The Crest, 302 2nd Street: Review and Ratings

Review of 302 2nd Street by Carter Horsley

This 12-story residential condominium building at 302 2nd Street in the Park Slope section of Brooklyn has been described as "neo-modernist architecture that blends the hip and the historic."

One is never too sure what "neo-" anything is, but this building looks like a hybrid between the avant-garde Art Deco towers of the great visionary film "Metropolis" and many of the city's public housing projects, which is not to say that it is spartan but that it is a bit incongruous.

The base is pretty standard rectilinear fare, but the top four stories sprout like a flower, curving outward slightly from a setback base with fins like an implanted V2 rocket.

Appropriately the building has been named the Crest, perhaps because it conjures a giant bird's nest on a top of a tree.

The building was developed by Shaya Boymelgreen and Isaac Katan.

Reactions to the building were mixed. "It's not particularly attractive, but it's not as ugly as others," said Sloper Dan Morgenroth of the Crest in an article by Dana Rubenstein in the June 9, 2007 edition of brooklynpaper.com. "Besides, added Morgenroth, what matters most is on the inside, particularly when on a fairly unattractive avenue that he actually called 'a bleeding eyesore.'"

The building has 68 one- and two-bedroom apartments and a lobby designed by Andres Escobar and the article said that "from the outside, the yellow-brick building tops off in a tuft of curved balconies."

The article noted that Mr. Boymelgreen's 'first major foray in the direction of the Slope was his conversion of a former Daily News plant into a luxury loft building dubbed Newswalk. The well-received Prospect Heights conversion, on Pacific Street, between Carlton and S. Portland avenues, was completed in 2002. Next in the pipeline was City View Gardens, completed in 2004 at 308 Second Street between Fourth and Fifth Avenues. The following year Park Slope Gardens took shape on the same block."

In a February 6, 2008 article at streetsblog.org, Ben Fried wrote that "when the City Planning Commission upzoned Brooklyn's Fourth Avenue in 2003, it has hailed by some as a breakthrough," adding that "Borough President Marty Markowitz trumpeted Fourth Avenue as 'a grand boulevard of the 21st Century.' Residential development would reshape this urban speedway, the thinking went, from a pit-stop for cabs to a stately corridor of mid-rise residences - Brooklyn's answer to Park Avenue."

"In the past two years," the article continued, "as the dust settled from disputes over building heights and provisions for affordable housing, Fourth Avenue's transformation has sped along. The first wave of new residential construction has hit the market, and dozens more properties from Flatbush Avenue to 15th Street are in various stages of development. But the early returns are discouraging for anyone who hoped to see a walkable, mixed-use district take shape here."

"While all of the new developments boast of their proximity to 'neighborhood gathering places' and the 'cozy' restaurants, shops, parks and public amenities of 'vibrant Park Slope,'" it added,"developers have made no apparent effort to create a cozy, vibrant street life around their own projects. Instead of transforming Fourth Avenue into Brooklyn's next great neighborhood, these new developments turn their back on the public realm, burdening the street wall with industrial vents, garage doors and curb cuts."

The first floor of the building, which has many balconies, is rusticated stone and next seven floors are orange-brick. Much of the first floor façade is given over to air vents for the building's garage.

Lin & Associates Architects P.C. was the building's architect.

The building has a concierge, a fitness center and a garden and washer-dryers. It also has a circular driveway and a canopied entrance.