The Aurora, 30 Bayard Street: Review and Ratings

Review of 30 Bayard Street by Carter Horsley

This dark blue-gray-brick, mid-block building at 30 Bayard Street is known as the Aurora. It has 40 residential condominium apartments.

The 13-story building was completed in 2007 when one of its apartments reportedly sold for $3.8 million, then a Brooklyn record. 

Three of the larger buildings on this block facing McCarren Park in the Greenpoint section of Brooklyn were designed by Karl Fischer, one of the most prolific architects active recently in Brooklyn, for developer Issac Hager. 

Andres Escobar did the interiors.

Bottom Line

Like its neighbor at 20 Bayard Street, this mid-block building overlooking McCarren Park is distinctively “styled” with no reference to context though it conceivably conjures a burly samurai warrior.

Description

The base of the building has two dark grey multi-story reveals. 

The building is setback at the seventh floor and unlike its 20 Bayard Street neighbor it has a symmetrical façade with numerous centered balconies on the setback tower including two on the 12th floor that are flared to the sides. 

The building's rear façade has no setbacks and much more glass as well as some balconies on the side that abuts the Ikon at 50 Bayard Street.

Amenities

The building has a 24-hour doorman, video security, a garage, a health club, a semi-circular lobby, and a roof deck.

Apartments

Apartments have 9-foot-4-inch to 10-foot ceilings and Brazilian teak flooring.

It has open plan kitchens with SubZero refrigerators, Wolf gas ranges, Jenn-Air dishwashers, frosted glass cabinetry and black granite countertops.

Bathrooms have Blianco Statuario stone walls with white marble vanity, Toto toilets, European Crystal white quartzite floor and sunken Zuma bathtubs. 

A one-bedroom unit has a small foyer that leads past an open, 8-foot-wide pass-through kitchen to a 12-foot-long living dining room next to a slightly larger bedroom.

One two-bedroom unit has a 10-foot-long entrance foyer next to a 12-foot-wide, pass-through open kitchen and an 18-foot long living/dining room with a balcony. 

A three-bedroom unit has a 10-foot-wide foyer that opens onto a 20-foot-wide living/dining room with a balcony and a 12-foot-wide, open, pass-through kitchen.  The master bedroom has a balcony.

History

McCarren Park is bordered by Bayard, North 12th and Lorimer Streets and Nassau Avenue. It was originally called Greenpoint Park but was renamed in 1909 McCarren Park after Patrick Henry McCarren (1847-1909), a former New York State Senator. 

McCarren Park is a 35-acre public park in New York City, USA. It is located in the Greenpoint neighborhood of Brooklyn, and is bordered by Nassau Avenue, Bayard Street, Lorimer Street and North 12th Street. It is operated by the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation. 

The park is used for softball, volleyball, soccer, handball, and other games as well as running and sunbathing and dog-walking. 

It has hosted craft fairs and rock concerts. 

The McCarren Pool was the eighth of eleven giant pools built by the Works Progress Administration. It opened during the summer of 1936. With an original capacity for 6,800 swimmers, the pool served as the summertime social hub for Greenpoint and Williamsburg.

The pool, however, was closed in 1984. "The reuse and reconstruction of the pool remained a contentious community issue for many years, until the community came to a consensus plan in 2001. The community sought to reconstruct the facility to encompass a skate park, an indoor recreation/performance center, and a smaller pool that could be converted to a seasonal ice rink. The plan was estimated to cost $26 million and had a good chance of receiving public funding, but unfortunately, the budgetary constraints of the City post-9/11 shelved the plan and the pool remained abandoned for the next few years," according to an entry in Wikipedia. 

As part of the 2005 rezoning of Greenpoint and Williamsburg the City appropriated $1 million in capital budget funds for restoration of the pool as a performance space, and the next year the City Council allocated $300,000 to support the construction of a season rink. 

In April, 2007, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced that a $50 million reconstruction of the pool was being funded as part of the City's PlaNYC long-term planning initiative. The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission approved of the pool's renovation plan on September, 2008.

The pool reopened in 2012.