New penthouses hit market at Meier’s OPP

Developer SDS Procida couldn’t have asked for better weather to show off the last three penthouses at the Richard Meier-designed On Prospect Park.

Brilliant sunshine and cooling breezes greeted visitors last night to the glass and steel tower at 1 Grand Army Plaza (though the wind did cause quite a few cocktail napkins to disappear). Brokers and potential buyers wandered through three newly unveiled penthouses — all pure white in typical Meier fashion — with floor-to-ceiling windows and private terraces. (See party pics above.)

Penthouse 16 South, a 3,524-square-foot, four-bedroom spread on the market for $5.1 million, has a private 29-by-58-foot Roof Terrace, with birds-eye views of the rolling green hills of Prospect Park, and the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Arch far below in Grand Army Plaza. Penthouse 16 North, on the market for $4.9 million, is 3,274 square feet plus 3,172 feet of terraces and balconies, with views of the Statue of Liberty. Penthouse 16 West, on the market for $2.75 million, is a 1,962-square-foot duplex with a private Roof Terrace. Two other penthouses in the building have already been sold, according to Cheryl Nielsen-Saaf, a senior vice president at the Corcoran Group who is heading up sales at On Prospect Park.

Construction on the building began in 2005, and the building faced slow sales during the financial crisis of 2008. But in January of this year, developers Mario Procida and Louis Greco announced that the building had finally sold half of its 96 units.

Nielsen-Saaf told The Real Deal last night that the building is now 75 percent sold. About 50 percent of those buyers are from Brooklyn, she added, with the others coming from Manhattan and beyond.

Units in the building have been selling for an average of roughly $1,100 per square foot, Nielsen-Saaf said, down from $1,400 to $1,500 per square foot before the financial crisis.

She added that there have already been a number of inquiries about the penthouses.

But other brokers groused that the penthouses are priced too high for the area. “That’s not a Park Slope price,” said one.

Attendees at the party included Gordon Hoppe, senior vice president and director of sales at Corcoran Sunshine Marketing Group; Frank Tamayo and Ken Evans of MetLife; Fern Kamins, a veteran Brooklyn broker who is now a senior sales director at MLBKaye International Realty; and Roberta Benzilio, Halstead Property’s executive director of sales for Brooklyn.