GREENPOINT

Be prepared to untangle some long spools of red tape.

A common refrain among New York apartment dwellers is that there's never enough space for anything: not enough closets, not enough cabinets, not enough counters. But that won't be the case for anyone who snaps up a condo unit in 170 West Street in Greenpoint. New York YIMBY got a first look at renderings for the six-story project designed by StudiosC Architects. According to the real estate trade publication, "although 170 West was filed as two buildings, it will look like a single, 70-foot-tall structure." So just how big are the units? All 15 apartments will be divided over 22,770 square feet of residential space — that's an average of 1,518 square feet each. YIMBY adds that "there won’t be any parking, and the developer likely filed the development as two buildings to sidestep the city’s parking rules, which would call for seven parking spots in a 15-unit building."

Rendering by StudiosC Architects 

Speaking of condos, they may be heading to Greenpoint in the nearish future. Brownstowner reports that the New Warsaw Bakery Company, located at 585 Manhattan Avenue, has sold for $8.7 million. Although no demolition permits have been filed for the two-story brick building, "plans call for a seven-story, 14-unit building with two towers." Brownstowner guesses it may be condos. Although this is more good news to potential condo buyers, it's a little sad to that it's at the cost of losing "a piece of Polish Greenpoint" — indeed, part of what makes the neighborhood so charming in the first place. But you know what they say. Location, location, location — and it's little wonder that Chatham Development Company snapped up the 10,000-square-foot piece of prime real estate that stretches all the way through to Lorimer Street between Nassau and Driggs avenues. 

In 1950, a young Jay Silverzweig, the owner of a plastics business, watched electricity costs take a toll on his neighbors in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Two fellow entrepreneurs, who used steam to clean rags, finally decided to get off the electric grid and worked out a cogeneration system (or CHP, i.e., "combined heat and power") that uses natural gas to produce electrical and thermal power.

More than 60 years later, those early experiments in alternative energy were lurking somewhere in Silverzweig's mind as he spearheaded the $1.5 million cogen project at the Brevoort East, a 26-story, 325-unit cooperative at 20 East 9th Street in Greenwich Village.