Ten years ago the western view from the Fort Greene Observatory was a low city skyline dominated by the Clock Tower at Atlantic Terminal. During Covid the real estate market was dead, however city and bourough councils granted building permits for a multitude of mega-luxury condo buildings to insure construction jobs and launder money for the filthy overseas rich, buying overpriced apartments with gray cash to then borrow more money from the banks. Greed at its worst be fitting the few.
None of these project answered the drastic need for affordable housing.
When I moved New York, I lived in the East Village in a tenementbflat with a bathtub in the kitchen. The rent was $188/month. Now there are few apartments for under $2000, bit the city authorities continue to sign off on ugly condos blocking views such as Brooklyn Tower over Junior’s Restaurant on Flatbush Avenue.
The 1,066-foot mongrossity looms over downtown like the wicked wizard’s tower from LORD OF THE RINGS. Sales offices were opened three years ago and the developers announced that 30-40% of the apartments had been sold for millions, however in truth a mere 18 of 148 condos have closed so far in Sarumon’s Tower of Doom.
“It’s not like Brooklyn Tower has sold nothing,” a real-estate source says. “They get high prices, just not quickly enough.”
This undisclosed flack promotes a project at risk and selling apartments wouldn’t solve the developer’s puzzle. To avert the foreclosure by the banks, the developer Michael Stern will seek refinance and refinancing on such a disaster appeals to no one in the financial market, unless the banks force Stern into a fire sale according to Curbed.com no one thinks it’s the end of Michael Stern, who is already on to his next supertall — a Dolce & Gabbana–branded Miami tower with Tal and Oren Alexander of OFFICIAL are handling sales. Real-estate developers famously have many lives — someone joked to me that Stern had 27 of them at 111 West 57th Street alone. Or as another put it: “He’s a very clever guy.”
A pox on all luxury developers.
Tear them down.
Fort Greene Observatory View 2011
