Residential Real Estate; From Dormant Armory to Middle Income Rentals

NY Times article from July 21, 2000  Posted on 04/14/04

By RACHELLE GARBARINE

An empty wreck of a building since the late 1980's, the Clermont Armory in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, has sprung back to life over the last 15 months as a rental apartment complex for middle-income tenants.

When the $14 million rehabilitation project that officials call ''adaptive reuse'' is completed by September, the 127-year-old former armory at 171 Clermont Avenue, among the oldest in the state, will have 110 studio to three-bedroom units. They will be in two five-story wings atop a one-story base created behind the facades of the original armory and overlooking an interior courtyard.


There will be 11,000 square feet of ground-floor commercial space, which has been leased to the Community Partnership Charter School, as well as parking for 113 cars on the ground and basement levels of the huge structure, which stretches from Clermont Avenue through to Vanderbilt Avenue between Myrtle and Willoughby Avenues.


The apartments, averaging 507 to 1,208 square feet, some with balconies, are being leased to people with annual incomes of $30,000 to $80,000, depending on family size, at rents of $850 to $1,750 a month. The project is being developed by a partnership between Hesky Brahimy and his brother, Samy, who are principals of the IBEC Building Corporation, and John Frezza, president of the Strategic Development and Construction Corporation. Both companies are based in Brooklyn, as is the project's architect, Robert Scarano & Associates.

The Clermont Armory project is part of New York City's New Opportunities Program, sponsored by the city's Housing Development Corporation. Under it, the housing corporation provides developers with mortgages at favorable interest rates to help spur construction of middle-income housing.

Since the program began in 1998, 27 projects with 1,900 residences have been or are being created. Eight are in Brooklyn and many, like the Clermont Armory project, are bringing new uses to abandoned buildings. Others include a 100-year-old former furniture warehouse at 139 Emerson Place in Clinton Hill that has been transformed into 50 rental apartments, and an 1840 hat factory at 597 Grand Avenue in Prospect Heights that has been reshaped into 52 rentals.

''The beauty of such projects,'' said Russell A. Harding, president of the city's development corporation, ''is that they not only help re-establish places like Clinton Hill, Fort Greene and Prospect Heights as attractive, affordable places for working families to live, but preserve some special buildings in the process.'' He said 10 more projects with 600 units were expected to receive financing by the end of the year.

Vivian Becker, executive director of the Pratt Area Community Council, a nonprofit community development group in Fort Greene, described the old armory as ''a very visible and blighted building'' and its renovation as ''a long overdue project, which we support.''

The developers of the armory project received a $10.34 million first loan with an interest rate of 7.5 percent from the city housing corporation, as well as a $2.2 million second loan with a 1 percent rate, ''which made the project financially feasible,'' Mr. Frezza said. The partners also invested $1.7 million of their own money, and the European American Bank guaranteed the $12 million construction loan.

The armory was built in 1872 to house the 23rd Regiment of the National Guard, and its 130-by-180-foot drill hall, with its barrel-shaped ceiling, was then the largest built without pillars or obstructions in the United States, according to the State Office of Military History. It was extensively reconstructed in 1911, though the drill hall was not affected.

The building functioned as an armory through 1964, when it was taken over by the city, which used it as a warehouse until 1986. After that, the old armory sat dormant, becoming the target of vandals, who stripped it of, among other items, its copper roof gutters and drains, leaving it vulnerable to damage from rain.

When the developers bought the building for $300,000 at a city auction in 1995, it had gaping holes in its roof and boarded-over windows.

The next challenge, said Robert Scarano, the architect, ''was to come up with a scheme that was sympathetic to the existing structure.'' Original details of the existing facade were incorporated into the design, he added.

That included retaining the outline of the building's Clermont Avenue pediment, which frames a Romanesque arch lined with mullions, to form a front atrium that leads to an open-air garden and then to the main entrance. The original gray masonry facades facing Clermont and Vanderbilt Avenues remain, though parts have been covered with yellow- or buff-colored stucco, and red accents have been added for contrast. Three of the wrought iron trusses that spanned the old drill hall were left exposed to the sky.

Inside, Mr. Scarano said, the building was gutted and reshaped into apartments. Apartments in the two wings have ceilings just over nine feet high, and features like hardwood floors and dishwashers. The building, with initial occupancy to begin next month, will have a 24-hour doorman.

Published: 07 - 21 - 2000 , Late Edition - Final , Section B , Column 3 , Page 7
Copyright 2000 The New York Times Company