111 Kent Avenue: Review and Ratings

Review of 111 Kent Avenue by Carter Horsley

This very impressive and dramatic, 7-story, 62-unit rental apartment building overlooks East River Park, a state park, in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The project started as a condominium in 2009 but was then taken off the market. In March, 2011, it was bought by Largo Investments and Laurence Gluck's Stellar Management for $24.6 million and was reintroduced to the market as a rental in the summer of 2011.

A broker involved with the development noted that "Eighty percent of the units have permanently unobstructed park, skyline and river views," while in its tall neighbors, Northside Piers and the Edge, "maybe 25 to 30 percent of the buildings have unobstructed views because other towers could obstruct their views. And they're tall and narrow, so three-quarters of their buildings face the other side. We're wide along Kent Avenue."

This building, which is known as 111 Kent Street, differentiates itself from the nearby glass-clad towers with a brick façade that in initial renderings indicated an Art Deco-like, black-and-white treatment but eventually was changed to a pale orange.

The façade's color, however, is not what is impressive about this building but its very angular bay windows that give it a rigorous and dynamic rhythm almost without equal in the city.

This section of the waterfront in Brooklyn is one of the most spectacular groupings of new buildings in Williamsburg, and for that matter the city. In addition to this mid-rise building and another, clad in dark gray masonry also fully fronting of the large park, just across North 8th Street, the south side of Kent Avenue has three extremely impressive developments, 184 Kent, a massive mid-rise building designed by Cass Gilbert, and the Northside Piers and the Edge developments, both of which have high-rise towers facing the river and very handsome mid-rise buildings along Kent Avenue.

Michael Muroff is the architect for this development and Charles Sharf was one of the developers. On November 23, 2010, brownstoner.com ran an item that said that the property, still unfinished, was bought November 17, 2010 for $43,635,540.69 by Garrison Development Group.

A broker quoted in a July 31, 2008 article by Steve Cutler at therealdeal.com said that "There are enough glass towers in Williamsburg," adding that "We wanted to do something that incorporated some brick, reflecting more of the surrounding buildings, which are brick and frame. If somebody wants an all-glass tower, that product exists for them."

The broker said that the developers are targeting "people who want waterfront and views, but want it West Village-style, something that's a smaller building." According to the broker, the development's interior architect, Andre Kikoski, "did a lot of scouting work, walking the neighborhood, getting the feel of Williamsburg, which is very eclectic in the culture and visually, containing brick buildings, old frame buildings, loft buildings, different colors, glass towers. It's not consistent like other parts of brownstone Brooklyn."

The building certainly is not typical. "The lobby will be high-tech modern meets turn-of-the-century rustic, containing sheets of diacrylic glass which change colors from purple to green to blue and go from reflective to opaque to transparent, depending on the viewing angle. The glass is juxtaposed against 10-inch strips of rough, knotty old barn wood bought from a company in Colorado that reclaims wood from barns in Austria," the article said, adding that hallways have floor-to-ceiling abstract photographs of the neighborhood.

Almost two-thirds of the apartments are two-bedrooms between 1,100 and 1,200 square feet; there are some one-bedrooms, a handful of ground-floor duplexes between 1,500 and 1,800 square feet, and a few three-bedrooms.

Apartment layouts facing Manhattan are "winged" with bedrooms on either side of the living rooms so that all windows face the East River.

The top floor is set back at the top floor and has four penthouses with terraces ranging in size from 700 to 1,000 square feet.

The building has a rooftop outdoor pool with two south-facing sundecks and private cabanas for sale, a gym, a window-walled lounge, a garage with valet service and a 3,000-square-foot private garden in the back. Kitchen appliances are by Bosch.

The building is three blocks away from the Bedford Avenue subway station of the L line.

Most of the apartments have balconies and most of the windows are multi-paned giving the building a highly-detailed look.

On March 11, 2009, a comment posted at brownstoner.com by Maly remarked that "Someone calls the cops, there's a wild building on a rampage. It looks like it's going to bite its neighbor." And the same time at the same website, Goldie remarked in her post that "it looks like Vanna White started turning some of the letters, and then just left part-way through. You're now left to figure out this puzzle on your own."