Buying and Selling in the Shadow of the Yards
Facing a decade of construction outside their front door, nine residents of the Newswalk building on Pacific Street in Prospect Heights have cut and run in the past year. Ratner is literally going to build right outside what was my window, Jacob Septimus (who sold his three-bedroom for 2 1/2 times what he’d paid) says….
Facing a decade of construction outside their front door, nine residents of the Newswalk building on Pacific Street in Prospect Heights have cut and run in the past year. Ratner is literally going to build right outside what was my window, Jacob Septimus (who sold his three-bedroom for 2 1/2 times what he’d paid) says. He is basically going to block the light of all of our sunsets. We didn’t want to live with that. We didn’t want to live with that construction.
How bad could it really be? Matthew Schuerman paints a pretty ugly picture in this week’s Observer:
As the arena, the train yard and five other commercial and residential buildings get underway late next year, as many as 470 trucks will make deliveries each day during the peak period, in winter 2009, according to the final environmental-impact statement issued in November. An average of once or twice a week, workers would be on the job until 11 p.m. For 10 months, one of the lanes of Atlantic Avenue would shut down. Side streets would close for longer periods, some of them forever. The levels of fine particulate matter—soot and dust—would exceed the threshold level that the Environmental Protection Agency considers dangerous to human health along two different stretches around the construction site (including down the street from Newswalk) for year-long periods.
Not everyone’s afraid of a little dust and noise, though. Halstead reports having recently sold four family-sized apartments on Pacific Street for around $800 a foot.
Earplugs, Anyone? Selling in Atlantic Yards’ Shadow [NY Observer]
Photo by f.trainer.
actually, anon at 10:21 mentioned the new mall over at flatbush junction, and I know exactly where that is, thank you very much, but was curious about a new barnes and noble over there. you dont have to be so judgmental, I am just curious about a closer place to buy books. geez.
Nobody said mall at Flatbush Extension –
they said Flatbush Junction but never mind ’cause most of downtown Brooklyn folks don’t know where that is.
If you read most real estate ads for props in the area – they trumpet AY as a positive. Any significant change to an area will certainly casue some people to sell and leave because they don’t want the change.
Other large-scale bldg. developments have taken or currently taking place in this city and I don’t think it sends too many fleeing nor is there such environmental consequences. Such as WTC, BPC, that Trump thing along west side in , etc, etc etc.
The drama by some of you is amazing.
i don’ tthink Newswalk residents are looking for your sympathy, ED. do you have sympathy for those damn wheezing 11 year old whiners? or have they had years to plan and relocate so screw ’em?
What new mall at flatbush extension? Where will it be, and what stores will be there? I hadnt heard about that.
D-U-M-B-D-E-A-L!!!
I don’t feel bad for Newswalk residents. They’ve literally had a couple of years to plan and relocate. At some point, you lose sympathy for the whiners. There are scads of new condo lofts with sunsets for days. Life could be a lot worse.
Anon 10:15 So True – the article could be just as easily be written like this:
Buyers in Atlantic Yards shadow apparetly discounting the horrendous predictions of opponents
Despite predictions by AY opponents that Bruce Ratner’s proposed AY development will make the area surrounding the railyards an enviromental, traffic and noise disaster, many people are not deterred. It is unclear if potential buyers are ignoring the predictions of AY opponents and even the draft EIS or simply feel that the predictions are wrong. But there is little question that the area surrounding AY remains desirable to affluent buyers.
Take Newswalk a 139 unit condo development which will be smack in the middle of the construction and evenual development. Within the last year only 9 units have been sold and those that have have sold have found willing buyers at the once unthinkable price of $650 a sq ft.
Such experiences are not unique to Newswalk, according to Nalani Clark, the co-principal broker and co-owner of the brokerage Brooklyn Properties, who said her agency just set the neighborhood’s record for a brownstone sale about two and a half blocks away. William Ross, the executive director of sales for Halstead Brooklyn, said that his brokerage just sold four large apartments on Pacific Street for about $800 a square foot right across the street from a couple of commercial buildings that Mr. Ratner has planned.
Meanwhile, on the north side of Atlantic Yards, the Dermot Company is also finding success with its conversion of the Williamsburgh Savings Bank Building, the tallest building in Brooklyn, at 512 feet. The Dermot Company has put about 35 percent of its 189 condominiums under contract since opening its sales office last July—right when the draft environmental-impact statement came out with images of a row of steel-and-glass buildings that would rise just 600 feet away from the former bank’s 78-year-old terrazzo lobby.
I agree that it will be horrific. Once the AY is finished, I have to worry about getting blown to smithereens by a terrorist while my toilet backs up. As my body flies through the roof, I will sail through the bitter winter air and past the long shadows cast by Gehry’s grotesque skyscrapers. But my body will be warmed by the reflected sunlight (estimated temperature 136 degrees) and my fall cushioned by a flatbed truck piled with mattresses entangled in a traffic jam stretching all the way to Ozone Park. As I pick myself up, I will be attacked by loud, drunken frat boys leaving a Nets game. Hours later, as I climb the steps to my rapidly depreciating home, I will slip in a puddle of puke left behind by an errant Nets fan and crack my head open. But help will never arrive, for the ambulance will be stuck in traffic. And thus I shall die of massive brain trauma, the hapless victim of the biggest boondoggle in the NYC history.
Yawn.. yes we all know that it will be awful. My guess it it will be more awful than anyone can even imagine after it is finished.