How much would you pay to see this view out your window? Too late: Someone already paid $2.4 million for it.
That was the price paid for the 1,300-square-foot penthouse apartment atop the Beacon Tower condominium in DUMBO. You can get that much space, albeit with a lesser view, for under $1.4 million in Park Slope and $900,000 in some other Brownstone Brooklyn neighborhoods.
“DUMBO is the new Tribeca,” gushed Debra Greco, the building’s real-estate manager. All but 14 of the 79 condos had been sold on the eve of Monday’s “topping off” ceremony.
The Beacon Tower, at 85 Adams St., is one of several DUMBO buildings developed by Shaya Boymelgreen.
Condo buyers will enjoyed a healthy city subsidy in the form of the 421-a tax abatement.
Boymelgreen’s son, Zvi, said “the program gives developers a head start to build. A lot of new construction would not happen without the 421-a. Land is too expensive.”
For now, Beacon Tower is the tallest building in the neighborhood, towering over the renovated warehouses and artists’ lofts that give the neighborhood its cachet.
But the Beacon Tower is like a latter-day Chrysler Building. While its workmen were enjoying the topping-off party, builders a block away were adding more floors to the J, another luxury condo building that will eventually rise 33 stories — the Empire State Building in this extended skyscraper metaphor.
$3M in old bank building
People used to go to the Williamsburgh Savings Bank building to have a tooth removed. Now, to get into the building, they’ll have to give up a right arm, too.
Residential condos in the famed tower — still the tallest building on Long Island — were officially put on the market this week, as developer Magic Johnson hosted real-estate agents eager to see how the building — atop a cathedral-like space that was occupied by the former bank’s home office — has been transformed.
“This will always be Brooklyn’s landmark building,” said Borough President Markowitz, before giving Johnson a Brooklyn Dodgers cap and a cheesecake from Junior’s — a gift that five out of five dentists would disapprove of.
At the zenith of the 512-foot Fort Greene landmark will be a $3-million, 2,500-square-foot penthouse whose balcony offers a commanding view of the borough and beyond.
Only a handful of dentists remain in the tower, renamed One Hanson Place. Sources said a Borders bookstore is negotiating a lease for the ground floor.
Johnson says he’ll move into one of the 189 luxury units in the building, a short walk from Bruce Ratner’s proposed arena for the Brooklyn-bound New Jersey Nets.
“I’ll be able to walk to a Nets game,” said the former Los Angeles Lakers star, whose Canyon-Johnson Urban Funds spent an undisclosed amount to renovate the $70-million building.
While the well-heeled VIPs sipped martinis, a dozen members of ACORN, an affordable housing advocacy group, picketed outside to protest the absence of low-cost units.
But Johnson defended the project.
“It would be unfair to say we haven’t tried our hardest,” said Johnson. “But if the numbers don’t work, they don’t work … We have to answer to [our] investors.”
Buyers of luxury apartments in the building will benefit from the city’s 421-a tax-abatement program.
