection of maisonettes and penthouses. Its 10,000-plus square feet of amenities will include an eighth-floor landscaped roof terrace, residents' lounge with fireplace, library, children's playroom, guest chefs' kitchen for entertaining, a fitness center and underground parking.

Studios at 550 Vanderbilt will start at $550,000, with three-bedrooms ranging up to $3,550,000. Sales will launch later this month, with move-ins expected by the end of next year. "This is part of something much bigger to come," said Jodi Stasse, managing director with Corcoran Sunshine Marketing Group. "Brooklyn continues to be starved for new ownership opportunities, and until this point, those opportunities have been on a smaller scale. This really has something for everyone: the open space, the park, and the vision for retail will turn this into its own new neighborhood connecting Ft. Greene, Prospect Heights and downtown Brooklyn."

Artists continue to pour into Bushwick, where an eight-bedroom Renaissance Revival, built in 1899, not only features original prewar details - including parquet floors, two antique fireplace mantels, 10-and-a-half-foot ceilings and antique chandeliers in every room - but also has a newly graffiti-painted lower level. In addition to patio space in the front and back, there is also a roof terrace.

The new listing, at 716 Bushwick Avenue at the corner of Hart Street, is on the market at $1,980,000. The brick mansion could work well as a triplex and a garden rental, as two duplexes, or as a single-family home. "It would be an ideal place for an artist," suggested Helen Chee, sales agent with Douglas Elliman Real Estate. "Now you can have living space and work space in the same residence - and still have room for a rental unit if you like. The whole area is really coming back as one of the coolest places to live in the city."

259 Clifton Place is another success story that is currently on the market for $1,899,000. On the border with Clinton Hill, the 19th century four-story brownstone is set up as a rental apartment on the garden level, with an owner's triplex above. The south-facing double parlor is flooded with light, and comes with 12-foot-high exterior doors, original mahogany bannister and marble mantels. The renovated kitchen is similarly spacious, with a large seven-foot island as well as a deck leading down to the garden.

"Bedford-Stuyvesant is desirable these days, and bidding wars are common here, especially if you do the work to freshen up a property before it goes on the market," said Kathleen Perkins, associate broker with Douglas Elliman Real Estate. "The affluent come here, looking to buy, and don't know how to make it look like a West Village townhouse. They know that the bones are here, with all the great woodwork, pIaster detailing, marble mantels, hardwood floors and the pocket doors - and they know it can be done."

A seven-room, 2,043-square-foot condo on the fifth floor of 225 Eastern Parkway at Clausen Avenue, with direct views of the Brooklyn Museum and Olmstead and Vaux's Eastern Parkway, is listing for $2.195,000. The Traymore was converted in 2006 to condos, fully renovated by the sponsor in 2013, after which the current owners spent three months creating elaborate, handcrafted shelving units for the living room, study, kitchen and one of the bedrooms. The restoration included custom radiator covers, window seats, bookshelves and a desk, as well as wainscoting in the study and an elegant black walnut countertop in the kitchen.

"The entire Crown Heights area, like Prospect Heights and Bedford-Stuyvesant, has really come into its own in recent years," said Jeanne Kempton, sales agent with Stribling & Associates. "The value is there, based on the beauty of the area, and, in this apartment, on the beauty of the built-ins, which are a true gift for the next owners."