98 Front Street
98 Front Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201
DUMBO, Brooklyn
BBL 3000517502 · BIN 3346567
- Year built
- 2019
- Type
- Condominium
- Units
- 165
- Floors
- 10
- Landmark
- No
- Subletting
- Permitted under condominium framework; sponsor retained unconditional right to rent unsold units (disclosed special risk); investor-tolerant
- Pied-à-terre
- Permitted (no owner-occupancy requirement disclosed)
Compiled by The Roebling Research Desk from the building’s offering plan, amendments, and related building documents (primary source dated 2020). Reported and subject to confirmation. Board policies can change by amendment — confirm at the offer stage.
98 Front Street is DUMBO's clearest statement that the neighborhood's new-construction chapter could produce architecture as distinctive as its loft-conversion chapter. The site — a full corner parcel at Front and Adams Streets, held for decades by the Jehovah's Witnesses as a single-story garage — was acquired by Hope Street Capital for approximately $60 million as the Watchtower organization unwound its Brooklyn real estate holdings, one of the last pieces of that historic sell-off. Where most of the Witnesses' DUMBO and Heights portfolio went to large-scale developers assembling mega-projects, Hope Street commissioned ODA New York to design a mid-rise condominium calibrated to the neighborhood's warehouse scale, and the result reads as a deliberate third way between preserved loft block and generic infill.
ODA's design logic is visible from the street: the 10-story building is composed as a stack of shifted cubes, with volumes pushed forward and pulled back to create cantilevers, recessed private terraces, and corner glass at the seams. The architects have described the approach as fragmenting the big-box building format into "growing pockets and urban voids" — in practice, the shifting produces over 100 distinct layouts across 165 units and gives an unusually large share of apartments either a terrace, a corner exposure, or both. The material palette is contextual rather than showy: exposed concrete framing and expansive glass, a nod to DUMBO's reinforced-concrete daylight-factory heritage — the Robert Gair Company blocks east of Adams Street pioneered that construction a century earlier — without imitating it.
The building's location does meaningful work in its value story. The parcel sits just outside the DUMBO Historic District's 2007 boundary, beside the Brooklyn Bridge approach, which functions as a permanent light-and-view easement to the west: upper-floor and roof-terrace sightlines to the bridge, Lower Manhattan, and the East River are structurally protected in a way few DUMBO buildings can claim. At the same time, the York Street F station is two blocks east, the High Street A/C station is a short walk south, and Brooklyn Bridge Park's ferry landing is roughly seven minutes west — a transit position that compares favorably with the deeper blocks of the historic district.
Within the DUMBO market, 98 Front occupies a specific niche: full-amenity new construction at entry prices below the neighborhood's trophy conversions and large-scale waterfront developments. The offering opened in July 2019 with studios from around $600,000 — a price point the historic district's loft stock simply does not produce — while the garden-level two-bedroom duplex-style units ran to $3.25 million by the seventh amendment. That spread, from accessible pied-à-terre-scale inventory to family-scale outdoor-space units, gives the building one of the widest buyer funnels in the neighborhood.
Architecture and unit composition
The 165 residential units (one of them the Resident Manager's unit) occupy marketed floors 3 through PH3 above a garden level, with the cube-shifted massing distributing terraces and setbacks through the middle and upper floors rather than reserving outdoor space for a penthouse tier alone. The garden level carries the building's largest spreads — two-bedroom units of roughly 1,350–1,730 square feet with private outdoor areas of 200–690 square feet per the offering plan's Schedule A — while typical tower floors mix studios of roughly 350–400 square feet, one-bedrooms of 520–650 square feet, and two-bedrooms ranging to over 1,100 square feet. The sixth amendment documents the building's late-stage reconfiguration: the Buildings Department required an enlarged Community Facility Unit on the third floor, which eliminated the original 3K resident-manager unit, created a new garden-level residence, and triggered a reshuffling of the garden-level amenity suite.
Interior specifications follow the new-development DUMBO idiom — floor-to-ceiling glazing within the concrete frame, open-plan kitchens, and finishes consistent with the 2019–2021 Brooklyn new-dev tier. The defining interior asset is light: the cube massing means exposures shift unit by unit, and the Adams Street frontage faces the bridge approach's open air rather than a facing building.
Building operations
98 Front operates as a full-service condominium with an attended lobby and live-in resident manager. The amenity program is concentrated on the garden level and the roof: the indoor saltwater pool with steam room and spa, the fitness center (expanded under the sixth amendment to absorb the former library/lounge area, with steam room and locker rooms), a secondary recreation room, residents' lounge, coworking space, and children's playroom below; and the approximately 7,000-square-foot rooftop terrace — barbecue stations, outdoor kitchens, bocce court, screening area — above, with Manhattan skyline and bridge panoramas. Parking operates as an attended 66-space rack system under license agreements, an arrangement buyers should understand as valet-style mechanical parking rather than self-park spaces. Storage lockers (20) and bicycle storage (83 spaces) are licensed separately.
Purchasers should note the offering plan's disclosed special risk that the sponsor retained the unconditional right to rent rather than sell units — standard language in this vintage of Brooklyn new development, but a reminder to review the current sold-versus-rented unit mix and board composition during diligence.
Recent sales
The retrade record
Lines that have traded more than once in the public record — the building’s appreciation arc, apartment by apartment.
Recent closings at this building, sourced from NYC Department of Finance records. Apartment-level detail (line, condition, asking-price context) verified upon consultation request.
| Date | Unit | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Jun 24, 2026 | 6E | $939,000 |
| May 7, 2026 | PH3G | $1,700,000 |
| Jul 30, 2025 | PH1G | $3,675,000 |
| Jun 2, 2025 | GRE | $2,250,000 |
| Jun 6, 2024 | 7N | $1,465,000 |
| Mar 18, 2024 | 5H | $1,550,000 |
Full closing history with price-per-square-foot over time, the complete retrade record, and every line that has traded.
Sales sourced from NYC Department of Finance recorded transfers (BBL 3-00051-7502) 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.
What to know if you’re buying
The massing creates real layout variety — inspect the specific unit. With more than 100 distinct layouts, floorplans in the same price band can live very differently. Terrace units, corner-glass units, and interior-facing units carry different value trajectories.
Understand the rack parking. The 66-space garage is an attended mechanical rack system under license agreements — convenient, but different in daily use from self-park garages. Confirm license availability and monthly fees.
The bridge approach is both amenity and neighbor. Adams Street frontage buys protected light and bridge views; it also means roadway adjacency. Visit the unit with windows open at different hours.
Carrying costs are moderate for new construction. The offering plan projected combined monthlies from roughly $700 for studios; verify the current common-charge schedule and the unit's actual tax bill, and run the True Monthly Carrying Cost Calculator against them.
Review the sold-versus-rented mix. The sponsor's retained rental rights make the current ownership composition a diligence item; ask for the condominium's current financials and board composition.
What to know if you’re selling
Market the architecture specifically. ODA's cube massing, the terrace ratio, and the protected bridge sightlines are documentable differentiators against both DUMBO's older conversions and its larger new developments — lead with them.
Position against the right comparable set. Studio and one-bedroom exits compete with the neighborhood's new-dev inventory; garden-level units with major outdoor space should be priced against townhouse-alternative demand, not the building's own tower lines.
The amenity package is a genuine differentiator at this scale. An indoor saltwater pool and a 7,000-square-foot roof deck are rare below the mega-project tier in DUMBO; feature them in marketing.
Closings are condominium-fast. Standard 30–45 day pacing from contract.
Comparable buildings
If you're considering 98 Front Street, also evaluate:
- Front & York (85 Jay Street) — the block-scale DUMBO new development one block east; deeper amenities, larger buyer pool
- The Clock Tower (1 Main Street) — DUMBO's trophy loft conversion; the neighborhood's pricing ceiling
- 70 Washington Street — the Gair-era loft-conversion benchmark for the neighborhood
- 100 Jay Street (J Condominium) — earlier-vintage DUMBO new-construction condominium peer
- 51 Jay Street — warehouse-conversion condominium in the historic district's eastern blocks
- 205 Water Street — boutique new-construction condominium alternative
- 1 John Street — park-front boutique condominium at the water's edge
- One Clinton (1 Clinton Street) — Brooklyn Heights' flagship new-dev tower; the cross-neighborhood alternative
Considering a move at 98 Front?
Request a private building brief with the relevant comparable sales, current and off-market availability, and an apartment-specific view of value.
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A Private Pricing Opinion — what your apartment at 98 Front would likely sell for today, what it costs to sell, and what you’d walk away with — reviewed personally against condition, exposures, renovation quality, and the competition actually on the market.