On Prospect Park, the 15-story condominium under construction on Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn, is a larger, more expansive version of architect Richard Meier’s three famous modern glass towers on the West Village waterfront at Perry and Charles streets.
“There is more space in Brooklyn,” observes Sean O’Brien, Meier’s project architect for the new building, “more room to breathe.”
But the question of how this modern structure works in the context of the historic monuments at Grand Army Plaza — the massive stone Brooklyn Public Library, the refurbished Brooklyn Museum and the Memorial Arch (modeled after the Arc de Triomphe in Paris), as well as the prewar co-op buildings and brownstones that line the surrounding streets — remains unanswered.
“That would depend on what architectural critic you are talking with,” says Mario Procida, who teamed up with Louis Greco to form SDS Procida Development Group, developer of the building along with Gordon Group Holdings. “The building is acontextual. Richard designs Richard Meier buildings. You know what you’re getting.”
The project architect offers another perspective. “One way to respect the history of a place is to contribute to it; to push a site to evolve with architecture whose material reflects the technology of today while formally respecting its surrounds. To do this is to extend the timeline of a place — to keep it current and vital,” says O’Brien.
And upscale. Apartments average around $1,200 a square foot, and top prices are as high as $6 million, so the 114-unit luxury building will push price points in the already gentrified Park Slope/Prospect Heights area.
“Having an architect of Meier’s caliber doing a building here in Brooklyn confirms that downtown Brooklyn has been annexed into Manhattan,” says Sal Cappi, vice president of Fillmore Real Estate.
The most expensive properties in the area so far, he says, are smaller conversions in Carroll Gardens, Cobble Hill and Brooklyn Heights, which are going for between $900 and $1,000 a square foot.
“The Wall Street guys are finally realizing that it’s easier to get to work from downtown Brooklyn than from the East or West side of Manhattan,” adds Cappi.
Almost half the units in the building are one-bedrooms, which will likely attract a fair number of Wall Streeters and other young professionals. Kelly Mack, president of Corcoran Sunshine Marketing Group, sales agent for the project, says, “buyers will be people committed to living in Brooklyn but who are looking for a full-service building.”
These are likely to include Brooklyn empty nesters who can trade their high-upkeep Park Slope brownstones — which have appreciated astronomically in recent years — for designer showcase apartments with luxury amenities, such as a 24-hour doorman, a concierge and valet parking.
Greco says that approximately 40 percent of buyers in downtown Brooklyn traditionally come from Manhattan. “We actually expect that percentage to be slightly higher for On Prospect Park,” he says.
The Manhattan crowd would be “design-savvy, sophisticated people” from downtown. “People who have an appreciation for architecture as art,” Mack says.
In a nod to the art-buying crowd, the building put its “Sales Gallery” at 78 Leonard Street in Tribeca. The office is a showcase for the design and materials of the apartments, which sales manager Cheryl Nielsen-Saaf calls “minimalist, clean and calming.”
The apartment layouts feature open kitchens as well as living and dining areas. The four-inch oak plank panel floors flow throughout the apartments, even in kitchen areas, to enhance the expansive feeling. Appliances, by Sub-Zero and Gaggenau, are hidden behind white furniture-quality doors and drawers. A sculpture-like white island with a Corian countertop provides the only separation from the living area.
Opened up with exterior glass walls, the apartments will be suffused with light. The partitions that form the walls of the master bedrooms fall two feet short of the exterior skin and will be connected to the glass exterior wall by a two-foot translucent panel that conducts light, which maintains the open design feel and provides privacy — useful because the building fronts on a traffic circle.
Taking a page from Meier’s 165 Charles Street project — the third of the towers built on the West Village waterfront — bathrooms will be glass-walled. They will also have an oversized marble soaking tub from which one can see all the way to the Manhattan skyline on the higher floors.
The building has a wide frontage on Plaza Street looking onto the Memorial Arch. Most units will have private balconies. From the sixth to the 14th floor, the views take in the expanse of Prospect Park. The building sets back at the eighth floor, providing units at that level with terraces as large as 1,900 square feet.
The building offers 46 one-bedrooms from 962 to 1,477 square feet that range from $790,000 to $1.5 million; 43 two-bedrooms from 1,137 to 2,418 square feet that range from $990,000 to $3.65 million; 17 three-bedrooms from 1,825 to 2,258 square feet that range from $2.5 million to $3.6 million; and seven penthouses from 1,243 to 3,408 square feet that range from $2.8 million to $6 million.
The penthouses will have 360-degree views from private rooftop decks that include Prospect Park, New York Harbor, and Brooklyn and Manhattan cityscapes.
Another amenity — access to the 30,000-square-foot Eastern Athletic Club, which features a rooftop terrace and swimming pool in an adjoining building — was granted to the developer with the purchase of the site. The building rests on the former parking lot for the historic Union Temple of Brooklyn, the first Jewish congregation in the borough. The congregation rents its top floors to the fitness club.
“It was a complicated, painful contract negotiation that took a year,” recalls Procida. “It involved delivering things for the Eastern Athletic Club and for the Temple during construction, and subsequent to completion over and above the cash consideration.”
The developer will build an upgraded lobby entrance for the club and a private elevator for residents of On Prospect Park. Membership is included in the condominium carrying charges.
The building also will have a rooftop garden with views of Prospect Park and the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, a parking garage with valet service and a 3,500-square-foot residents’ lounge with catering kitchen, screening room and Wi-Fi access.
The project is a beneficiary of the 421-a tax abatement, a program started by the city in the early 1970s to spur housing development. The program allows developers to pay taxes on the value of the lot they’re building on rather than on the new property itself for 10 years.
The abatement program costs the city about $300 million a year and often subsidizes luxury development. Recently, Mayor Bloomberg proposed reform that would require developers to attach some affordable housing to their properties to bring the subsidy program in line with its original intent.
On Prospect Park opened on Nov. 2 and had eight contracts out within a week.
Richard Meier’s last building in New York City, 165 Charles, opened early in 2005 and sold at an average of $2,500 a square foot, from $1.5 million for a studio to $20 million for the large penthouse with an 1,800-square-foot terrace.
“Compared to Manhattan,” says Procida, “this is a bargain.”