Red Hook gets some love from Chanel

Eye On Real Estate

April 6, 2016 By Lore Croghan Brooklyn Daily Eagle

Construction is expected to continue for another year on the condo conversion of 160 Imlay St. Eagle photos by Lore Croghan

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We found it in a glossy magazine the other day — a visual Valentine to Red Hook.

It’s from the famed French fashion house, Chanel.

It’s a double-truck ad splashed across two pages at the front of the March issue of Vogue showing the exterior of Pioneer Works.

The Pioneer Street Civil War-era ironworks building, which artist Dustin Yellin has turned into a high-profile cultural center with galleries and art studios, serves as a backdrop for two models.

The women, wearing pale-pink Chanel outfits and translucent shoes, are striding away from Pioneer Works along the asphalt bicyclist and pedestrian path that’s called the Greenway.

It might be a coincidence — or it might not — that Maureen Chiquet, who was Chanel’s global chief executive until recently, is a collector of Yellin’s art.

As Red Hook residents and frequent visitors to the waterfront neighborhood know, this stretch of the Greenway runs along Imlay Street. The building the models are walking towards, which is not shown in the photo, is 160 Imlay St., a picturesque industrial building that’s undergoing a condo conversion.

Seeing this ad made us long for a stroll around Red Hook. We hadn’t snapped photos of century-old 160 Imlay or other interesting neighborhood sites in a lamentably long time.

So we spent a day stalking, er, photographing Red Hook construction sites.

Spring 2017 construction finish at 160 Imlay St.

We didn’t spot any fashion photographers or models at 160 Imlay. But we saw plenty of construction workers in the fenced-in yard of the former New York Dock Co. building.

The white cast-in-place concrete structure is covered in construction netting and there’s no glass in the windows, as has been the case when we’ve visited periodically during the past two years.

Project completion is expected in spring 2017, a spokesman for Douglas Elliman’s Patty LaRocco, who’s in charge of condo sales, told us.

The top four floors of the building are being turned into 70 condos and there will be commercial space on the first two floors.

The condo conversion is being done by Est4te Four, a development firm that established its reputation by successfully turning a Milan warehouse area, the Zona Tortona, into a fashion district with offices, showrooms and studios for designers.

The Imlay Street condo conversion is the first Red Hook project for Est4te Four — no, that’s not a typo in the word “Est4te.” The firm also owns a nearly 1.2 million-square-foot development site in Red Hook.

The developer paid $25.1 million for 160 Imlay in 2012, city Finance Department records indicate.

The seller was a partnership headed by Bruce Federman, who along with business partner Bruce Batkin had spent several years fighting neighborhood landlords’ and residents’ opposition to the residential development of 160 Imlay.

The back of the New York Dock Co. building faces the Brooklyn-Port Authority Marine Terminal’s Pier 11, which the city Economic Development Corp. leases. Imlay Street condos with windows above the rooftops of the pier’s low-rise buildings will have views of Buttermilk Channel, the Statue of Liberty and Manhattan skyscrapers.

More than a year ago, Douglas Elliman’s LaRocco nailed down signed contracts for more than 50 of 160 Imlay’s condos, as we’ve previously reported. According to StreetEasy.com, the asking price for the costliest condo in contract was $5,397,840.