Brooklyn Heights

What’s up with Downtown Brooklyn apartment development? Part Three

Eye On Real Estate

September 17, 2014 By Lore Croghan Brooklyn Daily Eagle
Old and new in Downtown Brooklyn, with apartments in both. This Romanesque Revival property is the landmarked Offerman Building, where the upper floors are getting a residential makeover. The tower at left is 388 Bridge St., which is currently Brooklyn's tallest building. Eagle photos by Rob Abruzzese
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This ain’t just a business district now.

Downtown Brooklyn is full of residential construction projects. There are so many sites to see in the neighborhood that we decided to split our checklist into three stories.

In this one, we’re including a city landmark that’s undergoing residential conversion as well as sites where de novo development is planned or underway.

* * *

The Offerman Building, 505 Fulton St.

Old building, new apartments.

Residential conversion work should be finished soonish at the Offerman Building, an 1890s-vintage city landmark at 505 Fulton St.

The exterior is surely looking good. Scaffolding that covered it for so long is gone, and fine façade details are out in the open for all the world to see.

The stunning Romanesque Revival property designed by well-regarded architect Peter Lauritzen began its existence as a store, and has housed all manner of commercial tenants over the years.

Current owners Albert and Jody Laboz of United American Land recently put heavy-hitter discount retailers Nordstrom Rack and T.J. Maxx in its lower floors.

The 120 loft-like apartments the developers are creating on its upper floors should be ready to rent out late this year, the Brooklyn Paper reported.

* * *

Grove Alley Sites 8-16 Nevins St. and 299 Livingston St.

The little buildings at 8-16 Nevins St. are still standing — for now.

City Buildings Department applications for demolition permits have been approved for the residential construction site — which has a façade on Grove Place, a gritty but groovy alley whose development the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership is promoting.

Joseph Hoffman’s Bushburg Properties plans a 28-story, mixed-income rental apartment tower at the Nevins Street site, with retail space facing the alley, as Eye on Real Estate previously reported.

Around the corner at 299 Livingston St., a row house that also has a façade on Grove Place is targeted for development, too.

A late August Buildings Department filing calls for a 17-story tower with 37 apartments — which the inimitable New York YIMBY website was the first to discover.

An entity called 299 Livingston LLC bought the building for $2.65 million in August, city Finance Department records indicate. The buyer signed the deed with a scrawl and didn’t take out a mortgage, which would have revealed his or her identity.

What the records do show is that the purchasing LLC’s address is a house that belongs to Chaim Yoseph Daskal and Pearl Dembitzer.

Mr. Daskal, Ms. Dembitzer: Is the 299 Livingston St. project yours? Or is someone else running a development business out of the house you own?

* * *

The Hub, 333 Schermerhorn St.

Work is ongoing at the Hub, Doug Steiner’s rental-apartment tower plus retail development at 333 Schermerhorn St.

We peeked through the project’s fence and saw workers constructing the first bits of the basement.

So there’s action on the site, which has frontage on Livingston Street and Flatbush Avenue — even though the New York Observer reported in July that Steiner was seeking $300 million in construction financing for the high-rise project.  

* * *

10 Metro Tech Center

The demolition was quick.

It seems like the last time we walked by 10 Metro Tech Center, only a couple floors had been lopped off the old office building.

Now it’s nothing but a broad expanse of crushed rubble, without even the usual wooden fence that would shield the site from the view of passersby.

Apartments are planned at the property , which also uses 625 Fulton St. as an address, according to numerous published reports. But plans haven’t yet been filed with the city Buildings Department.

* * *
THERE’S MORE! LOOK FOR PARTS ONE AND TWO OF THIS RAMBLE THROUGH DOWNTOWN BROOKLYN, IF YOU HAVEN’T ALREADY READ THEM.

 

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