Nation's Largest Housing Complex Up For Sale

Perhaps following the lead of the recent Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper housing project sale in Manhattan, the Starret City housing complex in Brooklyn's Jamaica Bay neighborhood is up for sale and may command a $ 1 billion dollar price tag.

1 minute read

December 5, 2006, 10:00 AM PST

By Mike Lydon

"Starrett City, a 140-acre apartment complex built 30 years ago on Jamaica Bay in Brooklyn as an enclave for working-class New Yorkers, is on the auction block, the owner confirmed yesterday.

The complex, whose owner changed its name in recent years to the more chic-sounding Spring Creek Towers, is the largest federally subsidized rental complex in the country. Its approximately 14,000 residents live in 46 towers surrounded by well-manicured lawns. They have their own schools, churches, synagogues, shopping center, post office and power plant.

The sale by the owner, Starrett City Associates, a group of investors, is the latest indication that even bland brick buildings are a sought-after commodity in a booming real estate market that has driven prices skyward for everything from condominiums to tenements in New York City.

The Starrett City auction, which may take place in January, will follow the recent $5.4 billion sale of the 11,200 apartments at Peter Cooper Village and Stuyvesant Town. Tenants there fear the loss over time of an increasingly rare middle-class redoubt in Manhattan."

FULL STORY: Brooklyn Tract, Home to 14,000, Goes on Block

Friday, December 1, 2006 in The New York Times

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