BROOKLYN HEIGHTS, that enclave of impeccably restored brownstones lining narrow, leafy streets, has long been immune to the buzzy changes washing over communities beyond its borders. The local tone is set by entrenched institutions like the 102-year-old Brooklyn Heights Association and the even more august Brooklyn Heights Casino, whose tennis courts can be used as a ballroom and whose squash courts have spawned generations of talented young players.
At 20 Henry Street, an old candy factory has a modern annex.
The 1885 Peaks Mason Mints factory will have 38 condos starting at $450,000.
The 1885 Peaks Mason Mints factory will have 38 condos starting at $450,000.
But thanks in part to a more buoyant economy, changes are nibbling at
the neighborhood’s edges, particularly in the area residents call the
north Heights. Although most of Brooklyn Heights falls within a historic
district, the city’s first, half a dozen projects that will bring
pockets of luxury accommodations are moving through the pipeline.
Prospective residents are being drawn by good schools and easy access to
downtown Manhattan. Also in the works are new and refurbished hotel rooms, notably in the century-old Bossert Hotel, one of Brooklyn’s most storied buildings.
Four of the projects are on or just off Henry Street, the commercial
strip that has traditionally played second fiddle to Montague Street,
the neighborhood’s main drag. The first to open its doors will be 20 Henry Street, at Middagh Street, where Canyon-Johnson Urban Fund
is developing 38 luxury condominiums ranging from studios ($450,000
apiece) to four-bedrooms ($2.7 million) in the Peaks Mason Mints candy
factory.
The project actually consists of two structures. One is the 1885
factory, which retains its original red-brick facade, exposed
buttresses, oversized arched windows and chunky white “Peaks Mason
Mints” lettering. The other, on the former courtyard, is a new building
that will have floor-to-ceiling windows and garden penthouses.
“It’s more like a Dumbo project, except it’s in Brooklyn Heights,” said
Steven Rutter, the managing director of Stribling Marketing and
Associates, who is handling the sales. The apartments will be
relentlessly modern, with accents like teak vanities and free-standing
soaking tubs. But the main lobby will resonate with echoes of the past.
“You’ll be able to see some of the Southern white pine that was used
when they built the place,” Mr. Rutter said. “And it’s backlighted, so
you can see the original sap.” He keeps a chunk of the wood on his desk,
“because it makes a good paperweight.”
Among the residents who will start arriving later this year are Navin
Chawla, who lives in Dumbo with his wife, Allison, and their 8-month-old
daughter. “I used to stroll by the site and then started doing research
online,” said Mr. Chawla, who is preparing to enter medical school. “I
liked that it was near the subway and near P.S. 8. And I liked that the
building was modern but still had an old Brooklyn Heights feel.”
Echoes of the 19th century will also be felt next door at 30 Henry
Street, where construction has begun on a ruddy brick building, accented
with black wrought-iron Juliet balconies, that will contain five
floor-through condominiums. A feature being touted in this
parking-challenged neighborhood is a robotlike facility in the basement
known as an A.G.V. (automated guided vehicles) garage, which stores and
retrieves cars without human intervention. According to Harry Kendall, a
partner of BKSK Architects, the building’s designers, “cars will be
automatically whisked away, like a piece of dry cleaning.”
At 72 Poplar Street, a long-unused 100-year-old police station is being
converted to a condominium containing 14 family-size apartments, with
occupancy scheduled for 2014. David T. Ennis, the principal of the Daten Group,
the developer, sees the target audience as “urban hipsters starting
families” who seek a middle ground between the tradition-bound Heights
and cutting-edge Dumbo to the north.
Here, too, the goal is to marry new and old in graceful fashion. “The
block has the feeling of turn-of-the-last-century Brooklyn,” Mr. Ennis
said, noting especially the faux-gaslight street lamps. “We wanted to
respect that.”
A few blocks away at 70 Henry Street, long the home of the Brooklyn
Heights Cinema, plans are proceeding for a five-story building that will
contain 15 to 17 rental apartments, mostly one-bedrooms, and will
incorporate the movie theater in its ground and basement floors.
Construction could begin in the spring, according to the designer,
Randolph Gerner of Gerner Kronick and Valcarcel Architects.
As for the facade, “of course it will be brick,” Mr. Gerner said, in
this case reddish-brown brick, along with large steel casement windows
intended to impart a loftlike feel. “We want a building that’s
appropriate and respectful,” he added. “We really want to do the right
thing in this neighborhood, and that wouldn’t be a 50-story glass
tower.”
At Montague and Hicks Streets, work could begin by year’s end on the
planned conversion of the Bossert Hotel, which for decades stood at the
heart of the borough’s social life. A 14-story Renaissance Revival
building, it is becoming available because the Jehovah’s Witnesses, who
have owned and operated it since 1983, are selling many of their
Brooklyn holdings. The buyer is David Bistricer of Clipper Equity and
the Chetrit Group, which plans to transform the Bossert into a boutique
hotel with about 300 rooms.
The lobby, with its coffered ceiling and oversized columns topped by
elaborate capitals, will be restored to the way it looked when the hotel
opened, according to Gene Kaufman, the architect. “We inherited a
fantastic structure,” Mr. Kaufman said. “It’s a reminder of a time when
people made ornate buildings. We want to recall that grandeur.”
A very different sort of grandeur will be on display at 60 Furman Street in Brooklyn Bridge Park. Just south of the bridge, Toll Brothers City Living and the Starwood Capital Group
plan two mostly glass structures that will house 125 one- to
five-bedroom condominium apartments (price tag: $800,000 to $5 million)
and 200 hotel rooms. Amenities will include a screening room and, of
course, spectacular views. Construction is expected to begin in the
spring.
These new projects are arriving with predictable concerns from the
community. Will the transformation of the Bossert bring parking
problems? Will there be too much construction in the park? And perhaps
most important, will these projects alter the neighborhood’s character?
The answer to the last question, at least in some minds, is “not necessarily.”
“It’s true that Brooklyn Heights is very much of a community in which
people belong to the same institutions, like the casino and the Brooklyn
Heights Association,” said Robert Perris, the district manager of
Community Board 2. “On the other hand, these new projects don’t
necessarily destroy that. In a way, they simply expand the size of the
pie.”
