A working-class Brooklyn neighborhood known for its sweeping views of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge is getting a luxury makeover.
A working-class Brooklyn neighborhood known for its sweeping views of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge—and its many "Saturday Night Fever" filming locations—is getting a luxury makeover.
Shore Road, with its dazzling bridge, New York Harbor, and downtown Manhattan skyline views, is lined with decades-old co-op buildings that aren't going anywhere. With no raw land in sight, how to create an upscale building for the untapped luxury market at the southwest basin of Brooklyn?
For RockFarmer Properties, a real estate development firm specializing in Queens and Brooklyn projects, the answer was to find a 1961 brick co-op with a lot of shares for sale, and a board willing to have a developer bankroll a luxurious modernization.
"We focus on neighborhoods like Bay Ridge, Astoria, and Jackson Heights" in Queens, John Petras, managing principal of RockFarmer Properties, tells Realtor.com®. "They are very long-established neighborhoods, in some cases underserved in terms of new product and not sexy like Williamsburg or other areas, but great places to live."
Co-op apartments in The Veridian on Shore Road in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn come with spectacular Verrazzano-Narrows bridge views. (RockFarmer Properties) The developer snapped up around 75% of the available shares of the postwar co-op at 9323 Shore Road, christened it The Veridian, and embarked on a large-scale redevelopment of the unassuming six-story building. The co-op had great bones and generously proportioned rooms—and world-class views—but was in need of major capital improvements.
The result is a win-win: The investor is able to create luxury apartments it can sell off or rent; and the co-op's remaining owners will see a minimum 30% projected rise in the value of their units (in a co-op, residents own shares of an LLC, and those shares come with the right to live in a unit). Even existing renters are welcome to stay—provided they can afford the market rates.
Additionally, a conversion—or redevelopment—such as this is cheaper and faster than constructing a new building from the ground up, savings that can be passed along to the buyer. An alcove studio in the building, which is under contract at $330,000, has a $567 monthly maintenance which includes property taxes, heat, hot water, cooking gas, and access to the building's amenities.
Current availability includes lofts, studios, and one- through four-bedroom residences, with one-bedrooms starting at $400,000 and three-bedroom homes in the high $900,000s, with the most expensive unit priced at $1,050,000 for a three-bedroom. A $1,300,000 three-bedroom is in contract.
Fifty-eight of the co-op's 78 units will be gradually up for sale, 10 of which have already sold before the official sales launch. A couple of the sales are combined units for buyers who wanted larger layouts than what was available.
The median price tag in the ZIP code is $450,000, according to Realtor.com data, a 6% year-over-year increase. Park Slope, approximately 6 miles away, is $1.1 million. A renovated three-bedroom co-op in Park Slope is listed at $2.5 million.
A brand-new roof deck was installed to take advantage of the bridge views, immortalized in "Saturday Night Fever." (RockFarmer Properties) A luxe transformation
The Veridian apartments boast luxe features such as Bosch and Fisher & Paykel appliances, quartz countertops and custom cabinetry, titanium fixtures, and walk-in showers, but also a suite of amenities. Underutilized spaces gathering dust in the building were metamorphosed into a gleaming residents' lounge, gym, children's playroom and co-working studio, and library lounge.
There is also a new landscaped courtyard and a second-floor outdoor "meditative grove."
Additionally, there were also less-glamorous but needed upgrades—a brand-new buildingwide electrical system upgrade cost around $500,000.
"We love taking old buildings that were once beautiful but have gone through a period of not a lot of investment, and improving them to the level we're doing," says Petras. "We considered every nook and cranny, everything was reimagined and transformed."
Brand-new luxury amenity spaces, such as this courtyard, were carved out of existing spaces in the building. (RockFarmer Properties) The crown jewel of the redesigned co-op is the "Vista Skydeck" with its jaw-dropping 360-degree views of the bridge and harbor, and a limited number of private cabanas for purchase.
It was those views that sold the building, Petras says. During negotiations, the seller (a family who had long owned most of the building's shares) wanted more than the developer preferred to spend.
But when Petras went up to the roof on a beautiful, cloudless day, the harbor views were so hypnotizing that he turned to his partner and said, "Whatever the difference is, pay it, and let’s lock this up."
It's those magnetic views that the developer is counting on to lure well-heeled buyers who may not want to pay double or triple in a neighborhood like Park Slope.
The developer is fairly certain that The Veridian will have the only roof deck all along Shore Avenue, and the deck has been a significant selling point with buyers, though it won't be completed until sometime next year.
But possibly the key selling point is that there is no onerous co-op board approval process. Units for sale are considered sponsor units, meaning sales are negotiated directly between the buyer and the developer.
Rather than building from ground up, RockFarmer transformed an existing midcentury building in Bay Ridge into a luxe complex. (RockFarmer Properties) Bay Ridge's working-class roots
Bay Ridge, a mere 12 miles to lower Manhattan, remained relatively rural until the late 19th century. At the turn of the century, there was a building boom, and then the decade from 2010 to 2020 saw an astonishing 40% population increase.
The area—extremely diverse with large Norwegian, Italian, Greek, and Middle Eastern communities—has traditionally been a working-class neighborhood, as immortalized in the 1977 film "Saturday Night Fever." Its rather long commute to into the city—about an hour via subway—meant it was long overlooked in terms of the luxury market.
But as the borough—and especially more Manhattan-proximate neighborhoods like Brooklyn Heights, Carroll Gardens, and Park Slope—began to rise in prominence and price, upscale developments have cascaded southwest.
Bay Ridge has multiple retail corridors, including 86th Street (where Tony Manero struts down the street in the iconic opening shot of "Saturday Night Fever"), and Third, Fourth, and Fifth Avenues. Quiet and coveted Shore Road, with its bridge, skyline, and Statue of Liberty views, has its own tree-lined park.
This former utility room was transformed into an upscale residents' lounge. "Every nook and cranny" was considered in terms of how to create an amenity package, says the developer. (RockFarmer Properties) With far more work-from-home options than existed even a decade ago, as well as an express bus and ferry into Manhattan, Bay Ridge is ripe for a reimagining.
"There is a lack of beautiful luxury renovated products in the neighborhood," Corcoran agent Tom Le, who is handling sales in the building, tells Realtor.com. "We're now able to fill the void."
"There are no comps for what we're producing," adds Petras.
Le says buyers tend to be those migrating south from ritzier Brooklyn neighborhoods like Park Slope, Carroll Gardens, and Prospect Heights—or they're buyers who had moved out of state but grew up in the area and want to return.
Now, they'd like something more upscale than the typical Bay Ridge offerings. One returning buyer hailed from as far away as Miami.
Then there are the local downsizers—empty nesters eager to shed their large single family homes and all the maintenance those require.
"I call it quiet money," Petras says of Bay Ridge's upper-middle class wealth, created over multiple generations, often through successful family-owned businesses.
For that kind of buyer—one who has a million dollars or more to plunk down on a new, luxury co-op but doesn't want to leave the comforts and relative value of home—The Veridian is one of the only options.
He adds, "If you have the means, and you don't want to leave the neighborhood, this is a no-brainer."