Eventually the Washington Market was relocated to a city facility in the Hunts Point section of the Bronx and much of the area became known as TriBeCa (Triangle Below Canal) around the time of the city’s great Westway controversy that resulted in the city losing about $2 billion in federal aid to build a park along the Hudson River with a new underground West Side Highway because of Marcy Benstock’s concerns about the shoreline habitats of the river’s striped bass.

Landfill from the recently completed World Trade Center, of course, was used to enlarge Manhattan’s Hudson River waterfront with Battery Park City and TriBeCa quickly became popular for artists as prices in SoHo had began to soar.

The combination of older not fully filled buildings with trendy restaurants gradually led to numerous residential conversions, a trend that took off with quite incredible momentum after the tragic incidents of September 11, 2001 and quickly made TriBeCa the city’s hottest real estate market.

One of the most impressive projects at this time was The Sugar Warehouse, a handsome and large red-brick structure at 79 Laight Street on the southeast corner at West Street overlooking an entrance to the lovely and new Hudson River waterfront park and esplanade.

This building was erected in 1853 by the Grocers Steam Sugar Refining Company and was later sold to the United States Sugar Refining Company.

According to Joseph Pell Lombardi, the architect involved in this project’s restoration who has long been active in conversions in Lower Manhattan, this 10-story building was one of the tallest in the city when it was built. In a March 15, 2002 article by Nadine Brozan in The New York Times, Mr. Lombardi was quoted as saying “It was tall and proud on the skyline, one of our more important buildings.”

The building was next to a sugar refinery that Mr. Lombardi said at some point suffered from a “catastrophe” that required the removal of every other floor.

It was acquired in 2000 by Alex Forkosh of Forkosh Construction for about $15,500,000 and Mr. Lombardi noted that its conversion was “one of the more complex buildings” he had ever done because is core was 10 stories tall but other parts were five or six stories. “All the Landmarks Preservation Commission requirements were things we wanted to do anyway, like restoring the shutters and bricks and repainting the sign and street names on the sides,” Mr. Lombardi was quoted in The Times article.

Van Brody was the architect of record for the building s interior design.

Some of the apartments have 15-foot-high ceilings and two interior courts were created to bring light into the building.

Most of the apartments are split-levels and several of the penthouses have skylights. All the apartments have two to three bedrooms and initial prices ranged from $1,460,000 to $4,400,000.

The building has a three-step-up entrance and a dry moat and concierge but no sidewalk landscaping and no garage.

It is across Laight Street from the River Lofts project that is a combination of the residential conversion of a red-brick warehouse and the new construction of a red-brick condominium apartment building along West Street.

The ambience created by the black metal window shutters and the emblazoning in paint of the building’s name and address on the red-brick facades is very charming.