550 Vanderbilt condo renderings fudge transition from row houses to tower; building marketed along with Nets in China

New York YIMBY has the first renderings for CookFox's 550 Vanderbilt Avenue, 17-Story Pacific Park Brooklyn Condo Tower at the corner of Vanderbilt Avenue and Dean Street. Stephen Smith

writes:

The façade will be a mix of masonry and precast concrete, for a more traditional look than the Gehry and SHoP designs. It should fit in nicely with the brownstones of Prospect Heights, offering a gradual aesthetic transition towards the more modernist SHoP towers of the western end of the site and in downtown Brooklyn proper.

From a design perspective, yes, both 550 Vanderbilt and the previously revealed 535 Carlton indicate more of an effort to transition toward neighborhood. "It’s actually quite attractive," writes Ryan Hutchins of Capital New York.

But the aesthetic transition is coupled with a selective perspective on the rendering, which minimizes the scale transition between low-rise buildings on Vanderbilt and this 202-foot tall, 17-story, 275-unit tower. 

Note how the three-story brick building somehow lines up with the fifth floor of the building across the street. Also try to count the windows along the length of the tower--at least 17. In other words, a perspective from across Vanderbilt Avenue would show something far more massive.

Cross-marketing

Just as with the Nets 2010 trip to China, which coincided with marketing of EB-5 investments to Chinese immigrant investors seeking green cards, so too does this building have a cross-marketing aspect. The article states:

Greenland Forest City Partners – the joint venture recently forged between the Chinese developer that bought into the project and the Brooklyn-based firm founded by Bruce Ratner that started it – will host an introductory event for Pacific Park and 550 Vanderbilt in Shanghai this week, coinciding with the Brooklyn Nets’ upcoming exhibition games against the Sacramento Kings, also in Shanghai.

In this case, the market for the Brooklyn condos apparently does include Chinese buyers. Atlantic Yards is slated to have 6,430 apartments, including 1,930 condos and 4,500 rentals, half of the latter subsidized.

"Park" access?

Smith writes:

The lobby rendering also shows that the developer is making good on their pledge to make the interior public space – the “Pacific Park” after which the development has been branded – as accessible to the public as possible, with the greenery of the park clearly visible through the lobby entrance.

I'm pretty sure that the "park"--actually, privately-managed, publicly accessible open space--will not be accessible via the building entrance. Not until adjacent Pacific Street is demapped and turned green will there be a significant amount of the promised green space.