Housing Giants - September 10, 2008 - (Page 32) f e at u r e “A lot of my buyers can’t get younger, so they want to get cooler.” — Ben Jogodnik condo product is Horsham, Pa.-based, publicly traded giant Toll Brothers, the No. 8 ranked builder in PB’s Giant 400 with $4.5 billion in 2007 housing revenues. Although Toll won’t reveal how much of that came from its city living division, which builds condos in and around New York City and Philadelphia, it is substantial because the projects just keep coming. A typical success story is David Spreckelsen’s 5th street lofts building in Long Island City, Queens, just across the East River from Manhattan. It’s an eightstory, 117-unit building, brand new, but designed to look like an old industrial building retrofitted into lofts. Sales opened in February 2007, and 102 were sold by August 2008 at prices averaging $750 a square foot ($350,000 for a 400square-foot studio to $1.5 million for a 1,600-square foot three-bedroom apartment). “There was a rezoning done in 2005 to create residential opportunities,” Spreckelsen explains. “As soon as it went through, we jumped all over this site.” Long Island City had not yet gentrified, Spreckelsen says, but Toll knew it would — especially because the site has Manhattan skyline views and is one subway stop from Grand Central Station. It’s a lifestyle sell to high-income yuppies between 25 and 45 years of age. “They have no interest in the suburbs,” he says, “and in Manhattan, they’d pay double our prices.” Spreckelsen is now working on a 400unit project in Brooklyn and just broke ground on another project in Manhattan. Ben Jogodnik has projects farther from Manhattan, but still exclusively in walkable urban settings. “Toll is a luxury builder, and we’re probably more selective in our locations than others working in this niche,” he says. “Much of what we do, the rest of the country would call high-rise. They fall under all the highrise codes. But here in New York City, 12 stories is definitely called a mid-rise. “A lot of my buyers are move-downs, leaving a 4,000-square-foot home in the suburbs to move into the city, where the action is. “They can’t get younger,” Jogodnik says, “so they want to get cooler.” HG 32 HOUSING GIANTS.9.10.08 www.HOUSINGGIANTS.cOm http://www.citylivingbytollbrothers.com/ http://www.citylivingbytollbrothers.com/ http://www.5sl.com/ http://www.Housinggiants.com
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