Furnished patio (above).
TO WHOM BELLTEL TOLLS: Janice Behrens, with her daughters Julliette and Charlotte, bought a 2-BR at MetroTech’s Belltel. (
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Behrens apartment (
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When she gets up early enough, Gwen Wilson can take in nearly all of Brooklyn from her 489-square-foot studio on the 32nd floor of the Brooklyner rental building.
“I have the Brooklyn view,” Wilson says. “The sun rises on this side — it’s so beautiful at around 6:30.”
That view is pretty good. But, then, the Manhattan skyline on the other side of the building isn’t bad, either. And perhaps being at this nexus — with Brooklyn on one side, Manhattan on the other — might explain why this particular part of Downtown Brooklyn is experiencing an interesting real estate boomlet.
East of Downtown Brooklyn’s legal apparatus (Court Street) and north of its best place to procure a reasonably priced pair of sneakers (Fulton Mall) is Wilson’s micro-neighborhood, the MetroTech area.
MetroTech is neither fish nor fowl as a neighborhood. There are some tidy, well-maintained office buildings rubbing up against crummy ones. It’s a land of driving schools and fast-food chains. Finding a grocery store or a dry cleaner requires effort.
“We’re kind of a 10-minute walk to everything — in the middle of nowhere,” says Janice Behrens, who moved into a 1,300-square-foot two-bedroom at Belltel Lofts in September with her husband, Antoine, and her daughters, Charlotte, 5, and Juliette, 17 months.
Despite the somewhat undesirable location, MetroTech is a force to be reckoned with real estate-wise — and about to become more so.
Belltel (an Art Deco 1920s former telephone-company building) on Bridge Street was the first big shot in the arm to the neighborhood when it was converted to condos in 2007. It is now 70 percent sold, according to Michael Ettelson of Prudential Douglas Elliman. (According to Streeteasy, units sold for a reasonable $585 per square foot.) Then in late 2009, the Brooklyner — currently the tallest building in Brooklyn, at 51 stories — opened on nearby Lawrence Street. The building has been a huge success; its 490 units maintain a 97 to 98 percent occupancy rate, and the rents have been starting at a sturdy $2,600 for studios, sans concessions.
“There were many indicators that this would be a successful building,” says Brian Collins, vice president at Equity Residential, the owner of the Brooklyner. The main one was proximity. “It’s not just one subway line [here], there are half a dozen at your fingertips. There’s access to any part of the city easily. It was quite obvious that was going to be a major selling point.”
Several other developers have picked up on that. Which means the Brooklyner’s status as Brooklyn’s tallest building is about to be challenged by two different developments — both going up in MetroTech.
Stahl Real Estate is planning to break ground on a 53-story, 590-foot-tall tower at 388 Bridge St. early this year. (The Brooklyner is 515 feet tall.) The building will be a hybrid of condos (144 units), rentals and affordable-rate housing (234 units).
And AvalonBay Communities is planning on putting up an even more colossal, 861-unit, 57-story rental down the block, on Willoughby Street.
“This is coming off the success of our building at [nearby] Myrtle and Flatbush, Avalon Fort Greene,” says Philip Wharton, vice president of development for AvalonBay, known for its massive rental buildings. “That was a 42-story building with 631 apartments. And despite the fact that it started leasing during the economic downturn [it came on the market in October 2009], it performed very well. That gives us the confidence to start building something even bigger.”
Avalon Willoughby Square is slated to be finished by the end of 2014.
This MetroTech boom is the culmination of several decades of work. In the early 1980s, a push was made to make the area like Brooklyn’s version of Silicon Valley (no, really!) — an urban renewal project with new businesses and schools. But it remained gritty. Well into the ’90s, it wasn’t uncommon to see a snake charmer openly practice his trade in an empty storefront on the Fulton Mall.
And yet developers and hoteliers pushed on. “The Marriott opened up in 1998, and it’s one of the most successful hotel stories in the city,” says Tom Conoscenti, director of real estate planning for the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership.
Marriott’s success drew other hoteliers. In 2010, a 25-story Sheraton opened on Duffield Street, followed this past summer by the adjacent Aloft hotel.
“During the peak months — July, August, September — we’ve had over 94 percent occupancy,” says William Collins, front-office manager for the Aloft (where prices can start very low, in the $130-per-night range). He adds that funky indie bands have performed on the roof-deck bar, which has attracted the younger set.
Hotel 718, a boutique 128-room property also on Duffield Street, is slated to open in April. (It stands next to a rickety brown house with a sign in the window reading “Eminent Domain Abuse” with a slash through it.) And it comes with celeb-chef cachet: “Top Chef” winner Harold Dieterle is opening a German/Italian restaurant called the Marrow.
“There’s going to be a lounge on the second floor,” says Brian Dunne, director of sales and marketing for Hotel 718. “And there’s a roof deck, [where] we’ll have food and beverage service, as well.”
Room rates are not set yet, but Dunne projects they’ll be “in the $200 to $400 range.”
And yet another hotel on Duffield Street, by developer V3, which is also behind Hotel 718, is in the works. Plans are being kept mum, but, according to V3’s Web site, the finished product will be a 27-story tower with 186 hotel rooms, an indoor and outdoor bar and retail space.
The surrounding retail also got a big boost: H&M is opening on the corner of Fulton and Bridge streets; Shake Shack opened on the Fulton Mall (the lines are already huge); and the first phase of the mixed-use CityPoint is opening this summer. It will mean 50,000 square feet of retail just along Fulton Street. A second and third phase, consisting of half-a-million square feet of retail and 1,000 more residential units, will break ground this year. And a TJ Maxx store is coming to the Offerman Building on the Fulton Mall. (It will be H&M’s neighbor.)
NYU has even gotten in on the action; the school is leasing 120,000 square feet of space at 15 MetroTech and 2 MetroTech, for classrooms and offices. There is also a push for the school to take over 370 Jay St., a 400,000-square-foot building owned by the MTA that could be turned into classrooms, offices and possibly dorms. (Crain’s reported the MTA wants $50 million for the property — NYU wants to pay $20 million.)
Skeptics should note that the surrounding buildings weathered the worst of the recession storms.
“The time when the market was really starting to recover, the Avalon [Fort Greene], the Brooklyner, 80 Dekalb” all opened at the same time, says Conoscenti. “People came down here to look at one apartment, and they wound up looking at all of them. There was a critical mass of opening at the same time, and that drew in a lot more people.”
It might just happen again.