Stunning Views Of Architectural Marvels Like 55 Water Street Will Make You Feel Like The King Of The World

It’s not so weird that a condo in Brooklyn now costs $7.2 million — New York real estate long ago ceased to make sense. That said, it does seem strange to pay that much for a view of 55 Water Street:

It’s Brooklyn as you’ve never seen it and probably never will — unless you’ve got $7.25 million to spare for what is about to become the borough’s priciest condo.

The flagship penthouse unit at 1 Brooklyn Bridge Park, along the Brooklyn Heights waterfront, will consist of a 4,638-square-foot triplex with breathtaking, 360-degree views of the Manhattan and Brooklyn skylines from inside a state-planned public park.

But only those with the deepest pockets need apply. The price tag for the luxury pad is nearly double that of the current record sales figure for a Brooklyn condo: $3.8 million shelled out for a penthouse at the Aurora in Williamsburg in January.

“It will even have a private elevator that goes up to a rooftop terrace so you really feel like ‘king of the world,'” boasted Robert Levine, developer of the complex, which launched sales last week.

Levine’s “sky house” will feature seven rooms, four bathrooms and state-of-the-art appliances, as well as access to luxury amenities off-limits to park visitors.

Bridge Apartments Redux!

The question is which is better — a pleasant six-lane expressway or a massive city-sponsored housing project on top of the six-lane expressway:

Residents of Carroll Gardens and Cobble Hill hailed a city plan that would build housing atop the nine-block-long Brooklyn-Queens Expressway trench that divides the neighborhoods from the Columbia Street waterfront.

The proposal is part of Mayor Bloomberg’s vision for a greener, more efficient, more crowded city, which he presented during an Earth Day speech at the Museum of Natural History on Sunday.

“[Decking it over] is a great idea, so long as we get [to add] some input and we’re sure that the housing is in harmony with our current stock,” said Buddy Scotto, the de facto Mayor of Carroll Gardens.

. . .

Back in August, a city consultant presented three possible ideas for the decking over the open-pit highway, ranging from a 200-unit, low-density rowhouse subdivision to a string of higher-density, 12-story buildings containing 1,500 units.

The pie-in-the-sky idea was given new life in the mayor’s Earth Day speech, which included 126 other green initiatives.

Overall, Bloomberg says the city must build 500,000 units of housing near public transportation by 2030 to make way for the expected one-million-person population boom.

“Our plan calls for doubling the amount of land available for possible housing development,” Hizzoner said in the Sunday speech. “We can do it by decking over railyards and highways, and using government land more productively.”

Have fun with that.

Yuck, The Dreaded Gowanus Haddock (Give Coney Island A Break Already!)

Those 500 gazillion free condoms have to end up somewhere:

A perfect storm of circumstances, including the less-than-perfect Nor’Easter last week, has sent a record number of condoms into the Gowanus Canal, according to volunteers at this week’s Earth Day cleanup of the canal zone.

The explosion in the population of “Coney Island whitefish” is not only due to a city giveaway of condoms in bodegas, coffee bars and bars all over Brooklyn. Environmentalists say torrential rains from the Nor’Easter sent far more untreated sewage into the canal than the typical April shower.

Thanks to New York’s antiquated sewage system, when it’s raining that hard, “whatever was in your toilet lands in our natural resources,” said Ludger Balan of Urban Divers Estuary Conservancy.

Yes, Yes — In My Backyard!

Not everyone dislikes the idea of reopening the Atlantic Avenue Jail:

When YaYa Ceesay’s dream of opening a soul food restaurant came true in 2003, business, at first, boomed. He had found a great spot along an up-and-coming stretch of Atlantic Avenue across the street from the Brooklyn House of Detention and quickly built a strong group of regulars.

He opened the doors each day at 6 a.m., and from then until after the lunch crowd headed back to work, his restaurant, the Soul Spot, was packed with correction officers, prisoners’ families, neighborhood residents and passers-by. Fish and grits, chicken and waffles, scrambled eggs, salmon cakes — you name it he served it.

But in June 2003, three months after his glorious introduction to Brooklyn, the jail closed and the breakfast crowd disappeared. Three months after that, Mr. Ceesay was forced to trim the Soul Spot’s menu, and he moved back its daily start time to just before noon.

When the prison population left, he said, about 20 percent of his customers went with it.

Now that the city’s Department of Correction has said that it wants to reopen the jail and double the inmate population in five years, Mr. Ceesay and many other nearby business owners are saying they will be more than happy to provide food or services to those who will work there or who will visit the people held within.

. . .

But not everyone is quite so happy that a jail that once held 700 inmates will hold more than 1,400 if plans become reality.

Some residents in the area said that what is good for the mom-and-pop businesses might not be so good for the moms and pops whose new condominiums, many worth several hundred thousand dollars, would be just down the street from the repopulated jail.

“Go ask the parents of the schoolkids who go to Packer who will have to walk past the jail on their way to the store for a bag of potato chips,” said Corey Baylor, an investment banker who moved into a State Street condo four days ago, referring to the Packer Collegiate Institute on Joralemon Street. When the jail closed, the area surrounding the corner of Atlantic Avenue and Boerum Place, where it sits, was trying to reinvent itself. It was an unremarkable neighborhood of gas stations and hunched old office buildings. Today it is home to some of the newest high-end apartment buildings in Brooklyn. There’s a sparkling new YMCA a block away from the old jail, a high-rise is being built next door and rows of condos line State Street a block away.

Location Scout: Atlantic Avenue Jail/Brooklyn House of Detention.

Dude, It Would Be Zone Uncool To Do That And Have The Astroland Site Sit Vacant For Years

As Astroland prepares for its final season, some city officials are worrying — without attribution — that developer Joe Sitt is simply in it to change the zoning and then flip the land for, as some might say, big buck$:

Several officials told The Post they’re concerned that Joseph Sitt’s next selling spree could involve the massive assemblage of beachfront land his Thor Equities has bought up in Coney Island — especially if City Hall doesn’t allow his planned $2 billion entertainment complex to include luxury housing.

“The guy has a track record of flipping land for big bucks,” said one source close to the project. “He’s done it already in Coney Island and other Brooklyn projects like [Downtown Brooklyn’s] Albee Square Mall, and who’s to say he won’t play the city again?”

Chuck Reichenthal, a member of the city’s Coney Island Development Corp., is worried Thor will hold up the plan either by selling out or by holding out to see if the next mayor is willing to allow the housing.

“I look out my [Surf Avenue] office window, and what I see now is very sad,” he said. “They’re beginning to create a ghost town.”

. . .

[Officials] note that when Sitt bought the Albee Square Mall on Fulton Street five years ago for $24 million, he talked about giving the gritty site the same type of Vegas-style makeover he’s now pitching for Coney Island.

Instead, Sitt spent $10 million rehabbing the mall — which he renamed The Gallery at Fulton Street — but never followed through on his grand plan.

Then after the city rezoned to allow for larger development there, Sitt sat on the mall before finally agreeing last January to sell it for $125 million.

“It’s a great deal for him and it’s going to bring larger-scale development there by the new buyer, but it’s not going to be the ‘Bellagio of malls’ that Sitt said he was going to turn it into,” a source said.

In Coney Island, Sitt last year sold one of the properties he bought for $90 million — a 168,000-square-foot tract known as the Washington Bath House site — after the city said it would allow residential development there.

A spokesman for Thor Equities, Lee Silberstein, insisted that the company isn’t planning to back out of Coney Island.

Location Scout: Coney Island Amusement Core, Albee Square.