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Stephen Jacob Smith

By Stephen Jacob Smith 4/30 10:15am

Developing Situations

Condos at Boerum and Dean, developed by XXX in 2002.

Townhouse Torrent! Bluerock Plans Five Brick Neo-Brownstones for Pacific Street

Brooklyn has long been known for its townhouses, but usually they’re prewar brownstones. New development, on the other hand—at least the market-rate kind—tends to be multifamily, with developers cramming in as many small units as they can in send-ups of Manhattan condo towers.

But developers have started to warm to the single-family spreads (and not surprisingly, given the soaring cost of Brooklyn townhouses). Following on the heels of Carroll Gardens’ Sackett Union townhouses (six left, if you’ve got $4 million burning a hole in your pocket) and the Landmarks Preservation Commission’s approval of Dumbo’s first new townhouses comes word that five new townhouses are in the works for… well, we’re not quite sure whether it’s Boerum Hill or Cobble Hill, and we’d rather scratch out our eyes than call it BoCoCa(Go?), so we’ll just go with the historical term for the entire swath and call it South Brooklyn. Read More

By Stephen Jacob Smith 4/29 6:04pm

Manhattan Transfers

No word on whether the Times globe comes with the apartment.

Breaking News! Punch Sulzberger’s Old Fifth Avenue Pad Sells For $12.5 M.

The newspaper industry may be in secular decline, but at least the Sulzbergers’ bank accounts will be buoyed in the coming months: the late Arthur Ochs “Punch” Sulzberger, Sr.‘s palatial pad just sold for a cool $12.5 million, according to city records.

The eighth-floor corner unit at 1010 Fifth Avenue, a 15-story limestone prewar, has three bedrooms, including the master, which overlook the Metropolitan Museum of Art, plus another overlooking East 82nd Street. And it also has no shortage of storage space: we count 18 closets, including a few walk-ins (the Times may need to find a new place to keep its archives).

Sheila Ellis at Sotheby’s was tight-lipped about her listing when we called, which she shared with Patricia Wheatley, though the duo wasn’t shy about touting its bold-faced bonafides in the listing, which described the co-op as “the home of one of the world’s most prestigious and well known families.” Read More

By Stephen Jacob Smith 4/29 4:16pm

Manhattan Transfers

The hallowed halls in which The Observer was born.

Salmon Sells: New York Observer’s Old Upper East Side Home Finds a Buyer

The most expensive home in the five boroughs to go into contract last week (according to the Olshan report), is an address quite familiar to The Observer: 54 East 64th Street, this salmon-colored paper’s Upper East Side home before Arthur Carter sold the paper to Jared Kushner.

“Four floors, a giant alimentary center-hall staircase, caked moldings, brass chandeliers, glass-fronted oak cupboards, The New York Observer sometimes felt like a Henry James society home or a 70′s swinger pad, with reporters stacked and stuffed in its confines like Hong Kong tailors,” longtime editor Peter Kaplan described the mansion. “Our legal reporter set up his computer in the fourth-floor closet, near the tuxedo that was used by whomever had to go out to a formal evening.” Read More

By Kim Velsey and Stephen Jacob Smith 4/26 6:28pm

Manhattan Transfers

Not quite as magical as Mr. Schecter thought.

Another Overpriced Trophy Listing Pulled From the Market: Steel Magnate Decides Not To Sell 15 CPW Pad After All

As any Times Styles section writer knows, it takes at least three to make a trend, so we guess we can officially call it now: the much-ballyhooed real estate trophy market is over-hyped.

Today, yet another ambitious trophy listing was yanked from the market, slinking away just a few weeks after taking a $10 million price cut. Leroy Schecter’s 35th-floor spread at 15 Central Park West, which made such a big show of asking $95 million when it debuted last August, is no longer for sale. And like City Spire and the Woolworth Mansion before it, the 15 CPW departure was not occasioned by a sale. Read More

By Stephen Jacob Smith 4/26 5:37pm

Under Development

The site is currently made up of vacant lots and underused industrial structures.

Astoria Cove Unleashed: 1,535 New Homes Proposed at Halletts Point

The Halletts Point redevelopment proposal to bring 2,644 apartments to a forlorn peninsula of the Queens waterfront has been in the works for three years, but now a different developer is throwing its hat into the ring.

The vaguely-named 2030 Astoria Developers LLC submitted an early application to the Department of City Planning today to rezone another smaller chunk of Halletts Point. They’re calling the project Astoria Cove and they want to build another 1,535 housing units—a combination of townhouses and apartments—on a site overlooking Pot Cove in Astoria, with a pristine view of the Queens leg of the Triborough (RFK) Bridge. Twenty percent of the project, or about 340 units, would be set aside for affordable housing. Read More

By Stephen Jacob Smith 4/25 12:52pm

Affordable Housing or Lack Thereof

Public Advocate Bill de Blasio unveiled his housing platform today in Williamsburg, where housing prices have nearly tripled since 2004.

Bill de Blasio Unveils Affordable Housing Plan: 190,000 Units, Legalized Granny Flats and More

Until now, Bill de Blasio’s housing platform has mainly consisted of sniping at frontrunner Christine Quinn. But no longer: this afternoon Mr. de Blasio announced measures he would take mayor to curb what he calls the “full-blown crisis” of affordable housing. (Old habits, though, do die hard: Mr. de Blasio did take another shot at Ms. Quinn, saying, “Letting the real estate industry keep calling all the shots with our affordable housing policy isn’t going to deliver what working people need”—an allusion to her tax credits-for-affordable housing plan, which seems cribbed right from REBNY and Steve Ross’s proposals back in 2011.)

Mr. de Blasio started out, as all candidates do, with a promise for the number of affordable housing units he’d create: 100,000 “new affordable units,” plus preservation for “nearly 90,000″ others. Read More

By Stephen Jacob Smith 4/24 5:57pm

Manhattan Transfers

Windows – all three of 'em.

Three Million For Three-Windows: ‘Genuine’ Loft Tries For Greenpoint Record

Greenpoint is hot right now (or so we’ve been led to believe by all the Girls trend stories), but $3 million-for-a-loft-with-only-three-windows hot?

John Tarjavaara at Citi Habitats is about to find out. He’s the exclusive listing agent for a sponsor unit, 7B, at 190 West Street, a former industrial building. Developer Minc Platform, LLC “got in ahead of everyone else,” Mr. Tarjavaara told The Observer. “They saw the potential, and developed some units, keeping some as rentals and art spaces. Now two of those they’ve combined to make this one apartment.” Read More

By Stephen Jacob Smith 4/24 10:05am

Manhattan Transfers

Virtual staging is usually a bad sign.

Real Estate Dilettante Libet Johnson Lists Trump International Condo

Libet Johnson, heiress to the Johnson & Johnson fortune, appears to be in the mood for tying up loose ends. Two months ago she reconciled with her ex-boyfriend, celebrity weight loss-through-pregnancy-hormones guru Lionel Bissoon, reaching a joint custody agreement over a 9-year-old child that they “found” in Cambodia and brought back to the U.S. on a humanitarian visa.

Now comes the shedding of the real estate: Ms. Johnson has just listed her 30th-floor condo at the Trump International Hotel and Tower. She’s asking $4 million for the two-bedroom, 2.5-bathroom spread, or exactly double what she paid for it back in 2004. Read More

By Stephen Jacob Smith 4/23 10:46am

In the Rezone

At least one developer wants to build more housing at their Hudson Yards site.

Tip of the Iceberg? Silverstein Wants More Housing at Hudson Yards

With the 7 train extension set to see its first train at 34th Street and 11th Avenue next June, developers are rushing to line up financing and break ground on millions of square feet in new projects. The New York Times took a look over the weekend at the progress at Hudson Yards, but they buried some news deep within the story: at least one landowner—Silverstein Properties, which owns a 90,000-square foot site at 41st Street and 11th Avenue—wants zoning rules changed to allow it to build more housing and less office space.

For an area with poor transit links, the desire to shift from commercial to residential is not surprising. Though there will be a new subway station at 34th Street and 11th Avenue, successful office locations generally require not only transit, but redundant transit. Read More

By Stephen Jacob Smith 4/22 7:04pm

Manhattan Transfers

With an in-home diet that's "95 percent raw," we doubt Ms. Huss will be getting much use from the oven and microwave.

Ten-dollar Juices Buy Erica Huss a $2.25 M. Pad At One Brooklyn Bridge Park

What does a $65-a-day juice habit buy you? As a consumer, you might not come away with much more than hunger pangs and the ability to fit into your old high school clothes if you keep it up for long enough. If you’re juice purveyor Erica Huss, co-founder of Blueprint Cleanse, on the other hand, it buys quite a bit: a $2.25 million waterfront condo in Brooklyn Heights, to be exact.

The Jehovah’s Witnesses may be gone, but the suspension-of-disbelief remains: Ms. Huss just picked up a massive two-bedroom-plus-den at One Brooklyn Bridge Park, according to city records. Read More