Park Place Condominiums, 145 Park Place: Review and Ratings

Review of 145 Park Place by Carter Horsley

This very handsome, 8-story apartment building with a dual personality on the former site of the Brooklyn Gospel Tabernacle at 145 Park Place in Park Slope is one the tallest structures on busy Flatbush Avenue.

"On the side facing Park Place - a leafy, landmarked residential block replete with gas lanterns - plans...[called] for the new structure to blend in with century-old brownstones. But the side facing Flatbush Ave....[is] a modern, all-glass and aluminum façade that will tower over the neighboring row houses and stores on the commercial strip," according to a May 30, 2004 article by Hugh Son in The New York Daily News that referred to the building as the "Jekyll-and-Hyde condo."

"It's unlike anything else on Flatbush," declared architect and developer Tom Anderson, president of the real estate firm Anderson Associates. "It's a very dramatic façade, all glass and aluminum, and I thought it would be fun."

The 47-unit building is known as Park Place Condominiums and was completed in 2005.

"This building goes out of its way to acknowledge the historic value of the community, but it also goes out of its way to enliven a pretty dreary portion of Flatbush Ave.," Mr. Anderson maintained.

"I'm not opposed to modernist structures going up in brownstone Brooklyn, but this didn't feel right to me."

Jennifer Rawe, president of the Park Place Association of Neighbors, said that Anderson Associates has been attentive to the group's concerns.

The building's 5-story Park Place façade is covered with real brownstone stucco and will have a unique setback that visually conceals the top three floors - design aspects that Anderson said neighbors requested.

The building's Park Place brownstone façade has four-paned windows, two bandcourses and a cornice and discrete air-conditioners. It is slightly but sharply angled.

The Flatbush Avenue façade is very modern and has some curved balconies. The building, which is setback at the second floor, is also known as 286 1/2 - 292 1/2 Flatbush Avenue.

The building has an impressive modern lobby with curved seating an inlaid marble floor designs. The building has a concierge/doorman, an on-site superintendent, an interior courtyard, bicycle storage, a garage, a roof deck with a pergola and nine-foot-high ceilings in the apartments.

Kitchens have stainless steel GE Profile appliances, hardwood cabinets, stone countertops and some units have island counters. Each unit includes a stackable Bosch washer and dryer.

Baths have Jacuzzi tubs, terrazzo and tile showers and Crane pedestal sinks.

The building is close to the 7th and 5th Avenue shopping corridors. The Canyon-Johnson Urban Fund L.P. helped with financing and the building includes air rights purchased from an adjacent commercial building and also contains about 4,500 square feet of retail space.

There are four duplex apartments.

Lauster & Radu Architects also worked on the project.