Lightstone’s Paris-on-the-Gowanus Rental Building at 365 Bond Street Opens

One of the Lightstone Group‘s two new rental buildings in Brooklyn’s Gowanus neighborhood is set to open Tuesday. The new residence at 365 Bond Street, along with its neighbor at 363 Bond (a year from completion) represent a $350 million effort by the developer to build 700 luxury rental apartments on the left bank of the Gowanus Canal. Designed to look like an historic brick-walled warehouse, market-rate apartments at 365 Bond start at over $2,000 a month for a studio and over $3,000 for a one-bedroom unit, according to the Wall Street Journal. Lightstone President Mitchell Hochberg says the project was inspired by the Canal Saint-Martin neighborhood in Paris, known for a residential project near a similarly polluted waterway which helped create a “newly hip atmosphere.”

A photo from October, 2015 of the construction of a sea wall for the projects, via 6sqft

Twenty percent of the building’s units have been designated as affordable housing, for which 57,000 people have already applied, according to Lightstone Senior Vice President Scott Avram. Amenities will include doormen, valet parking, roof decks, a fitness center that overlooks the canal, plus space for kayak storage and a boat launch. The buildings and surrounding landscape are protected against rising water levels and built higher than the post-superstorm Sandy floodplain.

The neighborhood surrounding the 1.8-mile Gowanus Canal–designated a Superfund site in 2010 by the EPA due to a long list of contaminants–was long seen by many as little more than a warehouse-filled buffer zone between the pricey neighborhoods of Park Slope, Boerum Hill, Cobble Hill and Carroll Gardens. Recent years have brought an investment boom, including the further-transformative 2013 arrival of a 56,000-square-foot Whole Foods supermarket. Starting in 2017, the EPA will begin a $506 million five-year cleanup effort, with the parties responsible for the pollution, including the city and the National Grid power company, footing the bill.

The Lightstone Group buildings are the only new residential developments underway in the area, due to restrictive zoning. The developer benefited from a former spot rezoning allowance given to the property’s previous owner, Toll Brothers–though other developers have plans in the works nearby.

[Via WSJ]

Stay up to date on listings for 363 and 365 Bond Street at CityRealty.

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