Inside Third & Bond: Week 82
This is a major moment milestone, a word without emotional weight, doesn’t even cover it in the project’s life. It’s Third + Bond’s bat mitzvah or Quinceaños. She’s getting taller and a little awkward looking but pretty soon she’ll stop growing and start looking… finished. This week we are topping off our first five buildings….
This is a major moment milestone, a word without emotional weight, doesn’t even cover it in the project’s life. It’s Third + Bond’s bat mitzvah or Quinceaños. She’s getting taller and a little awkward looking but pretty soon she’ll stop growing and start looking… finished.
This week we are topping off our first five buildings. If this project were a high rise, we’d tie an evergreen to the topmost beam and have t-shirts, a big lunch and maybe a couple of speeches to celebrate the occasion. A full-on topping off party seems, well, over the top for 4 stories plus mezzanine but the celebratory sentiment is no less.
Other moments toward which a developer looks for greater return than a mere business milestone are closing the deal, seeing the first rendering or model of the design, breaking ground, launching sales and marketing, getting C of O, closing the first unit, paying off the loan, and adjourning the first condo board meeting.
As developers, we have an appreciation for tangibility. A buyer isn’t an owner until the contract has closed. A design isn’t finished until the building is complete. We like bricks-and-mortar. If we didn’t, then we’d probably be in a different line of work. There are a lot of ways to make a living and be in real estate construction loans, end loans, bonds, law, marketing, policy, zoning and permitting, on and on. To be a successful developer, it helps to appreciate the built environment itself. And to be a successful urban developer, you have to be keen on neighborhoods and the transformations neighborhoods take over time. These are things that help you understand and anticipate trends, objections and opportunities. And just as importantly, these are things that keep you excited about your job.
Just looking at the vacant lots that framed the old industrial building that used to be the site and seeing the homes now rising above the construction fence gives us a good feeling. The fruits of our labor are becoming more apparent every day. Becoming more and more real.
Inside Third & Bond: Weeks 1-81 [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.”
Over a month later, I must respond to Benson:
Benson,
As I’m sure you’ve heard many a time, Robert Moses was a tyrant of power and greed who hated the poor and had more hubris than a 14th century Crusader. He destroyed neighborhoods and displaced thousands of people. He used blackmail and fear to keep legislatures at his side; Even Fiorello LaGuardia couldn’t touch Moses because of the dirt he had on the beloved mayor.
Had Jane Jacobs not began a grassroots campaign against Moses’ eminent domain assholery, there would be a 10-lane highway running across Manhattan where Broome St is. Yes, this high-rent, extremely successful section of SoHo with all of its amazing architecture and streets of character (and expensive boutiques) would have been destroyed.
So, um, root for Robert Moses if you want. It shows how ignorant you are about the nature of cities.
Incidentally, Alison and David, today my alarm was set for 7:30. But your power drills woke me up at 7:15. Thanks a whole lot. How much are you paying Brownstoner to spread your charlatan message of goodwill?
“I’m really well practiced at failing greatly tho’.”
So are all the rest of of us, bxgrl!
Alison;
You have made my day!!!
6years- I always loved that quote. I’m really well practiced at failing greatly tho’. Would love to get a little at triumphing greatly 🙂
Alison- that would be very cool.
Thanks for the positive feedback, guys!
Often when David and I are out and about, we meet people who tell us that they love to read the postings — but never comment. So we had a sense readers like that are out there — how many we don’t know. Some people have even asked us when the Third + Bond blog book is coming out!
We plan to offer some of our most avid readers a personal tour of the construction site this summer — look out for details in a future posting. (Benson — we’ll save you the Super’s hard hat to wear!)
Benson: that TR quote is worth reprinting in full. I share it with my students every year and they always like it:
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
Benson- i suspect many of us read the blog but don’t comment because, at least for me, I know too little to comment on construction and such. But I do read it on occasion and enjoy it. It’s interesting to learn about buildings from the inside out.
Ever since this started, I’ve enjoyed reading it. However, I now find myself feeling like I’m watching a movie with a hot blonde girl and her jock boyfriend make out nearby the abandoned lake on top of the desecrated Indian burial groud where that woman was murdered 10 years ago to the very day.
Eek!
David, Alison and all;
Congratulations. This post really resonated with me on several levels.
I am an engineer, simply because I like to see things built. My father was a contractor,so when I was young I wanted to be an engineer involved in building construction. When I was in college, somebody convinced me that the prospects were better in industrial design and development, and that is where I have been for the past almost-30 years.
While I have shared the same sense of pride when we launch a new product, it is not the same for me as seeing a building going up, especially in a city. I still feel excitement whenever I pass a construction site. I very much regret not having gone into the construction industry, but such is life! Also, as it turns out, the prospects in real estate development are decidedly better than manufacturing, even with the current downturn.
I also find it dis-spiriting that your blog does not generate more attention on this site. Almost daily on this site you can find armchair generals railing against “evil” and “greedy” developers, and wondering why utopian visions can’t be fulfilled. Here you have taken the time to show what it takes to actually realize something, and make a living out of it, and the comments are few. I fear that the anti-development forces in this town are growing. I am known on this site for wishing that we had another Robert Moses back in town, getting things done.
Anyway, best of luck to you, and always remember what one of our great presidents (Teddy Roosevelt) had to say about critics: “The credit goes to the man in the arena”.