Prospect Heights Vulnerable to Developers?
The post we did earlier today about the Park Place teardown got us thinking about how vulnerable this area of Prospect Heights is. It has some incredibly beautiful blocks of townhouses that have two attributes that could make them targets: They tend to be a little smaller than the brownstones of Park Slope and Fort…
The post we did earlier today about the Park Place teardown got us thinking about how vulnerable this area of Prospect Heights is. It has some incredibly beautiful blocks of townhouses that have two attributes that could make them targets: They tend to be a little smaller than the brownstones of Park Slope and Fort Greene and they tend to be on extra-deep (usually 130-foot) lots. And, or course, they’re not landmarked. The result is that many of these old buildings have unutilized FAR and no landmark restrictions to hinder a small developer who wants to squeeze out every last drop without concern for the aesthtic impact on the community. 273 Prospect Place is a case in point. It’s 16.5 feet by 40 feet but sits on a 131-foot-deep lot, so there’s 1,390 square feet of extra FAR kicking around. The deal just got a little more interesting, too, with a price cut from $1,650,000 to $1,575,000. Still a little pricey for the house that it is in this market but we fear that a developer could find a way to make the numbers work.
273 Prospect Place [Douglas Elliman] GMAP P*Shark
the majority of houses over there are pretty ugly? are we talking about the same neighborhood? i mean, i guess if by “ugly” you mean “charming old townhouses with loads of period details on quiet tree-lined streets” then yes, i totally agree, the neighborhood is beyond ugly.
“Vulnerable to developers” ?
My God, next thing you know, we will be vulnerable to capitalist profiteers!
The vast majority of houses over there are pretty ugly and hopefully we will see some developers build something nicer.
Sheesh…you guys are a tough crowd.
Its a cute house and nicely redone – lets give brownstowner a break, shall we?
is this really worthy of a House of the Day? Sure the price was cut a little but this is the third time this property has been on your site, once a month for the last three months.
This house was way overpriced to start and with the cut it is still overpriced. There are other properties that are much nicer, wider, more detail, etc. in the immediate area that are cheaper.
FAR is really a worthless number in terms of what you can build, its a starting point at best. you have minimum set backs, height factor, sky plane, yard requirements, open space ratio. It aint brain surgery but to really know what you can or cant build, you have to use all of this information together so hire an architect or a code consultant
Or put another way, it is the ratio of allowable building square footage to lot square footage.
Floor area ratio. If a lot is 20×100 and the FAR is 2, the allowable square footage for the property, other restrictions aside, would be 4,000 (2 x 20 x 100).
Could someone put me out of my misery and tell me what FAR stands for? Googling for it is hopeless since it happens to be a common word…
The calculation of potentially available FAR is more complicated than simple multiplication, so Brownstoner may be overestimating the development potential of this and other sites. When we purchased our brownstone, we thought we had a certain amount of FAR for a dream extension, but a building code consultant determined that we actually had much less FAR to work with.