Toll’s son has eye for design at W’burg conversion

In Cayuga Capital Management’s restoration of a Williamsburg warehouse into a luxury rental building, the firm, led by the son of Toll Brothers Chairman Bob Toll, is taking care to ensure a beautiful architectural design, the Wall Street Journal said.

Unlike Toll Brothers’ City Living division, which the Journal accused of erecting bland glass and steel high rises (with the notable exception of the Touraine), Cayuga and Jake Toll have carefully considered plans for their conversion of the warehouse at 76 North 4th Street in Williamsburg into 83 units and 20,000 square feet of ground-floor retail. Cayuga picked up the site, originally slated for condominiums, from Anglo Irish Bank’s portfolio in 2010.

They are keeping the brick exterior, preserving glass-pane windows and arch-shaped window openings, and incorporating industrial features of their own — without falling trap to the cliches of “light bulbs hanging from exposed wires,” Toll said.

The end result of the $45 million restoration, Cayuga hopes, is a building that rents for $60 per square foot. It will have a rooftop garden, a barbecue pit and a bocce court. [WSJ]