The owner of the penthouse in the last building standing in the way of the planned Nets arena in Brooklyn accepted $1.88 million to go away, but the occupant of a much less desirable apartment scored a real slam-dunk payday — a sky-high $3 million.
Daniel Goldstein’s deal for his seventh-floor apartment not only makes way for the controversial project, but it stunned his former upstairs neighbor — who sold her penthouse for $1.12 million less nearly six years ago.
“Wow,” Holly Tingley, 40, said yesterday when told of Goldstein’s windfall for his condo at 636 Pacific St. in Prospect Heights, where he and his family were the last people remaining. “He held on a long time.
“I had the penthouse apartment and he still did better,” said Tingley, a mom of two.
But Tingley isn’t jealous of Goldstein’s profit, which came after the activist agreed to collect his windfall from developer Bruce Ratner instead of taking his chances in a condemnation process.
“Good for him,” Tingley said of Goldstein, who in 2003 paid just $590,000 for the three-bedroom unit. “He did put up a fight, and it was a long time for him.”
Softening the blow to Tingley was the fact that she and husband Kevin themselves made a pretty penny. They sold their apartment to make way for the $4.9 billion Atlantic Yards project, which will include the new sports arena and 16 residential and retail towers.
The Tingleys paid $789,144 for the penthouse apartment in July 2003 — and sold it for $1.88 million 17 months later.
The Tingleys’ deal worked out to $1,097 per square foot — significantly higher than the approximately $850 per square foot that most of the 29 other condo owners in the building got.
But that was still very much less than the $2,316 per square foot Goldstein is collecting.
“I don’t regret it at all, because sometimes I think you need to let go of things,” Tingley said.
Another former Goldstein neighbor, 37-year-old lawyer Erin Coffer, said, “I don’t begrudge him.
“The price seems high but it obviously doesn’t reflect the real property value. It represents something completely different — the negotiation for [Ratner] to finally get access to that building,” said Coffer.
Her third-floor condo, which she bought for $424,866 in June 2003, was sold for $1.05 million, $822 per square foot, in November 2004.
Ratner’s camp said Goldstein had been asking for $5 million before agreeing to $3 million. He denies asking for that much, but declined to say what he did want.