[UPDATED]
Will the Union Temple Condo be 16-18 stories? 30 stories? 15? Both Curbed and Brownstoner picked up on Quig’s coffee-spitting moment yesterday when a New York Times reporter blithely alluded to a (ho, hum) 30-story condo to be developed on the Union Temple’s parking lot on Grand Army Plaza. Reliable sources had led us to believe that the project was going to be only 16-18 stories.
Is it possible the NYT simply got it wrong? If so, it will be another great excuse to haughtily smirk and wryly refer to that paper, with a nudge-and-a-wink, as “The Gray Lady”–which, if you’re an editorialist at a competing paper, is shorthand for “I’m intensely jealous that THEY get all the readers and that they rejected all my freelance queries.”
Now, our favorite ProHo reporter DEBORAH KOLBEN–who is always right there on the stories we care about (and who has never publicly referred to the Times in a pejorative, ageist manner), has done her own piece on the Temple Tower, which pegs its height at a more reasonable 15 stories.
Catering to the Rich: Did we call it? We called it. Developers originally and laughably sold this condo project to us as “not luxury.” However, Deb’s conversation yesterday with a “boasting” spokesperson for Richard Meier revealed that “It will be the most luxurious building in Brooklyn.” Local agents speculate a 2-bedroom unit will go for about $1 million.
So what’s the real story? 15 stories? 30? The real story is that a developer has been planning for years to put a very large, very exclusive condo in your neighborhood, and you probably didn’t find out about it until very recently.
[UPDATE TO UPDATE] Thank you, dear guest: “The NYTimes has confirmed that (the condo) is NOT in fact 30 stories. They were working from old info and will run a correction shortly. The building will be 150 feet tall, and roughly 16-18 stories.”