35 Prospect Park West

The building occupies the full 100-foot Prospect Park West frontage north of Garfield Place and runs 165 feet back, on a 16,500-square-foot lot. Built floor area is roughly 191,650 square feet — a built FAR near 11.6 against 6.02 permitted under today's R8X zoning. The Department of Finance counts eighteen stories; the 1929 plan describes fifteen stories plus two penthouses, and the two accounts are best read as describing the same massing from different conventions.

The main entrance is on Garfield Place, not the avenue — a Roth planning decision that keeps the park frontage entirely residential and gives the corner apartments uninterrupted exposure. A separate service entrance handles deliveries through the basement. As built the building ran two passenger cabs finished in wood and two metal service cabs; the specification is explicit that Roth arranged apartments so that residents would not walk long corridors and would not face each other's doors across a landing.

Because the apartment mix runs from five rooms to thirteen, the intra-building price spread here is wider than in almost any comparable Brooklyn cooperative, and floor is not the dominant variable — line and configuration are. A park-front simplex, a Garfield Place line, a maisonette with a private entrance and a penthouse duplex are four different products in one building, and they should be comped as such. Renovation state matters more than usual as well: apartments of this size carry renovation budgets that can rival the purchase price of a two-bedroom elsewhere in the district.

35 Park West Corporation operates on a fiscal year ending September 30 and runs a genuinely large budget for a 70-unit building — total cost of operations above $2.7 million in recent audited years. Two lines dominate. New York City real estate taxes ran roughly $900,000 in fiscal 2020, against a building that is fully depreciated for accounting purposes. Payroll, payroll taxes and union benefits together exceeded $1.1 million. Substantially all employees are covered by an SEIU Local 32BJ collective bargaining agreement, and the corporation contributes to the Building Service 32BJ multiemployer pension fund, which its auditors disclose as having been certified in "red" — critical — status for the plan year ended June 30, 2020, with a rehabilitation plan in place. That disclosure is standard across union-staffed New York buildings and is not specific to this address, but it belongs in a buyer's file.

Capital spending has been heavy and recent. The corporation signed a $1,211,005 façade contract with Skyline Restoration Inc. plus engineering oversight, and had paid roughly $1.09 million of it by September 30, 2020. Property and equipment additions ran $1.11 million in fiscal 2020 alone. Funding came from the capital assessment in force since 2016 — $3.07 per share monthly in 2016, stepping down through $2.46, $1.50, $1.5345 and $1.5575 to roughly $1.58 per share for the year ending September 2021 — together with the 2 percent transfer fee, both of which flow to the reserve rather than to operations. Between them they produced more than $600,000 in fiscal 2020.

The consequence is visible on the balance sheet: the reserve fund fell from about $922,000 to about $359,000 over fiscal 2020 as the façade money went out the door. The corporation refinanced on June 5, 2018 with a $1,300,000 fifteen-year self-amortizing mortgage at 4.107 percent maturing July 1, 2033, and holds an undrawn $500,000 line of credit alongside it. Maintenance rose 5.0 percent effective October 2019 and 4.1 percent effective October 2020. No reserve study has been performed and the auditors note the omission. Ask for the current reserve balance, the status of the façade program, and whether the capital assessment is still running.

Two small revenue lines are worth knowing because they are unusual: the corporation licenses rooftop antenna space for $12,000 a year, and it bills storage separately from maintenance.

Recent sales

Sales sourced from NYC Department of Finance recorded transfers (BBL 3-01073-0041) and verified listing data. Apartment-level facts (line, condition, asking-price context) curated and cross-verified by The Roebling Team research desk. Not all transactions cross-verify with ACRIS records — sponsor and LLC purchases sometimes record at stipulated values rather than market price.

You are buying square footage that does not exist elsewhere in the borough. Simplexes of five to eight rooms, duplexes of eleven to thirteen, two maisonettes with private street entrances. Decide which product you are actually shopping for before you compare prices.

Model the carrying cost honestly. A union staff, a fully attended building and a nine-hundred-thousand-dollar tax bill produce maintenance figures that shock buyers coming from smaller Park Slope co-ops. Run the True Monthly Carrying Cost against the specific apartment's share count.

Ask where the capital program stands. A $1.2 million façade contract, a reserve drawn down from roughly $922,000 to $359,000 in one year, and a capital assessment running since 2016. Get the current reserve balance and the board's forward plan.

The 2 percent transfer fee is the seller's, but price it anyway. It shapes what sellers will accept and it shows up in every negotiation in the building.

Understand what the historic district exclusion means. No Landmarks review on windows or façade work — faster and cheaper capital projects, and no LPC protection attaching to this building either way.

Budget the board package time. Two shareholder committees, three years of returns, six references contacted individually, and a 75 percent financing ceiling.

Lead with the plan and the provenance. An Emery Roth commission, built as a cooperative in 1929 and never converted, with room counts no competing building can match. That is a short, checkable story and it is the whole listing.

Comp your line, not the building. Averaging across a five-room simplex and a thirteen-room duplex produces a number that helps nobody. Use same-line and same-configuration sales.

Disclose the transfer fee and the assessment early. A 2 percent seller-paid fee and an ongoing capital assessment are both better handled in the first conversation than in the third.

Confirm the advertising rule before you plan marketing. The corporation's written rules restrict use of the building address in public advertising and require advance notice of broker visits. Get the board's current position in writing.

Have the corporation's financial record ready. Audited statements running back decades, a documented façade program and a self-amortizing mortgage maturing in 2033 are underwriting assets with both the board and the buyer's lender.

If you're considering 35 Prospect Park West, also evaluate:

• 40 Prospect Park West — the 1942 co-op directly across Garfield Place; also excluded from the historic district, and a very different apartment
• 39 Plaza Street West — Rosario Candela's 1926 tower on Grand Army Plaza; the other architect-signature prewar cooperative in the neighborhood
• 1 Prospect Park West — the 2019 condominium conversion at Grand Army Plaza; the condo-ownership alternative on the same avenue
• 10 Plaza Street East — the 1959 fifteen-story co-op on the Plaza; postwar full-service
• 20 Plaza Street East — 1940 co-op on Grand Army Plaza
• 135 Eastern Parkway (Turner Towers) — the large prewar Prospect Heights cooperative; the closest peer on scale
• 34 Plaza Street East — prewar co-op on the Plaza's Prospect Heights side
• 209 Lincoln Place — the ten-story 1928 co-op inside the historic district
• 1 Grand Army Plaza (Richard Meier on Prospect Park) — the park-front new-development condominium alternative