The light grey stucco building with steel accents at 270 21st Street stands out in this quiet Brooklyn neighborhood of brick and wood frame row houses. It’s the lone example of modern architecture on this South Slope street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, and one of the first green homes in Brooklyn. When two of its three condominium units sold in April for about $962,000 each, it proved that green begets green, even if it takes quite a bit of time to bring such a project to market.
For developer Andrew Giancola, president of Giancola Contracting, the road to energy efficiency was lined with years of
termites, foundation problems and an ever-ballooning budget, among other headaches.
Giancola’s experience mirrors that of countless other small developers whose stories rarely get told, though a look at the obstacles they face to get their projects built and turn a profit offers a compelling snapshot of what it is like to be an eco-conscious developer in the city.
A third-generation Brooklyn builder, Giancola thought he’d found a bargain in a neighborhood not largely discovered by real estate developers in 2003, when he bought a dilapidated, termite-infested house for $485,000 in Greenwood Heights, located west of Green-Wood Cemetery and now also known as the South Slope.
He’d been a contractor for five years, with plenty of family support. His grandfather, Michael Giancola, and his father, Michael Giancola, Jr., were both builders in Brooklyn. His father had also overseen construction projects for New York City public schools, and always offered advice and encouragement at Sunday dinners, Giancola said.
But he soon learned that making a profit on the house would be harder for his small, family-run company than he ever anticipated. Giancola planned to spend one year and about $150,000 to $200,000 turn the house into three 1,100-square-foot condominiums. He didn’t know then what they would be worth, but he planned to sell two and make enough profit to pay for the third, which he’d keep for himself.
“My goal was to own my own apartment free and clear,” he said.
This was his largest and most expensive project to date, and he partnered with his cousin, Lawrence Vento, president of Ridge Iron Works in Brooklyn.
He found out quickly that the house had more problems than termites. It leaned about 30 degrees because it had been moved by a previous owner and hadn’t been placed on the new foundation properly.
“It was in terrible condition,” Giancola said. “When you go to the third floor, you felt like you were drunk.”
He had to raze the house and start over, delaying the project into 2004. Giancola and Vento had tried to fund the project with their own money, but now they had to come up with another $1 million. They took out loans and asked their friends and family for help.
“I thought it would cost $500,000, maybe $600,000,” he said. “But the budget just kept growing and growing.”
He hired Coggan & Crawford, a husband-and-wife architecture and design team he’d worked with on previous residential projects, to design the building. They convinced him to try something different: build Energy Star-certified condos that use 30 percent less energy than typical homes. Energy Star is a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency program that helps homeowners save money and minimize air pollution.
Other benefits of an Energy Star home include improved indoor air quality, soundproofing, durability and a higher resale value.
But when Giancola started out on his first green project, he was “forging new territory and consequently didn’t have a real market to compare to,” he said.
Much of the building’s lighting is fluorescent, and the carpet is made of recycled material. The building materials require little maintenance. The floors are unfinished concrete, and the unfinished steel accents require no paint.
Metal glazing reflects heat, and overhangs provide shade. All the glass is double-insulated and filled with argon gas to reduce heat loss. Windows and doorframes have thermal breaks that prevent the transfer of hot and cold air.
Giancola worked with the architects to ensure that the condos harmonized with the neighborhood’s architecture. Windows look out on neighboring St. John the Evangelist Church. Giancola painted an iron fence along the back of the lot red to match the red iron fence outside the church.
By 2005, the condos were finished and ready for sale. Still, they still had a hard time getting an accurate appraisal, Giancola said. St. John’s Condominiums across the street had hit the market, and they sold for close to $650 a square foot.
After consulting with a real estate appraiser, Giancola decided he could sell his condos for about $875 a square foot, given their design and energy efficiency. But they sat vacant into 2006, thanks to delays in getting approval from the state attorney general’s office, which must approve all condo offering plans.
During that time, more developers discovered the neighborhood, and real estate agents were calling it the South Slope. Older homes were being replaced by new higher-rise apartments and condos at a frenzied pace.
“The neighborhood was going crazy,” Giancola said. “It was kind of like a free-for-all.”
Long-time residents soon became anxious, and the city council rezoned the neighborhood in June 2006 to ensure that new construction projects fit more closely with the traditional look and feel of the neighborhood.
City officials also decided to inspect new building plans in the neighborhood, including Giancola’s, to make sure they adhered to the new zoning regulations. Parts of the building’s interior and exterior had to be changed or added before the plans were approved, Giancola said.
When they were finally were approved by the city, Chris Giancola, Andrew’s older brother, who has a background in marketing and advertising, created a market plan to sell the condos. Chris Giancola hired a photographer to take promotional pictures, bought advertising and posted sale notices on Web sites such as Craigslist.
One of the condos sold in April 2007, but the other sat vacant for several months until Chris Giancola hired Patrick Brennan, a broker with the Corcoran Group. Brennan, a California native, understood what the project was all about, Chris Giancola said.
“He just got it,” he said.
Both condos sold for about $962,000 each. Their energy efficiency is just one reason why Jin Pak and his wife Alexandra Clarke bought one. Even their attorney asked about buying one when they signed the papers, Pak said.
Their electricity bills are about a third less than they were at their former apartment on the Upper East Side, Pak said.
There’s still work to be done on the building, though. The condo Andrew Giancola will occupy on the ground floor still isn’t finished because he still needs more money, he said.
The building has won awards from the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce and the Brooklyn chapter of the American Institute of Architects for its design and energy efficiency.
“We felt really humbled,” Chris Giancola said.
But not deterred — Giancola has since built another Energy Star project, the Cobble Hill Lofts at 262 Bond Street, and is working on another project at 272 21st Street, next door to his first foray into green building.
“Maybe we can install solar panels that would go across both the buildings’ roofs,” Andrew Giancola said.