On the waterfront... someday.

The sun had not quite broken over the rowhouses and warehouses of Greenpoint Monday morning when The Observer arrived at the new concrete pier jutting out into the East River at India Street. The dock seemed barely finished, its concrete planks not entirely even, the sides of the structure lined with chain-link fencing. Whole sections were torn up and surrounded with orange construction netting.

When the ferry pulled up, ghost decals clinging to the foredeck, the passengers filed on, handing over their $4 tickets, joining the nearly 3,000 New Yorkers who have ridden the ferry each weekday since its launch in mid-June, according to the city—more than double the number officials had expected.

After ordering our locally brewed fair-trade coffee and a pain au chocolat, we turned to see a gay couple smiling across a starboard table, sharing a quiche, a floating picnic. On the port side was a pretty biracial pair staring out the window at Long Island City, its gleaming towers pulling into view. The woman held a breastfeeding baby on her lap.

The subway this was not.

But neither was it entirely new. The Bloomberg administration—and to a lesser degree its predecessors and the civic groups that surrounded them—has been dreaming about transforming the East River into the city’s new axis. It took nearly a decade of experimentation and failure, but the river is about to be flooded with people. The ferries (after two tries finally a success) are only the first sign.

Just two years ago the master plans, brand new parks, renderings and rezonings that made this stretch a seething hot bed of development and gentrification were declared dead, another casualty of an overheated real estate market that had thrust the nation into recession. But something unusual happened. Even as the unemployment rate rose, so too did the rents throughout western Brooklyn. Instead of shuttering, an almost endless stream of precious boîtes and boutiques opened on the vinyl-siding-lined streets. What the bourgeois soothsayers at New York magazine dubbed “The Billyburg Bust,” complete with operatic comparisons to Miami, never materialized. Not a few bankers and movie stars—Ed Westwick among them—moved in. So what if the critics are right, and there is a little too much South Florida glass for all the soot still in the air? This is Brooklyn circa 2012.

Packed ferries, along with subways, bike lanes and flea markets, are but only the latest sign that the Brooklyn waterfront has prospered, rather than withered during the downturn.

Developers are hard at work on nearly a dozen megaprojects, many of them all but forgotten about in the past three years. A number of firms expect to break ground sometime in 2012, as they told The Observer, and while such ambitions remain lofty, given the near impossibility to raise construction financing at this time, the strength of Brooklyn real estate market has developers scrambling to get on the waterfront.

Tour the developments bursting from the Brooklyn waterfront >>

“The ferry is really the litmus test,” Jed Walentas, the second-generation Dumbo developer, said. “If you have just one good thing on the water, a ferry makes absolutely no sense. There’s nowhere to go. But when you get enough things happening in different parts of the city on the water, all of a sudden, ferries make a ton of sense.”

None of these undertakings are as ambitious as Park Tower Group’s redevelopment of the Greenpoint Lumber Exchange. Park Tower put stock in the area long before many of its competitors, taking a stake in the defunct lumber yard in the northern-most reaches of Brooklyn, where Newtown Creek empties its Superfunded waters into the East River. With 4,000 units planned, in some 10 towers along 20 waterfront acres, Park Tower’s project is larger even than the controversial Atlantic Yards project. Despite its size, a good many community members welcome the development.

“Until stuff gets built in Greenpoint, we don’t get any waterfront access,” said Ward Dennis, co-chair of Neighbors Allied for Good Growth. “I guess some people would gladly trade that for a less crowded neighborhood, but the thing is, the rezoning is done, the land is going sit largely fallow and underused, or overused and productive, with at least some benefits to the community at large.”

Park Tower earned much of its good will by helping to shape the rezoning that made over Williamsburg and Greenpoint during the past decade. Dreamed up in 2003, a year after Park Tower took its stake in the borough (previously, it had developed and later sold off marquee office towers in midtown), the rezoning passed in 2005. Due to the expense of building on the waterfront, even during the boom, only four towers got off the ground, two by McMansion builders Toll Brothers at Northside Piers, two by Douglaston Development at the neighboring Edge.

Both projects foundered, coming online after Lehman collapsed, despite being in the beating heart of Brooklyn gentrification, North Sixth Street. (Ever been to the Thai restaurant Sea on a Friday night?) Even facing its challenges, the Edge became the best-selling building in the city this past year, moving 260 units. Douglaston has since taken over phase three of Northside Piers and is planning to build the first 40-story tower of the rezoning (at least a dozen are possible), which will house 500 luxury rentals.

“I’ve always been a big believer in Williamsburg because Williamsburg created itself,” Douglaston chairman Jeff Levine said. “Unlike some of the other areas that were built up through subsidies or rezonings first, Williamsburg was somewhere that built itself up, and then the city came in later and improved it.”

Park Tower, which has been quietly preparing its project while the gold rush was on, is making the same calculation. “The project has been there a long time, but now the market is finally there for us,” a person involved with the project told The Observer. “The only difference is we’re not looking at condos anymore.” If last decade’s boom was defined by the condo taking hold in New York, this decade, at least in the outer boroughs, will be defined by a rental resurgence. The banks are mostly to thank for this trend. The condos that remain are hard to purchase due to a lack of mortgage financing, which means greater risk, which means lenders are less likely to give money to condo projects. Meanwhile, vacancy rates hover around 1 percent across the city, even lower in the coves of Brooklyn’s gold coast.

Inside Park Tower Group's mammoth Greenpoint project >>

Not all projects have faired quite so well, however. Besides Park Tower’s Greenpoint colossus, the biggest development in the works on the waterfront, and the most contentious by far, is the conversion of the Domino Sugar refinery.

Its developer, CPC Resources, is said to be in financial trouble, according to a number of sources, and some of the city’s top developers have looked at the site beside the Williamsburg Bridge. So far none of those deals have worked out, but project manager Susan Pollock said the developer is about to reach a deal with a partner to revive the project. “It was always our understanding we would bring someone in with the experience to build tall towers,” she said. Rose Plaza, located on the south side of the bridge, is similarly on hold, as are a handful of developments in southern Greenpoint.

What unifies many of the projects making less progress are those that were not part of the city’s rezoning or that have tried to go above and beyond it, incurring extra costs and commitments—like Domino, like Rose Plaza. The India Street pier is part of one such project, a development proposed by Jonathan Bernstein that is trying to turn the surrounding streets into parkland, adding a public amenity but also many thousands of square feet to the project, as well as adding a recreational pier on Java Street that would further bulk up his project. Many in the community are against the streets-into-parks plan and even object to the second pier—while it improves waterfront access, it also gives Mr. Bernstein more air rights. “It’s the same thing we’re seeing down at Occupy Wall Street,” local City Councilman Steve Levin said. “Is this a public benefit, or it a private benefit?”

Yet it is the piers and the parks that have also paved the way for these projects. “Once the infrastructure is in, the sky’s the limit,” said Andrew Genn, senior vice president for maritime at the city’s Economic Development Corporation. Toll and Dougalston and neighboring rental 184 Kent have all finished their waterfront esplanades, which connect to East River State Park, creating a reasonable riverside park, a hint of the 14-mile emerald necklace that could someday stretch from the tip of Greenpoint all the way to the Verrazano in Sunset Park. Meanwhile, at the asphalt lot that someday will be the Edge’s 40-story tower, Brownstoner’s Jonathan Butler has set up a branch of Brooklyn Flea and the Smorgasburg, which draw some 15,000 BroBos to the waterfront every weekend in the summer.

And it is not all housing and hip hangouts, either. Mr. Genn argues that the working waterfront is more vibrant than it has been in decades. The Navy Yard is near capacity and Carnegie Mellon has proposed building its branch of the vaunted new tech campus there. New cargo operations have taken hold in Red Hook, not to mention big box stores and ocean liners—Port Authority executive director Chris Ward said it should all be redeveloped as housing someday, but then only to facilitate a stronger connection to Governors Island. The city has signed half-a-dozen new leases and partnerships at Sunset Park in the past year and also launched a sustainability plan for the massive industrial hub. “Brooklyn had been written off as a place to do maritime commerce, and now it’s back,” Mr. Genn said.

Much of this development has been during the downturn, with developers chastened and the city looking to expand its economy beyond Wall Street. If developers are already venturing in again, in a shaky economy, when things are back in full swing, the waves could kick back up.

And there are those developments causing waves already. Last week, the city received bids for the first development site at Brooklyn Bridge Park. “There is very little right about this because it takes away from the parkland,” Councilman Levin said. But the park needs the funds from a new apartment building and hotel to finance its maintenance, and even enliven the open space, its planners argue.

To make the project as palatable as possible, the city has encouraged a level of design rarely seen—or required—in Brooklyn. Among the firms submitting bids are many of the waterfront’s best builders: Mr. Walentas’s Two Trees, Toll Brothers, Dermot, Extell and Hamlin, all of which have hired some of the city’s top architects.

“We put forth a really strong statement on quality design,” Brooklyn Bridge Park president Regina Myer said during a tour of Pier 1 and the adjacent site last week. “We have put so much into the park, we do not want anything that detracts from it. This is the gateway to Brooklyn, a panorama seen all over the world. Whatever we build here has to be special.”

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

What a difference a year or two makes. (WSJ)

This is the last thing anyone was expecting, but it looks like a new shiny tower is coming to the Williamsburg waterfront, the site of one of its more troubled developments, in fact. In a bit of a coup, Douglaston Development will build a 40-story rental tower, according to The Journal, and while they have spent years struggling to sell their Edge development, the tower is actually being built next door, on the third North Side Pier site, which had been the provenance of Toll Brothers.

FX Fowle is still the architect, and the same development partners are involved, L&M Development Partners and RD Management LLC, but the other big change is rentals, instead of condos. While both the Edge and Northside Piers have begun to sell briskly this year, there is still some sense that is not where the market is. "The rental market in Williamsburg is through the roof," Douglaston's Jeff Levine told The Journal. Indeed, Ed Westwick has taken up in Mr. Levine's Edge, paying $7,000 to rent a two-bedroom there.

One bedrooms at the new tower will cost around $3,000 per month, according to The Journal. Judging from a previous rendering of the project, it looks like the design of the tower has been tweaked, as well. At 40-stories, it will be the tallest thing in North Brooklyn, surpassing the 30-story buildings next door. And so Miami-on-East-River continues to grow.

The old plans. Notice no Edge. (FXFowle)

The $300 million project is expected to begin construction starting in March.

That is partly what is surprising about this project, because the going word is that projects are shrinking, that nobody has the stomach for these huge projects. Toll told The Journal as much in explaining its decision to abandon the project. "The Williamsburg market is strong, but for most of us developers, it's not a place where we were making a lot of money," Toll's New York honcho David Von Spreckelsen said. "There's so much product, competing for price against each other."

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

That became a bit clearer with a report in The Journal that narrows the field for one of the largest affordable housing projects in a generation. The city has shortlisted three teams to develop the first two of six sites at Hunter's Point South, a spit of land on the East River and sludgy Newtown Creek. About two months ago, seven of the city's top developers were vying for the project, which boasts 5,000 apartment units, an unprecedented 60 percent of which will be set aside for affordable housing.

Some of the teams that did not make the cut? AvalonBay, the Virginia-based developer of bland projects in downtown Manhattan and Brooklyn, much of the sort that dominate QueensWest just north of Hunters Point South. The impressive and increasingly ambitious Durst Organization and Jonathan Rose Companies partnership also did not make the cut, as well as the Richman Group.

The three developers in the hunt are more middle-of-the-road. Douglaston Development is one of the city's largest; among its notable projects is Williamsburg's Edge and the Renaissance Plaza in Harlem. TFC Cornerstone has a familiarity with the area, having built one of QueensWest's towers, the take-it-or-leave-it View Long Island City.

Most interesting may be the Related Companies' bid with Phipps Houses and Monadnock Construction. The prominent developer is already at work on another megaproject, Hudson Yards, albeit slowly. That, as well as the Time Warner Center, have proven to be among some of the city's interesting developments to have taken shape of late, so seeing what they do here will be interesting, especially given whom they have hired for the job.

According to The Journal, it is super-hot New York firm SHoP, which is designing the Barclays Center at Bruce Ratner's Atlantic Yards site and had been hard at work on a big project at the South Street Seaport. Working with them will be the less than thrilling Ishmael Leyva, who has designed dozens of the city's unremarkable apartment towers. An odd couple to say the least.

Whatever the outcome, the clear winner will be the middle-income New Yorkers finding their way into one of those 3,000 affordable apartments when the entire development is built.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @mc_nyo

The city's Department of Housing Preservation and Development, which is administering the RFP, would not say who was in, but according to the Journal, AvalonBay, Douglaston Development, and a Durst Fetner/Jonathan Rose joint venture have been confirmed. (If you know of any of the other four, there's an email at the bottom of this post for a reason.)

The bidders are vying for the first two of six parcels on the 30-acre site, with the requirement to build 1,000 units of housing and a 1,100-seat school. The project is meant to be a haven for the city's increasingly squeezed middle class, with 60 percent of its units being set aside as affordable housing for families of four making between $63,000 and $130,000. The project was conceived in part as a paean to the loss of Stuytown--which is of course now not so lost, so maybe we don't need this anymore?

Why, with the real estate economy so bad, is there so much interest in this project? Besides the obvious fact that it's such a prime spot, just across the East River? Besides the fact that this thing isn't exactly going up tomorrow? Maybe it has something to do with affordable housing being one of the few real estate sectors that can actually still get financing.

mchaban [at] observer.com / @mc_nyo

But as it has done to so many projects in recent months, it seems the economy is throwing a wrench into the mix. Douglaston Development, the designated developer of one of those towers, is indicating it will pull out of its planned building of over 50 stories. Douglaston signed an agreement to develop the site more than three years ago, but did not close on the property, which Fordham is currently taking through a rezoning. No developer had been engaged for the second site, so Fordham is left without any builders.

Asked last week about the tower, Jeffrey Levine, chairman of Douglaston, said that he was negotiating with Fordham to step down from the deal.

“We have the option, as the result of our agreement, to back out,” Mr. Levine said. “As a result of the delay in the approval process … and in consideration of market conditions, we think that’s the prudent thing to do.”

In a statement, Fordham did not directly address the deal’s effect on the expansion but expressed confidence that a sale would eventually occur. “Given the status of the national and local economy, it is impossible to close any real estate transactions at this time,” a Fordham spokesman, Robert Howe, said. “We expect the deal will be resurrected when the economy improves.”

The Douglaston tower, which was part of a joint venture with Continental Properties, was to be built along West 62nd Street and Columbus Avenue. 

Fordham’s proposal to sell for private development land initially acquired through eminent domain, and intended for academic use, has angered neighbors who oppose the expansion.

ebrown@observer.com