$11 Million in The Burg? Gimme a Break!
Curbed started little hubbub yesterday when it posted the rendering of a hypothetical hotel to be built on this site on North 9th Street in Williamsburg. The picture was the pipe dream of a creative broker at Elliman trying to justify the astronomical asking price of eleven-friggin-million dollars for this one-story commercial structure between Wythe…
Curbed started little hubbub yesterday when it posted the rendering of a hypothetical hotel to be built on this site on North 9th Street in Williamsburg. The picture was the pipe dream of a creative broker at Elliman trying to justify the astronomical asking price of eleven-friggin-million dollars for this one-story commercial structure between Wythe and Barry (Sic). The listing doesn’t even provide lot size or buildable square feet. Come on, Mukesh, you can do better than that if you’re asking eight figures.
93 North 9th Street [Elliman]
Not So Fast! [Curbed]
Daring to Dream of a Billyburg Hotel [Curbed]
i second that thought.
Why are all the comments on here so antagonistic? it’s getting very old. it seems this would be better as a place to exchange ideas, not call each other names.
and discounted water views? give me a break!
so what’s the catch in williamsburg today? because it certainly has changed since it was the affordable neighborhood that made possible all the “arty” establishments and vibe that people seem to gush on about. considering the financial resources required to live there at this point and the look of most of the buildings, why should it be spared from greedy brokers/agents/architects/developers? isn’t this new york city?
Let’s not forget: this is Brownstoner.com. Not Co-op.com, not Apartment-Complex.com, not Williamsburg-Commercial-Development.com, not Save-the-WaterFront.com !
On a serious note: are there actually any brownstones in Williamsburg ? There must be ! — what areas of w-burg are brownstone blocks ?
Are these the views you call the water premium?
http://www.corcoran.com/images/media/UnitPhotos/326952.16.jpg
http://www.corcoran.com/images/media/UnitPhotos/326952.14.jpg
I have similiar water views from the top 2 floors of my brownstone in FG(and better lower manhattan skyline views). Does that mean i’m getting the “water premium” also.
Maybe it is time to start consistently talking about Stuy Heights as a separate and distinct neighborhood. I personally feel that it is frustrating to hear these blanket statements about B-S that simply don’t resonate as true – and that is partly because we are trying to discuss this huge swath of land that happens to have one name. Look at the map below on the NYC Dept of Planning website…B-S is bigger than the section that includes Brooklyn Heights, DUMBO, Boerum HIll, Navy Yard, Ft Greene, CH, and more. Yes, many of those neighborhoods are stunning, but can you imagine walking that entire area and seeing consistency block-to-block? I think we need new vocab to talk about this area.
http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/html/neighbor/neighl.html
Appreciate your comments – I think your points are valid, regardless of whether I agree and I certainly respect you more for laying them out there.
In the end, I think it comes down to this… living close to the water, in many cases with views, is something that people pay substantially more for then they do living in a landmark status community. (See the recent $8-12MM on the market in Bklyn Heights’ Columbia Heights where those houses went for a 30-40% premium over their inland, leafy-streeted counterparts.)
Ultimately, I believe you discount the value of the water view and that explains your view of Willyb/Broadway. Believe me $800-900/sq. ft on the Schaffer Landing, to me, is completely absurd (any water premium should be discounted due to the 20 blocks walk to the train and surrounding hideousness, not to mention a lousy looking set of buildings when all is complete). However, look at any part of NYC to compare same neighborhood housing with and without waterviews.
Lastly, Bed Stuy non-landmark, choppiness from street to street is not dissimilar to the BQE/Projects that surround Clinton Hill; I’d argue that the Bed Stuy streets will improve over time, the BQE and the projects aren’t going anywhere.
Keep up the good work.
Time to set a couple things straight, my Anonymous friends.
One, we don’t hate Williamsburg at all. We’ve been living here for the last year and a half. We appreciate the unique combination of desolate urban grittiness and small-town feel that it has had up until now–and fear for its survival. What we do hate are the flimsy, ugly buildings that are being slapped up with no regard for aesthetics or long term impact on the neighborhood. We also don’t think that $800-900 a foot on Broadway is worth it when beaitiful brownstones a mile or two South sell for half that. But that’s just our opinion.
Two, obviously we are postively disposed towards Clinton Hill (we wouldn’t have bought there if not and it’s not like we try to hide that conflict of interest) and because of our own stake in the neighborhood are probably more likely–at least on a subconcious level–to be attracted to stories, listings, etc, that relate to it. That said, we think there is a defensible case to be made why Bed Stuy will never match up to Clinton Hill (and this is in the context of admiring much of the Bed Stuy architecture).
Because Bed Stuy has not been (with the exception of Stuy Heights) protected by landmark status, there are pockets (and in some cases large swaths) of blighted turf and ugly, recently and cheaply built houses, that are going to make it impossible for adjacent properties to ever capture the feel of walking down an intact, leafy block in Fort Greene or Clinton Hill. That is not to say that there aren’t incredibly gorgeous blocks of BS that rival anything anywhere in all of New York City. But we fear that the inconsistency block-to-block is a real long-term impediment to the neighborhood holding value as a whole. In that context, yes, we think some of the prices you are seeing in Bed Stuy are getting ahead of themselves, but that is not a blanket indictment of the neighborhood as a whole by any menas.
Re: Developers Group et al, with the exception of some of the aforementioned Williamsburg eyesores that happen to be in our face whenever we leave our current residence, we generally have not focused too much on the condo market in general. If that’s a direction readers would like to see us go in, we’re willing to listen. But, given our limited time and resources, we wouldn’t want that effort to come at the expense of our core mission.