GALERIE in Long Island City was designed by ODA Architecture and features such amenities as a curated, rotating art exhibit.Binyan Studios
With the Manhattan real estate market cooling off — the median sale price recently fell below $1 million for the first time in three years — luxury developers are turning to the outer boroughs, creating towers and boutique buildings with big-name architects and the kind of outsized amenities usually found in Soho or Tribeca.
Much of this activity centers around Long Island City, which has become no stranger to glass towers, and will be getting even more Midtown-esque when Amazon moves into its new headquarters, and Downtown Brooklyn, which is in the midst of a huge building boom.
Manhattan-based Adam America Real Estate is behind 10 such developments, including GALERIE, an 11-story building designed by ODA Architecture that will feature such perks as a curated, rotating art exhibit, an indoor pool that opens onto a landscaped central courtyard, a library with books selected from the bookstore at MoMA PS1, located across the street, and a pet spa. Units boast Gaggenau and Bosch appliances and marble bathrooms. The building is about 65% sold since February of last year.
The penthouse at GALERIE in Long Island City.Binyan Studios
Adam America is also behind The Brooklyn Grove in downtown Brooklyn, another ODA-designed building that features a private dining room and woodland-themed playroom.
“We see a lot of growth in the outer boroughs,” says Omri Sachs, a principal at Adam America Real Estate.
The outer borough market has seen more success than Manhattan as of late. In the third quarter of 2018, the median sale price in Manhattan dropped more than 4%, from $1.17 million to $1.117 million, and more prominently, under $1 million for the first time in three years in Q4, according to data compiled by Douglas Elliman Real Estate.
In the third quarter of 2018, the latest time period for which outer-borough data is available, the median sale price in Brooklyn was up more than 2%, from $790,000 to $808,000 and in Queens it was up more than 4%, from $550,000 to $573,500.
A rendering of the skylit indoor pool at The Brooklyn Grove.Binyan Studios
Most luxury developments are strategically placed and are closer to the new amenities that have sprung up in growing neighborhoods.
“We’ve been trying to pick the neighborhoods with good transportation,” Sachs says, with GALERIE sitting blocks from 7, E, R and G subway stops and Brooklyn Grove a stone’s throw from Atlantic Terminal. “You’re really one stop away from Manhattan but the price of land increases immensely there.”
A rendering of the library at Long Island City’s GALERIE, filled with items from the bookstore at MoMA PS1 across the street.Binyan Studios
In the areas of Brooklyn that have already seen an influx of development, the building there has been getting more strategic. Take Twenty-One Powers, a low-slung, four-story tower that is modeled on the attached houses surrounding it, though it boasts rooftop cabanas and an onsite gym with Peloton bikes.
“It’s not the obnoxious skyscraper in the middle of a tree-lined street,” says Craig Dancewicz, a broker with The Aguayo Team at Halstead Property Development Marketing, which is marketing the 14-unit building.
Since the height of the market has been reached in Williamsburg, developers are banking on the fact that it already offers the amenities, including Whole Foods and an Apple store, that negate trekking to Manhattan on the presumably no-longer-to-be-shuttered L train.
Developing in Queens and Brooklyn does come at a lower price than in Manhattan, so developers can pass on the relative savings to buyers. At Twenty-One Powers, for example, one bedrooms start at $775,000.
“Two million goes a lot further here,” Dancewicz says. “By no means are you a pioneer [in Brooklyn] anymore, but it’s ever evolving.”