From left: Cynthia and Arthur Wood and the Broken Angel home in Clinton Hill (right)

Clinton Hill’s most famous private home, the Broken Angel house at 4 Downing Street, has been scheduled to hit the foreclosure auction block March 29,  according to data from PropertyShark.com.

The 10,400-square-foot property will be auctioned off with a lien of $2.7 million along with an adjacent 1,996-square-foot lot at 8 Downing Street, after lender Madison Realty Capital filed to foreclose on the building in 2008. [more]

From left: 90 Clermont Avenue, Ofer Cohen and Melissa DiBella of TerraCRG

The sale of a beleaguered seven-unit rental building at 90 Clermont Avenue in Fort Greene has closed for $2.6 million, according to TerraCRG, the firm which was marketing the building on behalf of Eastern Capital, the bank that foreclosed on the property in 2008.

The building was purchased by a private developer operating via an LLC named Abraham Equities. His identity was not immediately clear. [more]

Sen. Velmanette Montgomery and 55 Hanson Place (building credit: PropertyShark)

State officials are considering selling 55 Hanson Place, according to the New York Daily News, as they’ve told local politicians that a private developer has expressed interest in purchasing the property.

The 13-story, 300,000-square-foot office building, between Elliot and Fort Greene places in Fort Greene, is known as the Shirley Building and is home to the Department of Taxation, the Office of Children and Family Services and other state agencies, but officials say the space is underused. As part of a larger plan to cash in on its real estate holdings, the state is exploring the sale. [more]

Admiral's Row and a rendering of the plans for the site

Admiral’s Row in the Brooklyn Navy Yard has finally been transferred to the city, the New York Times reported, clearing the way for the 74,000-square-foot supermarket residents of the three nearby housing projects have long coveted.

Nine of the 11 homes that comprise Admiral’s Row, on the edge of the Fort Greene neighborhood, have fallen into such disrepair since the Navy Yard was closed in 1966 that even preservationists haven’t attempted to save them. [more]

Promised to be a driver of the Park Slope, Fort Greene and Clinton Hill economy, the Atlantic Yards construction project has retail landlords salivating but is leaving developers and residents wary, the New York Post reported.

The Barclays Center, which will open next September, is driving up retail rents in the area. Many landlords have allowed leases to expire and spaces to stay vacant in recent years in anticipation of higher rents sure to come with the new arena. Retail rents in the area range from $85 to $175 per square foot, with the high-end marking the top of Brooklyn pricing…. [more]

The New York City Human Resources Administration has inked a 20-year lease for 400,000 square feet at a 10-story building at 470 Vanderbilt Avenue in the Fort Greene area of Brooklyn, the New York Times reported, in what is, so far, the biggest real estate deal in Brooklyn in 2011 and brings the building to 85 percent occupancy.

“The building is huge — an entire city block — and it has basically sat vacant and derelict for years,” said Steven Hurwitz, the vice president of acquisitions and developments at GFI Development, the company that owns the ground lease. It was not immediately clear how this lease fits in with the administration’s previously reported plans to move into 4 World Trade Center.… [more]

The independent Brooklyn Waldorf School is opening in an unused building called “Claver Castle,” at 19 Claver Place just across the street from the historic St. Peter Claver Roman Catholic Church in Brooklyn, the first African-American Roman Catholic Church in the borough. As previously reported, the school has been scouting new spaces since it outgrew a space behind the Brooklyn Academy of Music building in Fort Greene, Patch said. “We were so cramped in the old space. Now everyone is happy,” said Katie Roth, assistant to the school’s director. “This building is a dream come true.” The school spent $4.5 million, funded by bank loans, parent donations and fundraising, to renovate the space. Teachers worked with architects to design a new interior layout to best work with the school’s schedule during the day. [Patch]
… [more]

Atlantic Terrace and Magnus Magnusson of Magnusson Architecture and Planning

While many developers utilizing public subsidies to build a new condominium deliver the bare minimum number of affordable units required by law, the partnership of developers behind Atlantic Terrace in Fort Greene took the opposite route. The New York Times reported that they offered only as many market-rate apartments in the 80-unit condo at 212 South Oxford Street as was needed, a total of 20, to maximize the number of affordable apartments they could offer.

The developers — non-profit Fifth Avenue Committee, architecture firm Magnusson Architecture and Planning and builder Mega Contracting — envisioned an apartment complex where affordable units were interspersed among market-rate ones.

… [more]

The developer that purchased the 40,000-square-foot vacant lot at 33-44 Putnam Avenue in Clinton Hill for $2.345 million last month isn’t about to waste any time on the investment. According to Brownstoner, construction has already begun at the site, between Downing Street and Irving Place, where permits filed with the Department of Buildings show that a 75-foot-tall, Karl Fischer-designed residential project is on deck. Sources say that the New Jersey-based developer is planning to fill the seven-story building with 30 affordable housing units, and a sign on the outside of the construction site indicates that work is slated for completion by December. [Brownstoner]