Dive Brief:
- Brookfield Properties and joint venture partner Park Tower Group are planning to build two apartment rental towers, totaling $1 billion, as part of the 22-acre Greenpoint Landing development on the Brooklyn, New York, waterfront, according to GlobeSt.com.
- The two new buildings will include 1,240 units. The total price of the project, which is expected to begin construction in 2019, also covers an extension of the development's planned waterfront esplanade.
- Brookfield and Park Tower Group are already in the process of delivering two other rental buildings with 800 units, and leasing of apartments in the first of those two towers is expected to begin this summer. Once Greenpoint Landing is built out, it will offer 5,500 rental properties, a public waterfront, four acres of green space, a K-8 public school and retail space.
Dive Insight:
High Manhattan housing prices and a lack of affordable options there are driving developers to the still relatively affordable borough of Brooklyn.
Developer Jenel Management is underway with a 511-foot-tall residential and commercial mixed-use high-rise at 540 Fulton Street. Commercial development on the first eight floors will take up 96,592 square feet of the building's 330,000 square feet, and 720-square-foot rentals will occupy the remaining floors above. The current building is 65% bigger than what initial permits indicated back in 2016. There has been no word yet if any of the units will be designated "affordable."
Even though Brooklyn is affordable when compared to the price of setting up house in Manhattan ($3,965 per month), it's pricier to live there than in most U.S. markets. The Real Deal reported this month that April rent in the borough slipped to $2,688, a 1% drop from last year, but that Brooklyn was still the ninth-most expensive rental market in the nation. Therefore, competition is tough for affordable units. Slate Property Group, which manages an apartment building under construction not too far from 540 Fulton, launched a lottery earlier this month for those making 60% of the area median income who are interested in its 37 affordable units, according to Curbed New York.
Greenpoint Landing's rentals will relieve some of the pressure on the affordable market, but others have stepped in as well to provide below-market-rate units in Brooklyn. The nonprofit CAMBA recently opened a 101-unit, $56 million affordable housing building on the site of a parking lot in the borough's Brownsville area and part of the New York City Housing Authority's Van Dyke Houses.
