The Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce last night hosted the 2012 Building Brooklyn Awards honoring 12 new developments across the borough. Many of the honorees at the event, which was held at the newly renovated Liberty Warehouse — a pre-Civil War structure on Pier 41 in Red Hook — shared an emphasis on affordability, community use and sustainability.
Although the ceremony tended to reward progressive approaches to development, the Residential Housing award for a single-family residence went to a celebrity home — the Atrium House, a former garage at 19 Powers Street in Williamsburg built for Steve Burns, the original host of the children’s show “Blue’s Clues.” Meanwhile the Multi-Family Residential Housing award went to 220 Water in Dumbo for its 134 condominium units in a renovated 19th-century warehouse. The award for Residential Low-Rise Housing was presented to Third + Bond, a modern 44-unit building at 103-115 Third Street in Carroll Gardens. The award for Multi-family Affordable Housing went to Liberty Apartments, a 43-unit apartment building in East New York.
Other winners included Jane’s Carousel in Brooklyn Bridge Park, which won the Recreation Facility award for the restoration of the 1922 merry-go-round there; the Red Hook Initiative, a new community center serving over low-income youth, which took home the Community Development Award; and Dekalb Market, the massive open-air commercial space in Downtown Brooklyn, which won in the competitive Retail category.
The annual event brought out several hundred people, including brokers, developers and members of the Chamber. Attendees included Fifth Avenue Committee executive director Michelle de la UZ, Toll Brothers City Living division president David Von Spreckelsen — both honorees — and Gregory O’Connell principal of the Red Hook development firm the O’Connell Organization. Guests drank cocktails on Liberty Warehouse’s 3,000-foot waterside patio, which boasts views of the World Trade Center and the Statue of Liberty.