One Brooklyn Condo Demand `Killed' as Market Slides (Update2)
By Sharon L. Lynch and Jonathan Keehner
Nov. 3 (
Bloomberg) -- Nowhere is the high-water mark of New York real estate more visible than the former Jehovah's Witnesses distribution facility at One Brooklyn Bridge Park.
The 14-story condominium complex shattered the borough's price ceiling when real estate entrepreneur Elizabeth Stribling agreed in March to pay $6.05 million to live there. Now, two- thirds of the 449 units in the 1.2-million-square-foot building remain unsold, testament to the financial excesses brewed up across the East River in the Wall Street canyons framed by One Brooklyn's floor-to-ceiling windows.
``We were killed,'' said Robert Levine, chief executive officer of RAL Companies & Affiliates LLC, who masterminded the $550 million waterfront project with views of the Brooklyn Bridge and the Statue of Liberty, along with amenities such as virtual golf, a movie theater and a planned 85-acre park. ``We have negotiated and done some contracts, but people are clearly much more aware of the current economy.''
So are his backers. Levine's partner in the Brooklyn Heights development, 10 blocks south of the Jehovah's Witnesses headquarters that abuts the Brooklyn Bridge, is a $300 million fund run by American International Group Inc.'s real-estate investment unit, a business that is itself on the block as New York-based AIG sheds assets to pay an $85 billion government loan.
Wall Street Layoffs Just when sales at One Brooklyn should have taken off after New York real estate's annual June-August lull, Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. went bankrupt, Merrill Lynch & Co. was forced to sell itself and Congress authorized a $700 billion bailout of the nation's financial system. About 160,000 New Yorkers may lose their jobs, including 45,000 in finance and related businesses, according to an estimate by Governor David Paterson. .......(more)
The complete piece is at:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=aEWE_9YUNBkI&refer=home
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
