The Bossert Finds a Buyer
When The Watchtower Group announced that it was selling one of its marquee Brooklyn Heights properties, The Bossert Hotel at 98 Montague Street, back in January, the big question quickly became whether they’d clear the $100 million mark. Well, from what we’re hearing, they have: According to a tipster who tends to know these things,…
When The Watchtower Group announced that it was selling one of its marquee Brooklyn Heights properties, The Bossert Hotel at 98 Montague Street, back in January, the big question quickly became whether they’d clear the $100 million mark. Well, from what we’re hearing, they have: According to a tipster who tends to know these things, Robert A. Levine, the same developer behind One Brooklyn Bridge Park (a Brownstoner advertiser), has locked up the deal for “north of $100 million.” Given that the 224-unit building has 200,000 square feet of space that could easily fetch $1,000 a foot post-renovation, it doesn’t seem like such a crazy price to us. Reached through his publicist, Levine had “no comment” on the deal (as opposed to a denial) and the Watchtower broker did not return our phone message before posting time.
Update: We’re now hearing through another source that the price was $90 million and that RAL plans to turn it into student housing, at least in the near-to-medium term.
Watchtower Divestment Continues: The Bossert on the Block [Brownstoner] GMAP
I really think that the lobby will be used as a definite selling point for any buyer of future condos in this building–it really is gorgeous, and the Witnesses have maintained it to highest standards. As for the rooms, they were mainly used as dorm-style housing for the married couple “Bethelites” who take a vow of poverty and work in the other buildings they own in Brooklyn. If they were used as dorms by the new owner, they are in excellent shape, but what a waste and not a likely idea for a building that could be redone and marketed as a very high-end property.
360 Furman/One BBP is a mess. Haven’t budged”40% sold” in a year. Maybe condos in parks ain’t such a good idea after all. Perhaps it’s time to scrap the foolishness on the piers and build a real park. That way the kids who will live in the Bossert may actually have a place to recreate (jogging past all the current residents of the Heights in their walkers).
When are people going to start moving into BBP? What’s the status for occupancy?
10:56 here:
Given the cost of finding property and constructing college residence halls, the idea is not so unlikely. ALL of the downtown Brooklyn schools are screaming for dorm space. St. Francis has precious little, Polytechnic’s 400 bed dorm is full, Brooklyn Law is full, City Tech is planning to build dorms but it’s plans are several years away (since the “demise” of Ratner’s Mr Brooklyn). The St. George is doing brisk business as a college residence.
And if not the Brooklyn schools, Pace University wanted a dorm in lower Manhattan and had to delay their plans.
The financial upside on college housing is surprising good: A BED in a dorm in NYC can go for $7,000 for 10 months. Add summer rental to that and it’s a nice chunk of change for a population that doesn’t demand granite countertops and bamboo flooring. Given that college kids will live two to a room, it could make the developer sense.
Look at the prices they are getting now at the NYU dorm on Livingston St.
http://media.www.nyunews.com/media/storage/paper869/news/2007/09/05/News/Grad-Dorm.Opens.In.Brooklyn-2950896.shtml
Thanks 11:08. We could also tell the new buyers of the penthouse in the Clocktower that they could have lived there too for FREE in the ’70s.
Student housing in the Bossert?? Why not turn River Cafe into a soup kitchen?
“Here comes NYU”
That’s ridiculous. Nothing is the same as it was in the 1970’s. Try buying a brownstone for $24,000!
Don’t laugh at the student housing idea. The Bossert was used as a dorm for years before the Witnesses got it. I have friends who lived there in the 70’s when they went to Brooklyn Poly, which will soon be part of NYU. NYU is coming to Brooklyn Heights in a big way as soon as they have an engineering school in Brooklyn. John Sexton was a prof. at St. Francis College so he knows the ‘hood. Here comes NYU!
“360 Furman is not “in” anything. It is a wart on Brooklyn Heights ass”
-Do I detect a bitter Willowtown resident who is still bitter about the collapse of the Soviet Union?
360 Furman is not “in” anything. It is a wart on Brooklyn Heights ass.