Toll Brothers Trumpet Williamsburg Invasion. Is Gowanus Next?

It is becoming hard to take a walk in certain parts of Brooklyn and Queens without stumbling very real across evidence of The Invasion of the Toll Brothers, builders of suburban homes for the affluent. Not that we didn't know it was happening, as previously reported in Curbed, Gothamist, the New York Times and blogged by Times reporter Lisa Chamberlain in Polis.

First, came the demolition work in Long Island City where Toll is putting up 118 units at 48th Avenue and Fifth Streets. Next, was 110 Third, a 20+ story high rise in the East Village with apartments starting at $850K.

Gowanus Lounge froze in his tracks on Kent Avenue and North Eighth Street in the Burg, however, when he looked up to find evidence that work is now underway on the first Brooklyn beach head established by the Brothers Toll. The development, North8, is a modest six-story project with one, two and three-bedroom condos and duplex townhomes. Asking prices start at a half million.

(We have seen the future and it does not include hipsters, except, possibly, trust fund ones.)

The website for North8 says, "Williamsburg. All grown up. Shouldn't your apartment be too?" The townhouses, which will be on North Eighth, will have "landscaped backyards." Nice suburban touch, that. By the Toll Brothers' disturbing standards, North8 is a nice and sensitive development that does not give the finger to its neighbors.

North8 will be across Kent from parkland, so it won't suffer the fate of some, like the building across from the Toll Brothers' three big towers at 164 Kent, called Palmer's Dock after the original name for the area. (This part of Kent was the Brooklyn Eastern District Terminal, with dozens of rail spurs going to a half dozen piers.)

Palmer's Dock is entering the next development life as luxury housing (with 117 of 900 units reserved for affordable housing). So, is the huge adjacent parcel, which is coming back with three towers called "The Edge."

What makes GL truly nervous, however, is knowledge that the Brothers Toll firm is also in possession of significant land in Gowanus, between the canal and Bond Street, and Second Street and Carroll Street.

About two hundred units are planned (backyards?), roughly across the canal from Leviev Boymelgreen's Gowanus Village.

GL is definitely starting to think that West Slope is the way to go, namewise, especially with the Brothers from Toll and the urban version of their suburban vision on their way (once they get the zoning changed from industrial to residential).