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New York

Brooklyn pol to fight for reality in renderings


From left: the offending rendering and an actual image of 360 Smith Street

A Brooklyn politician has pledged to investigate a particularly egregious case of the rendering versus reality gap after controversy erupted last week over a new image depicting 360 Smith Street in Carroll Gardens.

According to the Brooklyn Paper, the new rendering by KSQ Architects shows a courtyard in front of the building that is, according to scale, twice the size of the property’s actual garden.

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The 47-unit rental building, which cost developer Jeff Gershon $14.9 million to build, is 70 feet tall in real life. Per the rendering, that would make its garden 131 feet long, when it is actually only around 80 feet.

Broker Sha Dinour of Triumph Properties provided the following explanation: “It’s not that the size is not accurate — it’s that the angle of the camera is not what you can see with the naked eye.” He also argued that tenants are coming to visit the building and see it for themselves before signing a lease anyway (50 percent of the building has already been snapped up within the past two weeks).

But state Assemblywoman Joan Millman, who represents the neighborhood, said she plans to combat this type of exaggeration and that the developer or broker could face penalties. State law prohibits “fraud or fraudulent practices [or dishonest or misleading advertising,” she said. [Brooklyn Paper]