Professional Circle Members Get Inside Look at Stunning One Brooklyn Bridge Park
Chairman’s Award recipient, Robert Levine of RAL Companies, led 15 Professional Circle members on an exclusive tour of One Brooklyn Bridge Park, an historic waterfront warehouse totaling more than one-and-a-half million square feet that has been renovated into a 14-story luxury condominium complex located within the 85-acre Brooklyn Bridge Park.
Levine and Vince Cangelosi, RA, founder and principal of Creative Design Associates (CDA), guided members throughout the complex. Looking out from floor-to-ceiling windows in one sunny, beautifully furnished apartment on the seventh floor, tour goers enjoyed expansive views of the Brooklyn Bridge and Manhattan skyline as well as the dramatic transformation under way along the waterfront.
“There is no place in the building that doesn’t offer great views,” Levine said.
The building is part of a renaissance on the Brooklyn waterfront and has been dubbed the largest condominium conversion in Brooklyn’s history.
Originally designed by New York architect Russell G. Cory in the late-1920s, the building was previously used by the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society—better known as the Jehovah’s Witnesses—as a printing and distribution warehouse. The developers, 360 Brooklyn Investors and the R.A.L. Companies & Affiliates, hired Creative Design Associates to turn the 14-story warehouse into a mix of 370 lofts, 24 duplex town houses and 24 penthouses with sun-lit terraces. They went out of their way to maintain the historic character of the exterior and did paint analysis to match the original color.
The building will eventually be surrounded on three sides by Brooklyn Bridge Park, which was designed by landscape architect Michael Van Valkenburgh. Once finished, the park will feature a range of activities, including kayaking, court sports, bird watching and boating. There are also plans for water taxi service from the park to Manhattan.
