Downtown Brooklyn’s Oro condominium, the 40-story tower at 306 Gold Street, has closed more than 200 of its 303 studios and one-, two- and three-bedroom units, bringing the building to roughly 65 percent sold and occupied, according to an announcement today from Rose Associates, which is handling sales. That’s a significant spike from last November, when PropertyShark.com reported that 63 units had closed; even then, it was ranked as the city’s seventh-best-selling building of 2010. It wasn’t always smooth-sailing for Oro, though, which was originally developed by controversial United Homes owner Yaron Herscho. – Sarabeth Sanders [more]

The community board of New Castle, the Chappaqua town where developers originally sought to build a 348-unit condominium on the 114-acre site that formerly housed the Reader’s Digest, ruled that Summit Development and Greenfield Partners could only build 111 units on 31 of the acres, the New York Times reported. The developers purchased the land for $59 million seven years ago and have been continually rebuffed in their efforts to build on the site, and have alleged in two lawsuits that the town opposes affordable multi-family housing. But the town supervisor, Barbara Gerrard, said the community wants to limit residential development to leave room for commercial development in order to raise more revenue for the town. [more]

The Reader’s Digest campus in the town of New Castle

The developers who purchased the Reader’s Digest campus in Westchester in late 2004 with plans to build housing on the 114-acre property are suing the town of New Castle for repeatedly refusing to approve their development plans, charging that racial, age and socioeconomic motivations were in play in their decisions. According to the Wall Street Journal, Summit Development and Greenfield Partners paid $59 million for the site six years ago and have since spent another $10 million on it, but between the financial crisis, the bankruptcy of Reader’s Digest, which forced the company to renege on its 20-year lease at its landmark headquarters there in 2009, and the town’s alleged resistance to affordable housing in the wealthy Chappaqua hamlet, the developers have had enough. They filed a lawsuit in New York state Supreme Court Friday, seeking to force the town to buy the property back from them. [more]

Inside a unit at the Oro condominium

The Oro condominium in Downtown Brooklyn announced today that it will offer a rent-to-own program for interested buyers. Under the program, 50 percent or more of the monthly rent cost goes toward a down payment. The development, which slashed prices on its units by as much as 25 percent in October, has notoriously struggled with sales in the two years since it began marketing units. As The Real Deal reported in the December issue, approximately 12 buyers at Greenfield Partners’ Oro — at 306 Gold Street — are currently disputing their contracts. The building currently has approximately 40 percent of its 303 units
sold and is financially stable, according to Rose Associates, which is
marketing Oro. Robert Scaglion, senior managing director at Rose, said
that the program has been implemented in order to help buyers secure
financing for their purchase. “In today’s market, obtaining financing
is often the greatest hurdle,” Scaglion said. “Oro’s rent-to-own program gives buyers the flexibility of having a 12-month period to obtain financing, improve credit scores or make a larger deposit.” TRD [more]

189 Bridge is now partly rental

From the November issue: Like many other development firms, the Clarett Group rode the wave of
the real estate boom expertly, building successful condos in Manhattan
and other markets across the country. Like a host of other developers,
however, the company hit a damaging riptide in Downtown Brooklyn. A few
months ago, Clarett’s condo, the Forté, went back to its lender,
Eurohypo AG. The move was the most boldface example thus far of the
difficulties developers have encountered selling condos in Downtown
Brooklyn, generally defined as the section of the borough bounded by
Nassau Street to the north, Ashland Place to the east, Schermerhorn
Street to the south and Court Street to the west. That catch zone
encompasses several micro-neighborhoods, including the western edge of
Fort Greene. Several big developers are feeling pain in the saturated
area, which has been generating a lot of attention lately because three
new luxury rental towers are preparing to launch. [more]