What Will Become of the Remsen Wallflower?
Despite its prime location, 186 Remsen Street in Brooklyn Heights has been available for lease since its last tenant, an adoption agency, moved out more than five years ago. Locals say it’s because “the building is a wreck” and is priced too high. Robert Oliver of the Joseph P. Day Realty Corporation said owner Larry…
Despite its prime location, 186 Remsen Street in Brooklyn Heights has been available for lease since its last tenant, an adoption agency, moved out more than five years ago. Locals say it’s because “the building is a wreck” and is priced too high. Robert Oliver of the Joseph P. Day Realty Corporation said owner Larry Wohl is looking to lease the 35,000-square-foot, late-19th-Century building to a single tenant for $1 million annually. At $28 per square foot, that would place the building in the Class B market if it were well-maintained, but people who have been inside called it “raw space” and “garbage-looking.” One real estate insider said 35,000 square feet is “stretching it,” and that “the economics for renting it as office is very bad.” Indeed, Property Shark said the building is 25,000 square feet.
The insider said neighboring St. Francis College unsuccessfully offered to buy the building. And another Heights resident thinks the building would be an ideal annex for P.S. 8, which recently cut its Pre-K program and is still overflowing with students. New condo development nearby such as One Brooklyn Bridge Park would only increase demand on the school, the worst-case scenario being trailers in the playground, said the resident. But the insider doubted bringing the building up to the strict elementary school code standards would be economically feasible at Day’s price.
The Franklin Building [An Architectural Guidebook to Brooklyn]
186 Remsen Street [Joseph P. Day] GMAP
11:20, plenty of parents are talking about trailers/portable classrooms, but it could just be conjecture. It’s interesting it was mentioned in the article when I’ve heard exactly the same thing. If you have insight and know it isn’t happening, I’m pleased by that news. (Thanks for your work on the PTA, by the way. They do a great job).
I’m on the PTO at ps8 and nobody is talking about trailers/portable classrooms.
“another Heights resident?” Is that code for Brooklyn Heights Association executive director Judy Stanton, who does indeed live in the heights, speaking for veiled attribution?
11:04, at least the younger grades at PS8 seem at full capacity, no? The three kindergarten classes each have the maximum 25 studens. And they’re likely doing away with pre-K next year due to the increasingly packed classes in all grades. In any event, the middle school issue is by far the most crucial for the area so I’m hoping, if funding is going to come, it comes soon.
your “resident” is sadly ill-informed. PS8 has doubled in size in recent years, but it’s still not even at capacity. And many public schools go WAY over capacity. The city would never go for it.
I know that PS8 is looking for an annex (I’m very familiar on this one) and we looked at the old police bldg. But honestly, the next school issue that will be funded in the area is a middle school
grim, grim, grim.
a piece of old Brooklyn (circa 1980)
yuk!
Middle school in the area, in addition to more room for PS8 itself, is desperately needed. PS8 is becoming a victim of its own extraordinary success as it’s now bursting at the seams with talk of having to use portable classrooms. This place be such an incredible alternative, but don’t know how they would get the funding to do that.
The front entrance was recently covered with black plywood, because of the tenacious homeless people who have been using the vestibule as a sleeping area.
I also saw an outreach group talking to one of the said homeless persons yesterday on my way home from work.
That’s what happened to PS 8 over the course of just 4-5 years. Went from half-empty to overflowing.