John Catsimatidis, president and CEO of Red Apple Group Inc. — the company behind the 1,000-unit mixed-use development on Myrtle Avenue in Downtown Brooklyn and the Gristede’s supermarket chain — told
The Real Deal his first priority if elected mayor would be to create more middle class housing. “I don’t want to lose the middle class to Connecticut or New Jersey,” he said, adding that he would create this housing “through transit-oriented development. We have trillions of dollars in infrastructure near trains. We should upzone near them, and provide special credits.” That doesn’t sound too much different from what City Planning is already doing, except the agency missed an opportunity to include affordable housing requirements in the recent Park Slope and Williamsburg rezonings.
Catsimatidis also said his biggest concern “is that the real estate market stays up and the banks don’t get scared and stop giving loans to investors or lenders. An executive at a major bank said to me recently, ‘our construction loan department is fully open,’ but he confided that ‘we haven’t made a commitment in three months.’” He said his company plans to build 5,000 units of housing over the next 10 years, including in Coney Island.
Mixing townhouses along side street corridors with an attached tower has become an increasingly popular tool for developers to get approval for projects where a height limit is in place, and ground-floor retail is not an option, according to
The Real Deal.
Owners pay a premium to live in these homes, where they get the privacy of living in townhouses along with amenities usually only available to apartment owners, like access to the parking garage and fitness center.
“You have the best of both worlds. You can have the privacy and the sense of community if you want,” said David Von Spreckelsen, vice president of Toll Brothers, which is developing Northside Piers in Williamsburg. That project added townhouses, starting at $1.86 million, to its tower to satisfy height restrictions along the park leading to the waterfront, according to The Real Deal. North8, another Toll Brothers project, has townhouses starting at $1.18 million, each with backyards. Not one of the Northside townhouses have sold since pre-sales started a year ago. Though Von Spreckelsen said sales were going as expected, he did admit to the Real Deal that most Williamsburg buyers are looking for studios and one-bedrooms.
Perhaps they’ll sell better in a more family-oriented neighborhood like Carroll Gardens, or at least that’s what The Clarett Group is hoping with its project planned at the former International Longshoreman’s Association Building at 340 Court St. Rather than building a narrow 17-story tower, which would have undoubtedly been confronted with stiff opposition from locals, the developer opted to build a seven-story building with roughly 10 townhouses along the side streets, the Eagle reported. “We just thought it was much more appropriate for this neighborhood, and we thought it would be better received by our neighbors and our customers,” said Clarett Senior Managing Director Daniel Hollander.
The National Guard Bureau wrote in to clarify the
Eagle’s recent summary of the draft report on the Admiral’s Row homes at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, which was previewed at a public meeting on the matter last week. According to the draft report, the homes would cost $19.6 million to renovate; eight of the 10 homes are salvageable; and the homes together are significant as a historic district, which could mean they all have to be preserved.
Kristin Leahy of the National Guard offered this clarification, “The buildings along Admiral’s Row are both eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places individually and as a historic district. Because of this, the process stipulated within the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) will require the National Guard Bureau to consider the effects to the individual buildings and the district as a whole that will result from the proposed property transfer.
“Any outcome to the buildings both individually and as a district, however, will be determined during the NHPA process. The NHPA process does not mandate preservation of any number of buildings because they are deemed eligible for listing on the National Register. Rather, the law requires the Federal agency involved to consider the effects of their actions and evaluate viable alternatives.”
— Compiled by Sarah Ryley
© Brooklyn Daily Eagle 2007
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Just a reminder, though -- It’s not considered polite to paste the entire story on your blog. Most blogs post a summary or the first paragraph,( 40 words) then post a link to the rest of the story. That helps increase click-throughs for everyone, and minimizes copyright issues.
So please keep posting, but not the entire article. arturc at att.net
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