The Real Estate Scene Down Under
Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass, that is. The NY Post takes a look at Brooklyn’s priciest neighborhood today, “where the average price per square foot in the second quarter of 2008 was $917, according to the Real Estate Board of New York (REBNY). (Compare that to Brooklyn Heights at $834 and Park Slope at…

Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass, that is. The NY Post takes a look at Brooklyn’s priciest neighborhood today, “where the average price per square foot in the second quarter of 2008 was $917, according to the Real Estate Board of New York (REBNY). (Compare that to Brooklyn Heights at $834 and Park Slope at $801.)” They chronicle the real estate adventures of one forward-thinking resident who purchased a $260,000, 1,260-square-foot apartment in 1998, and sold it five years later for $895,000; he repeated a similar feat, and ended up affording a $1.2 million condo. All three of his units were in Two Trees buildings. A companion article chronicles what they paint as the benevolence of Two Trees, who offered free rent to businesses if they were the “right kind” of retail outlets for the nabe: book stores and furniture shops and arts centers. “Of course, the Walentases aren’t responsible for every thriving business in DUMBO,” they write. “But it’s hard to imagine that the eclectic Superfine, a restaurant open since 2001, would have existed without their influence.” They are not, however, responsible for the Starbucks.
Down Under [NY Post]
Don’t Pay Retail [NY Post]
Front Street from Above. Photo by DumboNYC.
sam, good one, but I think Biff Champion would be more like the preppy, obnoxious and annoying frat boy Harvard Law grad who’s courting the Mafia Don’s daughter and gets whacked in the first 2 minutes of the film.
Funny, Biff.
Biff doesn’t sound like a character from Goodfellas?
Isn’t there always one gay mobster?
Let’s just hope their self-interested benevolence will extend to them carrying through with their promise to build a state of the art, dynamic middle school that will serve all children within that zone.
And I agree with sam that the Wallentas seem to be cut of an entirely different cloth than the Scaranos of the world in terms of their positive influence within the neighborhoods they operate.
(I can’t help but notice the names of the posters above reads like the characters in Goodfellas…Fast Freddy, Fat Lenny, Rookie and sam).
David Wallentas invented, planned, and built DUMBO. End of story. He bought so many buildings that he had Beyer Blinder Belle do a master plan of the whole area, because he owned most of it. I never thought his scheme would be so wildly sucessful. He had no friends at City Hall. It is a remarkable story.
PS: If he owned the Empire Stores, they would be a spectacular waterfront attraction instead of the decrepit and crumbling pieces of s–t that they are today. Those State-owned hulks are the Achilees’ heel of the neighborhood. Old-fashioned urban blight brought to us by the State office of Parks Recreation and Historic Preservation -ironically enough.
Agreed, I think it’s amazing what the Walentases have done, it’s just not the same thing as an anonymous donation to Unicef, that’s all!
self-interested benevolence is the most durable kind.
personally, I think self-interested benevolence is the best kind. It means that you are actually invested in the future.
benevolence, maybe, but obviously SELF-INTERESTED benevolence.