Rendering of 74-76 South 2nd Street via Investmates and Google Earth aerial showing project's location
In recent years, Investmates and INOA Architecture have staked out northern Brooklyn as their home turf for medium-density, high-end residential development. The latest effort from the architect-developer duo is in progress in Williamsburg, where two numbered lots at 74 and 76 South 2nd Street will hold three curvy-niched, townhouse-style condos (it remains to be seen how the house number issue will be handled).
Based on the neighborhood’s $1,233 per square foot condo price average, each of the generously-sized, nearly 3,000-square-foot properties will likely run somewhere from $3.5 million to as steep as $5 million or higher. Recent sales figures at the similarly-composed Wythe Lane Townhouses nearby sold for more than $4.5 million in 2016. Other factors, such 25-foot-deep private backyards, roof terraces, and two-block distance to the new promenade at Domino Park, also speak in favor for competitive pricing.
74 South 2nd Street. Credit: Investmates
Townhouses of Wythe Lane where individual townhouses sold north of $4.5 million in 2016. Images credit to KUB Capital
Section of a typical home at The Townhouses of Wythe Lane
The rake-roofed, fillet-cornered, dialpad-like composition, where entry portals gracefully curve into street-facing planters and even curbside steps, is in tune with INOA’s distinctive aesthetic. The angled-fluid style manifests through many of the firm’s other north Brooklyn collaborations with Investmates, such as 81 and 108 India Street, 141 and 153 Green Street, and 205 Freeman Street, among others. These projects bring a touch of avant-garde, more expected from the likes of Chelsea (e.g. Zaha Hadid’s curvaceous condo at 520 West 28th Street), to leafy streets of northern Brooklyn, where new architecture is frequently conservative, traditionally-styled, or, at worst, downright uninspired.
This is not to say that the neighborhood lacks distinctive new projects. The abovementioned Domino development bestows the neighborhood with the chiseled-niche, gapped-midsection 1S1 mixed-use skyscraper and the stepped ziggurat at 325 Kent, where skybridge-style upper floors leap over a canyonlike courtyard. Closer at hand, namely around the corner from 76 South 2nd Street, rises the recently completed, 19-story rental at 321 Wythe Avenue, where staggered black-and-white rectilinear niches and projections interweave and create a distinct presence on the skyline.
Similarly eye-catching, if much lower in profile, is the sharp-angled, metal-sheathed 26 Marcy Street, where Studio Esnal unified three townhouses with a single facade in a manner similar to 76 South 2nd Street, Wythe Avenue Townhouses, and other low-rise projects where the quirks of city code make Department of Buildings filings simple for joined smaller projects rather than a single larger one.
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