A Mellower Beastie Boy Is Adding Home Building to the Mix

 

Featuring Leslie Marshall and James Cornell’s listing at 242 Pacific Street, Boerum Hill, Brooklyn.

 

On “Slow and Low,” the penultimate song of their debut album, Michael Diamond and his fellow Beastie Boys rap, “We don’t only rock the house, but we house the rock. We don’t stroll but we roll straight to the top.”

The 21-year-old bad boy once famous for fighting for your right to party probably never would have guessed that about three decades later he would be a developer of an actual house, one that is striking but not exactly rocking, in that land of strolling and strollers, brownstone Brooklyn. But with a wife and two children in private school, and his 50s not far off, Mr. Diamond, known to millions of former adolescents as Mike D., has found himself branching out into other passions.

This time, it really is Mike D. with the master plan.

Tamra Davis — who met her husband of 21 years while directing music videos for the Beasties, N.W.A. and Sonic Youth, and has since shot such features as “CB4,” “Billy Madison” and “Half Baked” — prefers another of Mr. Diamond’s lyrics to define the project.

 “It’s more like ‘Skills to Pay the Bills,'” she said.

The couple were standing inside the shell of a townhouse at the corner of Boerum Place and Pacific Street in Cobble Hill that they are building with Jill and John Bouratoglou, both architects. They all met four years ago on the basketball court, where Mr. Diamond and Mr. Bouratoglou coached their sons together.

At playdates and in the stands, their conversations became consumed with talk of light fixtures and classic buildings as much as good teachers and new movies. It was the Bouratoglous who helped convince their friends to leave TriBeCa for Brooklyn two years ago, where the architects helped the artists gut-renovate a historic townhouse in Cobble Hill, where they now live.

Online, some have criticized the rebellious teen idol for moving to brownstone Brooklyn, to say nothing of building there. “What, am I supposed to live in a frat house?” Mr. Diamond shot back. “It’s not like Jay Z’s still in the projects.”

The work is not really a surprise for either Mr. Diamond or Ms. Davis. His mother was an interior designer, and he fondly recalls a middle-school trip to the Yale School of Architecture, designed by Paul Rudolph, as an eye-opening early experience. Ms. Davis grew up in a succession of modernist homes around Los Angeles and her work on music videos was often budget-conscious, leaving her with the task of handling locations and sets.

“I’m the one interested in function, and he’s all about form,” Ms. Davis said. “He’s all about making sure it doesn’t just work, but it’s cool.”

The Bouratoglous live next door to the new house, which was until recently an empty corner lot owned by a man who has an auto body shop across the street. He refused to sell, but Ms. Bouratoglous began baking him cookies and bringing him flowers, and last year he agreed to part with it, for $1.5 million according to city records.

“When he told me the price, that’s when we decided to invite Mike and Tamra over for dinner,” Ms. Bouratoglous joked. A few other friends have invested in the project, but none are as involved in the design.

In addition to creating their Cobble Hill home, Mr. Diamond and Ms. Davis have designed homes for themselves in Malibu and Atlanta, though this is their first speculative venture. The interior is still under construction, but the house came on the market last week for $4.98 million, listed with James Cornell and Leslie Marshall of The Corcoran Group.

In a departure for the neighborhood of redbrick and brownstone, 242 Pacific features black bricks and ipe wood on the exterior. “It’s on this really prominent corner, just off Atlantic where people come off the bridge, so we wanted to really make a statement,” Ms. Davis said. The windows, some 10 feet high, are at irregular widths. “Mike has a real sense of rhythm, you could say, and I think we worked to express that in the facade,” Ms. Bouratoglou said. Yet the most important feature is probably the garage. “In this neighborhood, you get P.P.S. — post-parking syndrome,” Mr. Diamond said. “There’s probably no bigger amenity.”

Inside, the living room is four feet above the street to increase privacy, and to create a large multipurpose room downstairs. “When you live through a winter with two boys, you quickly realize the value of a do-anything room,” Mr. Diamond said. The kitchen is being overseen by Ms. Davis, who has a popular vegetarian cooking show online, and there is a back patio on the roof of the garage.

One flight up are three bedrooms for children or guests; another floor up is the master suite for the parents. “We’ve got his-and-hers closets,” Mr. Diamond said, before pausing. “Or his-and-his or hers-and-hers.” The top floor has a roof terrace and a flexible space, for editing films, recording albums or just painting and doing yoga.

Jonathan Miller, president of the appraisal firm Miller Samuel (and an avid Beastie Boys fan), said that while the involvement of Mr. Diamond and Ms. Davis would not necessarily boost the price, their roles certainly help with the marketing. “His brand-slash-reputation is Brooklyn, a positive,” Mr. Miller said. “He’s not known for design, but this is a quirky pairing, so it gets eyeballs onto the project.”

Yet the hope is that people might come to associate the “D” in Mike D. with developer. Ms. Davis, putting her location-scouting skills to use, is already buzzing about the borough on her scooter to look for new opportunities, Mr. Bouratoglou said, including some sites ripe for multiunit properties.

Mr. Diamond, perhaps aware of the expectations that can build up around a forthcoming project, is more circumspect about the foundations his new quartet is laying.

“I know it sounds new-agey, but the best projects just present themselves,” he said. “You just get together with your friends, and it doesn’t even feel like work.”

Copyright © 2014 The New York Times Company. Reprinted with Permission. Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times. 

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