326 Melrose fits well with its neighbors, a former factory and new rental building. The units are flooded with sunlight. — Photo, left, by Jeremy Sapienza, all others courtesy of AptsandLofts.com
It was just about a year and a half ago when the condominium at 326 Melrose Street was caught in the maelstrom we’ll euphemistically call The Janet Corona Incident. In the crossfire, the development itself was dubbed by some “the Hep of Poop” after some of the fevered ravings of the agent then in charge of sales. It’s a shame, too, because it is nothing of the sort — it’s a lovely, bright, well-laid out collection of apartments. Obviously, Ms. Corona is off the job, and the ubiquitous AptsandLofts are on. The building, once to be called Lumbini Garden, now simply goes by its address. Agent Jennifer Lee said she’s not aware of the Corona controversy, so sadly we have no further details.
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At only eight units, it’s small — contextual, one might say — and aside from the facade’s modern design, it fits well on the block with such buildings as a brick former factory, older tenements, and another new rental building right next door. The area has been full of construction activity in the past few years, with developers utilizing lots that had been vacant for decades, including nearby condominiums, market-rate rental infill, and subsidized homeownership and rentals built by local community-based organization Ridgewood Bushwick Senior Citizen’s Council.
In addition to a large ground-floor studio for $299,000, the building mostly comprises one-bedrooms with modern appointments, including central air and washer and dryer in-unit, priced from $295,000 to $449,000. Oversized moldings and other classic details ground the high-ceilinged spaces and warm up the contemporary kitchen fixtures. The bedrooms, though small, have a wall of glass that opens onto an ample balcony which on the upper floors affords sweeping views of Bushwick and Manhattan in the distance. The rear ground-floor unit is a duplex with a private yard, and the front top-floor apartment has a large roof deck and double-height ceilings with skylights over the kitchen area.
Web designer Christoff Frazier recently signed a contract for a unit at 326 Melrose, having stumbled upon the building after seeing a development nearby.
“I didn’t know a whole lot about Bushwick before I found the apartment,” he said. “I really love the neighborhood, it reminds me a lot of home — San Francisco.”
Frazier thinks 326 is higher quality than similar developments he’s seen in Brooklyn, and the builders’ “attention to detail” — plus the fact that the apartments have gas in the kitchen, a rarity in new construction — sold him on the place.
If it seems strange for the developer to follow through with selling these units instead of, like the Castle Braid, reverting to rentals, AptsandLofts has inspiration in the nearby 38 Wilson. Four units there are now closed and seven more are under contract, thanks to the current and previous White House’s doctoring of the mortgage markets. FHA backing, which Lee says 326 Melrose is now seeking, allows buyers to put down just 3.5% and pay a low interest rate, and it is only available for units under $729,000 — making Bushwick condominiums attractive to people working with a small down payment.
So while the economy continues to seek its equilibrium, it still makes sense to buy for those who plan to stick around in New York for a while, especially with the current government incentives. Time will tell if these programs are simply blowing air into a still-deflating bubble, but in the meantime, relatively affordable — and very attractive — Bushwick condos like 326 Melrose will probably sell out.
sjp December 18th, 2009 at 2:04 pm
it will be unfortunate for the real estate market when the tax credit expires.
hopefully these developments sell out before then, or else there will be more unwanted rentals in the neighb (as if 144 castle braid shitstains aren’t enough)
tenants have rights December 23rd, 2009 at 1:17 pm
The construction activity occurring in the 6+ unit buildings on Melrose Street is a clear example of the active destruction of affordable housing in Bushwick. Landlords are driving out the longtime rent-stabilized and rent-controlled tenants, renovating the buildings, and then increasing the rents. This website should really take a more critical approach to gentrification… Instead of giving so much positive coverage to the Bushwick real estate boom you could raise awareness about how people are unjustly being forced from their homes.
vertigo January 3rd, 2010 at 5:12 pm
“Tenants right,” you should make a blog of your own if you want to push the idea of housing as a right. I’d like a right to an apartment that other people pay for, but I know that eventually, that someone’s gonna have to be me. I came to the city with much the same ideas as you do: The rich landlords are gouging the poor, so much of our money goes to rent, all of our hurry and hustling is just to survive. I figured the surest way to avoid that trouble was to work and buy my own building so that i didn’t have to struggle like that if I wanted to live here. And so I did, I bought a building in Bushwick (my family helped, we’d been saving since we immigrated here). I’ve come to understand now that the rents that people pay (and complain to me about) are actually not money I make. The rents go to pay a PORTION of the cost of the building (including the property taxes that pay for other people’s low-income housing). The rest, I pay by working more than full-time. Actually, rents mask the true inefficiencies in the system. Note: most people in apartments do not pay for their water, it’s required that landlords provide heat and hot water. So if someone uses a lot of water, then everyone in the building has to pay, and that cost is rolled into your rent. The city has 3 different agencies that fine you for garbage that OTHER people leave in front of your building. Each has a different fee (one requires that you show up to court, and then they impose a fee). All that rent? Goes to the city. If you are renting, you are agreeing with your landlord that he provides you an apartment, and you are paying for (a portion of) it, not that you can live there forever and pay less than the cost of your living there. If you really want to lower the cost of living and rent, pay attention to the way our corrupt politicians are mismanaging the system. Rent control and bureaucracy is distorting the cost of housing and living in the city.
I have one tenant who totally disregards instructions from pest control, and as a result the whole building has to be visited by pest control every month, which costs everyone in their rent. If I was rent controlled, I would be forced to allow them to stay, while everyone else in the building suffers. How many times have you heard about low-income and rent controlled conditions being miserable and roach infested? You wonder why?
On a different note, I’m gonna miss the hep of poop jokes
sophia January 3rd, 2010 at 10:21 pm
this position on gentrification makes sense to me….
“Low-income households actually seem less likely to move from gentrifying neighborhoods than from other communities,” said Frank Braconi, co-author of a similar research project, the New York gentrification study by the Citizens Housing and Planning Council of New York.
It may be convenient for community leaders, student groups, and activists to make a villain out of ‘gentrification,’ as their way of fearing a future in which their advocacy for the chronic poor is rendered irrelevant by the rising tide of economic growth. In fact, the disingenuous cries for the ‘preservation’ of the present inner-city communities by activists and some neighborhood leaders have to be looked upon as a way of preserving their own influence over the business of poverty, oppression, and victimhood.
What benefit is there in impeding a massive and wide-reaching improvement of the entire economic and social structure of a community? Isn’t this precisely what neighborhood leaders have called for since the Great Society? Isn’t this the end result they would all wish for their disenfranchised constituents? Rather than condemning Harlem to a state of perpetual stagnation-defined by broad tracts of public housing and widespread poverty-wouldn’t a new model of economic growth hold more promise?
That is the very question that such tenants’ groups, activists, and leaders, should consider before they condemn-without restraint-any wide-ranging, comprehensive upgrading in the social and economic conditions of American cities. They can continue to mistakenly characterize gentrification as a perverse process of social and economic Darwinism, or they can make an honest assessment about the critical and substantive benefits realized by all residents of a community undergoing positive change: jobs, better municipal services, decent places to live, thriving commerce, and the hope that a whole community can start stepping out of poverty once and for all.
Richard L. Cravatts, Ph.D. is director of Boston University’s Program in Book and Magazine Publishing at the Center for Professional Education.