Our favorite buildings in this fine world were all constructed long before we were born.
Still, it can be a splendid thing to witness the creation of a new building.
As long as construction doesn’t entail the destruction of preservation-worthy properties or the displacement of Brooklynites from their homes, it’s intriguing to watch a project take shape over long months. When there’s finally a finished building, a place where people live and making a living, we can look at it and recall that legions of workers labored in all kinds of weather to shape steel, stone and concrete into an edifice.
In the case of 7 DeKalb Ave., zinc is on that list as well. It’s the façade material on this nearly completed rental-apartment tower at City Point.
“We love the zinc façade,” Aron Gooblar, vice president of Washington Square Partners, told Eye on Real Estate during a recent property tour. “It’s unique. It will age well.”
Washington Square Partners co-owns 7 DeKalb Ave. with Acadia Realty Trust and developer BFC Partners. Also, Washington Square Partners and Acadia Realty Trust jointly ground-lease the City Point site from the City of New York.
City Point is Downtown Brooklyn’s mixed-use mega-development, situated on Fulton Street where the Albee Square Mall formerly stood. When fully built — including an apartment tower whose construction has not begun — City Point will be 1.9 million square feet in size.
There is a nearly completed 100 percent market-rate rental apartment building at City Point. It’s called City Tower.
And a retail complex on City Point’s bottom floors, which are still under construction, will be the home of numerous businesses including Alamo Drafthouse Cinema — a movie theater with seat-side booze and food service that’s expected to open in the summer. It will also house DeKalb Market Hall, which will be filled with food vendors chosen by Anna Castellani, founder of DUMBO’s popular gourmet grocer Foragers.
The very first residential tenants to move into the development recently arrived at 440-unit City Tower, which is also known as Tower 2 or 336 Flatbush Ave. Extension. Its developer is the Brodsky Organization.
Open Houses just started
At 7 DeKalb Ave., 200 of the apartments are affordable units for low-income and middle-income tenants. A staggering number of applicants signed up for the lottery that will determine who gets to rent them.
The other 50 apartments in the tower are market-rate units.
This building is also known as Tower 1 or 70 Fleet St.
The first tenants at 7 DeKalb began paying rent on March 1, and are in the process of moving in, Gooblar said.
Corcoran Group and Great Jones Realty — a firm headed by BFC Partners’ founder Donald Capoccia — serve as the exclusive leasing and marketing agents for 7 DeKalb’s market-rate apartments.
Eighteen of these units were made available for rent in January. Some were leased before the building received a temporary certificate of occupancy, Gooblar said — tenants rented them without being allowed to visit the building’s furnished model apartments.
Temporary certificates of occupancy were recently issued. The first Open Houses were held on the weekend of March 5 and 6.
“What we’re hearing from people coming through is that they really want to live here because it’s City Point,” Gooblar said. They consider the movie theater, DeKalb Market Hall and Trader Joe’s, which is going to be one of the retail tenants, as attractive amenities.
