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It’s not every day that New Yorkers turn down a cash offer of $130 million. For this reason, the Brooklyn Heights Association has bestowed its prestigious Good Neighbor Award on the shareholders of the co-op at 75 Henry Street, who last month turned down a developer’s offer for their commercial space that would have made each of them at least $120,000 richer.
 
“They listened to the concerns of their neighbors,” presenter Tom Stewart told Brooklyn Paper. “This award is given in recognition of their true community spirit."

Many in the neighborhood were concerned that Anbau Enterprises’s proposal to erect a 40-story condo tower on the co-op’s Pineapple Walk commercial site would block views, increase congestion, reduce property values and otherwise make life in Brooklyn Heights a little bit less worth living.

By a vote of 191-112, the shareholders at 75 Henry Street agreed with those concerns and turned down Anbau’s millions. Priceless.

In a move that goes sharply against the grain of recent history, the shareholders in a Brooklyn Heights co-op have voted against allowing their board to pursue the sale of their commercial property to a condo developer who was offering $130 million.

High-end Manhattan condo developer DDG is making its first foray across the East River to Brooklyn to undertake its first conversion project. Working with Westbrook Partners, DDG plans to convert the former Standish Arms Hotel in Brooklyn Heights into a luxury condominium.

Westbrook and DDG purchased the elegant 12-story, 120-unit building from Taurus Investment Holdings last summer for $60 million, Crain’s reports. Taurus had converted the Standish, located at 169 Columbia Heights, from a hotel to luxury rental apartments in 2008.

The condo conversion will be DDG’s eighth development in the city. The company is known for luxury residential buildings that feature handmade bricks from Denmark as a design signature.