Creative Real Estate Group founder Chris Havens and Dumbo
As Brooklyn’s thriving tech scene pushes Dumbo’s office vacancy rate below 2 percent, local community groups are trying to plot the industry’s expansion beyond the neighborhood but within the borough. Brooklyn Paper reported the Dumbo Improvement District, Brooklyn Navy and Downtown Brooklyn Partnership have created a task force aimed at making Downtown Brooklyn the destination for startups that can’t find space in Dumbo. [more]
Clockwise from top left: Vince Clarke, the exterior of 30 Main Street and interior shots of the condo he sold
Vince Clarke, the English synthpop musician and songwriter who purchased the former home of J. Crew creative director Jenna Lyons last week, an impressive seven-bedroom townhouse in Park Slope, has sold a Brooklyn property he purchased just last year with wife Tracy Hurley.
Clarke, who has been in a number of successful groups, including Depeche Mode, Yazoo, the Assembly and Erasure, has sold his three-bedroom, 2.5-bathroom condominium at 30 Main Street in Dumbo for $3 million, according to public records filed with the city today, $200,000 more than he paid for it in August 2011. [more]
For the last decade tech firms and digital advertising companies have launched and expanded in Dumbo, but according to the Wall Street Journal the growth has finally hit a roadblock as space is becoming scarce.
Though the area was initially “sketchy” when tech firms began to arrive in 1999, the cheap commercial rents and loft space appealed to startup firms. Now, more than 100 such companies are based in Dumbo and the industry employs the most workers in the neighborhood. The leaders are Etsy, which added 100 employees in 2011 to bring its total to 250, and Huge, which has 400 employees. Both expect to expand in 2012. [more]
Famed pizzeria Grimaldi’s will leave its original location in Dumbo next Monday following a dispute with the landlord, the Brooklyn Paper reported. But Brooklyn pizza aficionados won’t have to wait long or venture far from the 19 Old Fulton Street location to find the restaurant in its new spot — the owners plan to open next door at 1 Front Street Nov. 29.
The dispute began last year, when landlord Dorothy Waxman tried to evict Grimaldi’s for falling behind on rent and city taxes. But a judge ordered her to accept late payments and allow the pizzeria to stay open. [more]
The now somewhat famous Clock Tower triplex penthouse by developer
David Walentas at 1 Main Street in Dumbo has been chosen as Esquire
magazine’s bachelor pad, the magazine said today. The unit will be
host to various celebrity and charity events throughout the fall and the magazine’s annual design showcase. This will
be the first time the bachelor pad has come to Brooklyn.
“The Esquire Apartment concept was conceived in New York in 2003,”
noted Jack Essig, senior vice president, group publishing director and chief revenue officer of Esquire. “Although we create our house every other year in Los
Angeles, this is the first time we’ve taken our New York project to a
location outside of Manhattan. We really challenge ourselves every
year to find a new prime neighborhood and a building that represents
the essence of the magazine.” — Katherine Clarke [more]
Soho and Tribeca were the most expensive New York City neighborhoods in the second quarter of 2011, but Dumbo was a surprising fourth entry on the top 10 list, according to PropertyShark.com. Dumbo was ahead of many other Manhattan neighborhoods such as the Upper East Side, the Upper West Side, the West Village and Chelsea, with a median sale price of $1.075 million. That price increased 9 percent from the median sales price in the second quarter of 2010, which was $990,000. Brooklyn’s Boerum Hill was also on the list at number 10, with a median sales price of $801,000. Soho was tops at $2.147 million, a 26 percent increase over its 2010 second-quarter price of $1.7 million.
— Miranda Neubauer [more]
In an email sent out to the theater’s mailing list, St. Ann’s Warehouse artistic director Susan Feldman thanked everyone for support during what she called the “Tobacco Warehouse saga,” Brooklyn Heights blog reported. She said that the theater troupe will be departing Dumbo but exploring options elsewhere, blaming the “callousness” of the surrounding neighborhood and preservation groups such as the Brooklyn Heights Association. In April, a federal judge blocked the city’s plan to turn over Brooklyn Bridge Park’s Tobacco Warehouse to private developers, siding with preservationists who argued that it was part of protected land. The judge ordered the Tobacco Warehouse, already promised to St. Ann’s by the city for its $15 million new performance center home, returned to federal protection as part of Empire Fulton Ferry State Park. [more]
City Joinery, a Dumbo-based furniture making company, is moving to Easthampton, Mass. after the landlord upped the rent by $3,000 on its 5,500-square-foot showroom and studio space at 20 Jay Street, bringing it to $8,000 a month, according to Crain’s.
Jonah Zuckerman, City Joinery’s founder and owner, said the rent hike made the space essentially unaffordable, especially since demand is lessening for wooden furniture since the recession.
“In the boom years, we would have a couple walk-ins and one or two appointments every day, so the showroom investment was totally worth it,” he said. “But in the past six months, we’d be lucky if we had one party a week.” [more]
Fifteen of the 125 retail spaces in Dumbo are vacant, according to a report by the Creative Real Estate Group cited in the Brooklyn Eagle. Nine of the vacant retail spaces were at least 3,000 square feet, and the total amount of free space is 48,250 square feet. Two Trees Management has three vacant retail spaces totaling 12,200 square feet. Dumbo, dubbed “Silicon Beach” for its concentration of tech companies, has little trouble attracting retailers to smaller spaces. Accordingly Two Trees’ most coveted retail space is just 700 square feet at 20 Jay St. In March, Two Trees rented out an 857-square-foot space in Dumbo free of charge to Edible Schoolyard NYC, a non-profit healthy living and eating organization. [Brooklyn Eagle] Comments
Dumbo is quickly becoming New York City’s “Silicon Beach,” according to Fortune magazine, which ranked the six “hottest” tech companies that have blossomed in the neighborhood, in a list that heralds the neighborhood as an up-and-coming tech center. Companies like digital ad agency Big Spaceship and Etsy, a popular online “hobbypreneur” site, are among the “hot” digital companies named in the neighborhood. [more]
