It’s fine to flash the neighbors — just don’t have the indecency to smoke.
The condo board for one of Brooklyn’s most prestigious addresses has banned smoking throughout the glass-walled building — including in residents’ private apartments.
Condo owners at tony 1 Grand Army Plaza — a k a 1 Prospect Park, where residents are famous for parading around in the buff, giving parkgoers an eyeful through their floor-to-ceiling windows — will now face fines if they dare to light up in their multimillion-dollar pads.
The only area where residents can puff away is on their private terraces, which boast sweeping views of Prospect Park.
More than two-thirds of residents in the Prospect Heights building designed by famed architect Richard Meier voted to allow the ban, which is believed to be among the first in Brooklyn.
Many said they were galvanized by Mayor Bloomberg’s crusade to make the Big Apple smoke-free. Bloomberg has proposed a law to require residential buildings to adopt smoking policies and disclose them to prospective buyers and tenants.
“Bloomberg inspired people to say, ‘It’s possible to ban smoking at home,’ ” said Steve Sladkus, the lawyer for the condo’s board.
Sladkus said smoke can creep from one apartment into another through electric sockets and shoddy vents.
“Instead of spending millions to reconfigure ventilation systems, condo boards are finding it more cost-effective to just eliminate smoking,” he said.
A few condos in Manhattan have voted on similar bans, such as the Upper West Side’s Ariel West at Broadway and 99th Street. Smokers there face fines of $150 for the first smoking offense, increasing $150 each time after.
The building’s fines have yet to be determined.
Its condo-board president, Dennis Sughrue, said the discussion about whether to make the building smoke-free first arose over the summer.
“I had pregnant mothers e-mailing me to complain about evidence of secondhand smoke in the lobby, common areas and even seeping into in their own apartments,” Sughrue said.
“But some people were quite vocal in their opposition” to a ban, Sughrue said. “They called it an Orwellian attempt” to control people.
Resident Glenda Garrick said she voted for the ban, but can understand why smokers might be angry.
“I don’t smoke — but I can certainly understand how someone who bought an apartment three years ago could feel like it’s an unfair restriction that they didn’t know about when they purchased the apartment,” she said.