Every time a bell rings, a new Brooklyn condo gets its wings — or a developer tries to wrestle one out of a Broken Angel.
That’s how some people responded to last month’s news that Clinton Hill’s Broken Angel, one of the city’s most eccentric architectural structures, would be developed into condos. Critics said the plan was emblematic of how Brooklyn is being overrun by pricey new housing.
If Broken Angel is emblematic of anything, though, it’s of the neighborhood it calls home. Like current-day Clinton Hill, the story of Broken Angel involves a hot real estate market, a vibrant network of local residents and an increasingly high profile.
Broken Angel was both the home and decades-long work-in-progress of artist Arthur Wood, who bought the base of the structure, a dilapidated tenement, for $2,000 in 1971. Thanks to Wood’s work on the building, it is now a hodge-podge of glass and steel additions that jut out and up at fanciful angles; its stained-glass windows are fashioned from materials the artist found on sidewalks.
The building gained national attention when it served as the backdrop to “Dave Chappelle’s Block Party.” Then, last October, it caught fire, and Wood and his wife were evicted. The Department of Buildings found Broken Angel in violation of a number of codes and deemed many of its additions illegal.
Partnering up
Wood could not pay for the work required to bring the structure up to code, so after first putting the building up for sale, he decided to team with a developer and construct condos inside Broken Angel.
“He brought in a local developer mostly to appease the courts,” said Michael Annunziata, the Massey Knakal sales director who was handling the sale of Broken Angel. “We put it on the market in October and got 25 offers for the property and its adjacent lot — up to $1.9 million — before he decided to develop it himself.”
Annunziata believes the development arrangement will benefit both Wood and his creation.
“It’s nice to see something unique,” he said. “If it’s done right it will have much success and preserve Wood’s original vision.”
Preserving Wood’s vision is exactly what Broken Angel’s developer Shahn Andersen says he wants to accomplish.
“When we’re finished it will be even more esoteric and outlandish than it is now,” said Andersen, who projects it will cost $3 million to renovate Broken Angel and develop the adjacent lot into a second Wood-designed structure Wood called the Sunflower Building. Andersen himself has rehabilitated several 19th-century brownstones in Brooklyn and Manhattan.
Andersen, who is financing the development, said that he and Wood will split the condo profits 50-50. “[Wood] is going to come out ahead,” he noted.
History of the ‘hood
The fire at Broken Angel, Wood’s eviction and his subsequent deal with Andersen were covered in several Brooklyn-centric blogs before the story was picked up by the New York Times and the Daily News. Real estate topics and other community issues concerning Clinton Hill, in fact, have birthed a lively virtual counterpart to the neighborhood (see below).
The non-virtual neighborhood has plenty of life on its own, though. Clinton Hill boasts a coveted supply of historic brownstones, a healthy rental market, several under-construction condominium projects and expanding retail development.
From the late 19th century until the early 20th century, Clinton Hill (situated between Fort Greene and Bedford-Stuyvesant) was home to Brooklyn’s richest industrialists. Oil executive Charles Pratt built several houses in what is now the neighborhood’s historic district, and founded the Pratt Institute in 1887.
In the past five years, Clinton Hill’s large stock of turn-of-the-century brownstones has become increasingly attractive to buyers looking for a cheaper alternative to Park Slope. Values in the neighborhood have lagged behind nearby areas in part because Clinton Hill is not well served by transportation; commuters must rely on the much-maligned G and C subway lines.
Still, “values have risen a lot in the past five years,” said Kingsley Duah, sales director at local brokerage Naucorp Properties. Duah said two-family houses in the area start at $850,000 and three-families are priced at $1.2 million and up. “The brownstones are good from an investment standpoint because there’s rapid appreciation,” said Duah.
Rental prices have also been rising.
“Rentals don’t stay on the market long,” said Sandra Sautner, an associate broker with Brown Harris Stevens. “It’s not booming, but it’s going strong.”
Sautner said rents on one-bedrooms in Clinton Hill range from $1,400 to $1,900; two-bedrooms go from $1,700 to $2,200; and three-bedrooms are $2,500 to $3,300.
Murder Avenue reborn
Rounding out Clinton Hill’s housing picture are several small- to medium-sized condominiums currently under construction, most of which are being built by local developers.
“There are no Boymelgreen-style developers in Clinton Hill,” said Marcus Renard, a project manager with the Developers Group, which is marketing the 18-unit 609 Myrtle.
The building, which will contain luxury finishes and sport a glass curtain wall, is on the border of Clinton Hill and Bed-Stuy, a border that brokers have been pushing eastward to capitalize on Clinton Hill’s better reputation.
Renard said one-bedrooms in the building are going for around $530 a square foot and two-bedrooms are selling for around $550 a square foot. The building is half sold since hitting the market last summer.
Renard was involved with sales of another Clinton Hill condo, the Spencer, about three years ago, and said prices are about 25 to 30 percent higher at 609 Myrtle. He said that while the hike reflects, in part, 609’s higher-end product, prices have risen substantially across the board.
He also said that most people in the neighborhood are welcoming the new condos.
“As you get more developments, there’s an influx of new businesses, and residents take more pride in their neighborhood,” he said.
The stretch that 609 Myrtle is rising on used to be referred to as “Murder Avenue,” but since 1999 the Myrtle Avenue Revitalization Project LLC has been working to attract businesses to the avenue.
In the past five years Myrtle has started to show signs of revitalization, with small restaurants and boutiques sprouting.
“Myrtle Avenue, like a lot of other commercial inner-city streets, had seen a lot of disinvestment,” said Blaise Backer, executive director of the Myrtle Avenue Brooklyn Partnership, which comprises the LLC and the Myrtle Avenue BID. “There was a high retail vacancy rate, boarded-up storefronts and lots of graffiti.”
Backer said retail rents on the avenue average in the low- to mid-$30-a-square-foot range, and that they have been on the rise.
“There’s always been a Main Street, mom-and-pop feel to Myrtle,” said Backer. “Now we’re starting to worry more about the displacement of businesses with values rising. There’s certainly room, though, for national anchors.”
Only the blogs know Brooklyn
When Robin Lester moved to Clinton Hill from Hell’s Kitchen nearly three years ago, she fell in love with her new neighborhood’s look, ethnic diversity and friendliness.
“People would say ‘Hi’ to me on the street,” said Lester. “In Hell’s Kitchen, the neighbors on my own floor would avert their eyes to avoid saying hello.”
Lester decided to start a blog, ClintonHillBlog.com, to track neighborhood goings-on and provide a forum for community members. She said that besides being a place for locals to discuss new businesses, buildings or to call for service improvements, the blog aids in “mystery solving.”
“There’s always something quirky to be seen or experienced in Clinton Hill,” she said. “Whether it be a rumored pet pig who gets walked on a leash or a strange junky car painted like a shark always parked on the street, mentioning these things answers questions and creates a communal feeling.”
Lester’s blog and others, like Brownstoner and Gowanus Lounge, tackle larger community issues and often break news stories days before newspapers.
“Brownstoner, as he lives in Clinton Hill, had brought a lot of attention to real estate in the nabe, as well as crime issues. I do know that after several posts about drug dealing on Grand Avenue, the police shut the block down,” said Lester. “Gowanus gives a lot of coverage to major development changes, like Atlantic Yards and Coney Island. I think the three of us complement one another nicely, as far as addressing the concerns and interests of Clinton Hill.”