Talk to almost anyone affiliated with Brooklyn’s Prospect Heights, and their unofficial line on Vanderbilt Avenue is that it’s what Cobble Hill’s Smith Street was 10 years ago. By that, they mean it’s primed to become the local go-to stretch for everything from a cup of coffee and a seat outside to a locally sourced gourmet dinner. And residential developers are also a big part of this thoroughfare’s land grab.
“Pretty much weekly, I see someone trying to open something up,” says Andrew Schoengold, who bought in Prospect Heights’ Modern Post.
Activity on Vanderbilt — which in the last couple of years has been made more user-friendly with the addition of a grassy median and bike lanes — includes last summer’s opening of the Milk Bar café and a forthcoming outpost of Pequena, a Fort Greene Mexican-food mainstay.
But the surest sign of all is the imminent opening of the Vanderbilt, a gastropub created by Saul Bolton. Bolton is the chef who opened Saul on Smith Street 10 years ago, the effective catalyst for the wave of new restaurants that have made Smith Street what it is today.
“When we moved to Smith Street, before [opening] Saul, people said, ‘What the hell are you doing? You should be living in Brooklyn Heights or Park Slope.’ They said, ‘Smith is dingy’ . . . It wasn’t desirable,” says Bolton. “But the housing stock is gorgeous; the audience was there.”
Bolton sees on Vanderbilt and in the rest of Prospect Heights (which spans from Atlantic Avenue to Eastern Parkway on the north and south and Washington Avenue to Flatbush Avenue on the east and west) the same thing he saw 10 years ago on Cobble Hill’s Smith Street. Namely, a relatively affordable neighborhood with beautiful homes.
“It’s a good time to go [to Prospect Heights] because we can fit in,” says Bolton. “Coming to Smith now, there are 40 restaurants there. There’s a dearth of services [in Prospect Heights] still, where you’re not just joining the crowd. You’re filling a need.”
According to Peggy Aguayo, who has been selling homes in the area for 20-plus years, the brownstones in Prospect Heights, which are even bigger and grander and on deeper lots than those in Park Slope, are priced between $1.5 million and $2.3 million. But the bigger story might be the area’s condo boom.
In addition to historic brownstone stock (much of which was recently landmarked), there are more than a dozen condo projects that recently opened or are on the way. They include 272 St. Marks Ave.; On Prospect Park, Richard Meier’s tower at Eastern Parkway across from Prospect Park; Vantage238, at 238 St. Marks Ave.; the Modern Post at 655 Washington Ave.; the Washington at 35 Underhill Ave.; 660 Bergen; and 659 Bergen — to name just a few.
And despite the dicey real estate market, the buildings seem to be doing fairly well. The past six months saw 660 Bergen sell 18 of its 24 units, which range in size from 830 to 1,382 square feet and are priced from $459,000 to $799,000. At the Modern Post, six of 10 apartments priced from $379,000 to $789,000 have sold in 10 months. Of Vantage238’s 20 units priced between $625 and $800 per square foot, 10 are in contract after four months of sales.
The draw for many has been the price. Aguayo estimates that condos in the neighborhood average between $550 and $625 a square foot — less than what buyers can find in Park Slope and Brooklyn Heights.
“I moved here because I found a beautiful, affordable apartment,” says Sabrina Godfrey, co-owner with Alexander Hall of Milk Bar.
“We started looking in Downtown Brooklyn because we liked the development plan and being close to the promenade — and DUMBO,” says Oscar Aarts, an investment banker who relocated with his wife, Cherie Aarts Coley (CEO of Poloppo.com, which sells T-shirts emblazoned with children’s art), and their daughter to New York last year.
“But we found that anything we liked was over $700,000. Our budget was more around $600,000.”
Enter Prospect Heights. The couple found a one-plus-bedroom unit at Vantage238 for $585,000.
“It was by far the best building and the best value that we’d seen,” Aarts says.
The neighborhood’s affordability has many buyers willing to overlook the possibility of the neighborhood changing massively if and when the much bandied about Atlantic Yards ever finds its footing. And with the recent investment of Russian billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov in the Nets, it’s looking more likely than ever that at least an NBA stadium will be built.
“It’s not even on my radar,” says finance guy/Brooklyn blogger Kenny Eng, who bought a 1,450-square-foot three-bedroom in the Washington for $545,000 three years ago. “The part [of the Atlantic Yards site] that’s closer to me, on Vanderbilt, will probably be a parking lot for the construction workers, so I’m not too thrilled about that.”
After a moment, he adds: “That whole project is 10 to 15 years off, even more. Who knows? I could be gone by then.”