Downtown

AVA DoBro shares the honor of being Brooklyn’s tallest building with 388 Bridge St.

Eye On Real Estate

August 12, 2015 By Lore Croghan Brooklyn Daily Eagle
AVA DoBro, a fine new addition to the Downtown Brooklyn skyline, is the tower covered with blue panels near the center of the photo. Eagle photos by Lore Croghan
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High there!

Eye on Real Estate hereby hails the handsome, nearly completed tower at 100 Willoughby St. as the new tallest building in Brooklyn.

It’s high time we offered congratulations to developer AvalonBay — because tenants will soon start arriving at AVA DoBro, the rental-apartment tower formerly known as Avalon Willoughby West.

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The first residents will be moving into the 57-story Downtown Brooklyn skyscraper in September, an AvalonBay spokesperson told Eye on Real Estate.

In a moment, we’ll give you a run-down on what’s up with the leasing of the 826-unit development, which has frontage on Bridge and Duffield streets.

First, we need to explain something about this “tallest building” thing. As far as we can tell, AVA DoBro actually shares the honor of being Brooklyn’s Tallest with neighboring 388 Bridge St.

The Bridge Street building, a glamorous combination rental apartment-condo tower built by the Stahl Organization, has been the borough’s tallest building since early 2014.

According to city Buildings Department records, 388 Bridge St. is 575 feet tall.

The AvalonBay spokesperson told us — and other publications have reported — that AVA DoBro is 575 feet tall.   

Sounds like a win-win situation — the sought-after superlative can be used to describe both of these beautiful buildings.

A few years ago, when the two towers were in the planning stages, 100 Willoughby St. was expected to wind up being six feet taller than 388 Bridge St. — and 388 Bridge St.’s reign as Brooklyn’s Tallest was going to be short. Now, it seems the two buildings can share the distinction.

For the longest time, another Downtown Brooklyn Belle of the Real Estate Ball held the Tallest title: The landmarked 512-foot Williamsburgh Savings Bank building at 1 Hanson Place, with its famed four-faced clock tower. Then, for a couple years before 388 Bridge St. was built, another Downtown Brooklyn tower was the Tallest — the Brooklyner, a 514-foot rental-apartment building at 111 Lawrence St.

Three-bedroom apartments for $6,000-plus per month

Apartment leasing began in May at AVA DoBro, which is clad with blue panels. The name, of course, is short for Avalon Downtown Brooklyn.

The tower is a distinctive addition to the Downtown Brooklyn skyline, whether viewed from the crosswalk at Adams and Joralemon streets, the windows of Court Street office buildings or the F and G platform at the Smith-9th Streets Station in Gowanus.

We wanted to find out how many applications per week AvalonBay has been getting from prospective tenants and how many of the apartments that have been put onto the market have been rented.

But AvalonBay’s top executive in New York City “feels that he is not in a position to respond” to these and other questions at this time, the company spokesperson said.

Nevertheless, we do have some info about asking rents at AVA DoBro, which we gleaned from its web pages.

When we checked the listings the other day, all the available apartments were located on the building’s third through 14th floors.

* There were studios that will be available on Sept. 1 with asking rents from $2,695 to $3,070 per month — and others with fall occupancy dates in roughly the same price range.

* One-bedroom apartments available on Sept. 1 were priced at $2,770 to $4,085 per month, and others that will be available in the fall were around that price range.

* There were a few two-bedroom units available on Sept. 1. Their asking rents were $3,795 to $4,400 per month. Two-bedroom apartments with fall occupancy dates had asking rents as high as $4,660.

* Just a few three-bedroom apartments were available for fall occupancy — Sept. 18 was the earliest date — with asking rents of $6,220 to $6,415 per month.


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