Inside Third & Bond: Week 6

Now we’re getting into the juicy stuff! After hearing last week about the potential impact of the project on neighbors, this week David Kramer and Alison Novak from The Hudson Companies discuss the design process and, at the end, ask for your input on several matters.

We know many of you are eager to see floor plans. Above is the street-level duplex of the typical townhouse at Third & Bond. This version is probably the 20th or so iteration. Between this one and the initial version, shown below, we made some big decisions.

The idea to do the duplex came from the townhouse typology and the desire to make marketable use of the cellar space. While many duplexes in Brooklyn use stoops to create two floors of habitable space, for handicap access purposes in a multi-unit building, our ground floor unit needs to be located at the sidewalk grade (no stoops). We decided that if we add an internal set of stairs to the ground floor apartment, we could still create a duplex unit with a lower level. But many duplexes, where the upper level is at sidewalk grade, don’t have great lower levels; they’re glorified basements. We realized that if we excavate the rear yard to a lower grade so that the lower level has light and air, we could make the lower level much more marketable.
More floorplans and discussion on the jump…

This floor plan:

shows our initial take on the duplex. The width of the townhouse is 20 feet. (Remember, when we bought the land, we had in mind that we would build 9 townhouses, each 20′ wide, on 180′ of Third Street frontage.) There are 3 bedrooms on the upper floor and living/dining room on the lower level. We didn’t like it. We decided that it made more sense to have the living room/dining room/kitchen on the upper floor. When you’re arriving home with groceries, it seemed a pain to go down a set of stairs to reach the kitchen. And we didn’t like the 20′ width. This plan shows 2 bedrooms, each 9’5. We wanted to have a larger master bedroom that was at least 11′ wide and a second bedroom that would be 9′. So we adjusted the floor plans to 21′ townhouses, which we knew would end up changing the configuration of the last townhouse on the corner. At this point, the floor plan looked something like this:

We liked this better: two bedrooms of different widths, the master bedroom has an ensuite bathroom, and the unit is shaping up to be a sizeable apartment: 3 bedrooms + home office, 3 baths, and great entertaining space. Plus, the home office can really be used as a 4th bedroom since a window could go in the 10 foot areaway (where it says Open to Below).

Until we changed our mind. While the areaway does provide light to the home office, our colleague Bill pointed out that areaways tend to look lousy over time and become depositories for litter and cigarette butts. Not to mention the areaway detail is not inexpensive to build, and the light quality from a 10′ areaway is not so fantastic. Given that we already had 3 bedrooms, we decided the apartment was sufficiently compelling without bringing light to the home office.

And so we arrived at the floor plan at the top: 3 bedrooms, home office, 3 baths, in 1,950 square feet. As you’ll see comparing plans, we added a lot of storage and closet space, like in the master bedroom. Some of the other things we debated and debated:

• Should the upper level bathroom be a 2 fixture bath, or 3 fixture bath, and if 3, should it be a shower or bathtub? Our resolution: 3 fixture, bathtub.
• How wide and deep should the deck be off the upper level?. Our resolution: as wide as the townhouse, 5′ deep.
• Should the shower be in the master bath or the second bath? Our resolution: second bath is shower-only and master bath is bathtub with shower.

And on and on and on. We find we’re always tweaking floor plans up until the time they’re actually built. But we’re getting there.

We’d love to hear what you think and have posed a few questions for online polling.

Inside Third & Bond: Week 5 [Brownstoner]
Inside Third & Bond: Week 4 [Brownstoner]
Inside Third & Bond: Week 3 [Brownstoner]
Inside Third & Bond: Week 2 [Brownstoner]
Inside Third & Bond: Week 1 [Brownstoner]

From our lawyers: This is not an offering. No offering can be made until an offering plan is filed with the Department of Law of the State of New York.”