Eli Karp’s Hello Living has been pushing the frontiers of new luxury condo development in Brooklyn, with a pair of projects in what is practically East Flatbush.
But the other day, YIMBY stopped by one of their projects in a more prime part of Brooklyn: 834 Sterling Place, near the corner of Nostrand Avenue in white hot Crown Heights.
Called Hello Sterling, the seven-story building has topped out and has had its glass façade panels installed on its edges, bracketing the developer’s signature balconies. Designed by Zambrano Architectural Design, the project also has a number of green features, as is common in all of Karp’s buildings. In addition to having no PTACs – a wasteful and ugly form of air conditioning – the building also has triple-glazed Austrian-made windows and doors, with superior energy efficiency and soundproofing.
The 54 units at 834 Sterling Place will be spread across nearly 48,000 square feet of space, for an average condo size of 880 square feet, with six units on the ground floor and eight units on each level above that.
There will be open air parking on the ground level with 27 spaces, or exactly the number required by zoning. While there are frequently commercial uses dating back to before the 1961 zoning code spilling out onto the side streets in Crown Heights, the current zoning does not allow this, and so there will be no ground level retail.
Hello Living picked up the land – with 145 feet of frontage on Sterling Place, and a small 27-foot lot out back on St. John’s Place from which to draw air rights – for just $3 million in 2012. At just $63 per buildable square foot, this is a good half to two-thirds off what such an assemblage might trade for today. The investment was particularly well-timed, with the land bought at a time when it was being priced for cheap rental builders, whereas condos are now fetching $1,000 a square foot elsewhere in Crown Heights.
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