A $7 million-plus sale of a 14th-floor penthouse at Dumbo’s Clock Tower Condominium, a former corrugated cardboard factory built in 1915, has broken Brooklyn’s most expensive condo record.
The new record comes just two months after Elizabeth Stribling, founder of Stribling & Associates, set the record by buying a $6.6 million penthouse apartment at One Brooklyn Bridge Park, which she is marketing.
Karen Heyman, senior vice president of Sotheby’s International Realty’s Downtown Office, told The Real Deal that two West Coast men working in the financial industry bought the Clock Tower penthouse. The apartment had listed for $7.8 million, but Heyman could only confirm that the price topped $7 million.
The 3,200 square-foot, three-bedroom, two-and-a-half-bathroom apartment had been on the market since August 2006, when it listed with Sotheby’s for $10.5 million. Heyman said the former owners, Bliss Spa founders Thierry Boue and Marcia Kilgore, weren’t “really particularly motivated at that time to sell” and rented the penthouse out for a year while the price was cut repeatedly.
Heyman said the buyers plan to use the penthouse — last renovated at least seven years ago — as a pied-a-terre, and would begin their own renovations before moving in.
“They have a place here [in Manhattan] but they absolutely love Dumbo,” said Heyman.
Developer David Walentas, known for turning Dumbo into a residential neighborhood, lives in the 15th floor penthouse. Walentas bought the building for just $6 a square foot in 1981.
Heyman said the 16th floor, with views of the city behind a glass-faced clock, is under renovation and “will definitely be the most expensive unit in Brooklyn” when sold. It is expected to sell for up to $30 million.
Hayman said she just sold a ninth-floor condo for $3.99 million, the second-highest sale in the building, without listing it. She said the buyer is a woman “who loves Dumbo and wants to be close to her grandchildren.”
Another condo is in contract for $2.87 million, to a German looking for a pied-a-terre.
A three-bedroom, three-bathroom condo on the ninth floor that sold for $3.16 million in March 2007 is back on the market for $4.3 million.