Horror Show Friday
From Bed Stuy (left) to PLG (middle) to Bushwick (right), the building boom’s bottom-of-the-barrel are looking like particularly tough sells now. Who’s going to buy one of these places now? Hard to imagine. $549000 2 fm, Short Sale [Craigslist] $729000 / 7br Parkside Ave [Craigslist] $729000 / 8br PRIME Bushwick [Craigslist]
From Bed Stuy (left) to PLG (middle) to Bushwick (right), the building boom’s bottom-of-the-barrel are looking like particularly tough sells now. Who’s going to buy one of these places now? Hard to imagine.
$549000 2 fm, Short Sale [Craigslist]
$729000 / 7br Parkside Ave [Craigslist]
$729000 / 8br PRIME Bushwick [Craigslist]
“Unfortunately, this is what happened across all of Brooklyn during the building boom we recently had. No neighborhood was safe from this kind of unsightly architecture.”
BRG, I don’t think that’s entirely true. There are some landmarked areas that managed to avoid having anything like this built within them.
“I hope what comes out of all this is for developers / architects / planners / designers / builders / contractors to realize that people aren’t going to settle for this kind of architecture; and that there is a more concentrated effort in pre-planning aesthetically viable structures that create a positive visual impact on a neighborhood.
Posted by: bayridgegirl at November 7, 2008 11:25 AM
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Now that is a quote worthy of QOTD.
“The middle one is the least offensive.”
Yeah, perhaps they should have put large trees (thick evergreens, preferably) in front of the other two to improve (i.e., hide) them.
The add for the Parkside house says that it’s near the park [true–Prospect Park] and a golf course {huh??].
It then says that the house is near “DELAWARE Park and Golf Course”. A Google search shows that to be in Buffalo, NY. Well, Buffalo and Brooklyn do both start with “B”. The salesman’s knowledge of Brooklyn is truly awe-inspiring 🙂
Unfortunately, this is what happened across all of Brooklyn during the building boom we recently had. No neighborhood was safe from this kind of unsightly architecture. It is low cost assembly using inexpensive materials and in most cases shoddy workmanship. Developers went through a ‘Build it cheap, Build it fast’ phase and the outcome are these buildings / homes that are unsightly blemishes.
I hope what comes out of all this is for developers / architects / planners / designers / builders / contractors to realize that people aren’t going to settle for this kind of architecture; and that there is a more concentrated effort in pre-planning aesthetically viable structures that create a positive visual impact on a neighborhood.
PS…But they aren’t and they wouldn’t be in those areas. And if they were the prices would be higher. Doesn’t mean they’d get higher prices elsewhere or these prices in these neighborhoods.
I’d love to see what a thorough inspection of any of this shit would unearth as far as building quality.
agreeing with fsrq:
“The reason they will or wont sell has little to do with their aesthetics and much more to do with their price and location.”
If these were in Clinton Hill, Red Hook or Gowanus at that price you’d all be coming in your pants.
There’s plenty not to like about the design of these buildings but it’s funny how it’s always the ground floor that really kills these cheap new construction buildings dead. What happens with the ground floor, does the architect’s small shred of talent completely drain away by the time he gets to planning that level? There’s never a bit of green, the electric meter is the main focal point. On the PLG place at least the windows are large, and there was some attempt to do something varying the brick. It baffles me completely when somebody goes through builds a new building and actually chooses to install windows that are tiny. Like on the Bed Stuy and Bushwick buildings.
As for the all-new-things-are-bad rant that typically comes up, some of us can hate all new buildings of any kind, but face it, owning a 100 year old house with the huge amount of maintenance it comes with is really not for everybody. Also there’s simply not enough old houses for every single person who wants to live in NYC. It’s impossible to avoid ever building anything new. Developers are just doing a terrible job in Brooklyn, that’s all. You can go to so many other cities in the U.S. and see way way way better, more interesting and cool architecture in new construction condos in their urban areas. There are some real tacky no-taste people building condos here.
Simple problem, simple solution. First, get off that crack that makes you think “three-quarters of a million dollars” is a reasonable price range for these properties. Let the drug wash out of your system completely. Then price them all fairly for ugly, badly built houses in marginal areas–say, $250,000, which is still pretty high, frankly, and beyond the reach of many families without overextending themselves–and they will sell to some nice deserving hard-working people who want to own their own homes but aren’t particularly concerned about esthetics. That’s how it worked when we bought our house in 1986: Priced out of Park Slope, we bought something crappy (old-crappy in our case, not new-crappy) in a then-dangerous neighborhood for a pittance. It wasn’t a pittance to us, but it was a (leaking) roof over our heads and a foot in the door. Sounds like the bleedin’ Waltons now, don’t it, mate?