50 Franklin Street

After procrastinating for at least two months, we finally made it out to 50 Franklin, the brand spanking new Civic Center Tribeca building brought to you by the architects that also designed the Thompson LES Hotel. You can see this clean gray and blue building with balconies from several blocks away on Franklin as you walk up one of Tribeca's grittier streets, littered with old loft buildings, bodegas and a "closed on the weekends" deli on the corner. Walk a couple of blocks west however, and you start to hit a decent area of Tribeca (well, if you fancy the overpriced Centrico or the bachelor-party infested Churrascaria). Overall though, this building's location is MUCH better than many rants say ("it's not Tribeca because it's east of Broadway blah blah blah"). So is this building in Tribeca? Nope. But it's close enough in our opinion.

We do have to mention however, that the building's one main tie to Tribeca (the coveted zoning for the uber coveted PS 234) no longer exists according to the broker. This building is zoned for "another school" whose number "escaped" the broker when we asked.

At any rate, we began our journey at this 72 unit building in the creepy sales office across the street. Even though there was a huge sign that said "50 Franklin Sales Office" hanging over the door, we couldn't believe that anyone was running an operation out of what looked like a 6-story 1850s brownstone (and not the kind where Blair Waldorf hangs out) with an old creeky elevator and a buzzer outside the door. Anywho, once we got to the sales office (which was medium full on a Sunday - maybe 3 groups there) the agent handed us some hardhats (cute touch, I think mine said "Lily") and told us that 50 Franklin is 15-20% sold. It's a low enough number to actually be believable, however the agent's claim that they are "selling fast" and that reaching 50% sold will be "no problem at all" had us accidentally spitting up our Diet Coke (good thing we were already on our way to the condos across the street).

Once in 50 Franklin, which is mostly complete with the exception of the roof deck (ummm...we seriously cannot even imagine how they are going to turn that tiny A/C unit covered space into the grand lounge area pictured in the brochure) we ran through several 1BRs and a couple of 2BRs. Probably the most interesting thing about this building is that despite the myriad of brochure photos with happy models looking at the Empire State Building and expansive views of Manhattan, only the Penthouse units (gosh, where have we seen that trick before?) actually have a view of anything other than the office building across the street (north) or the even worse (we couldn't believe it) gross graffiti covered neighboring building (south). Of course, if you stand on your 42 sq ft balcony (which most units have) and turn your head to the left, you can see a small sliver of that Civic Center park whose name we can never remember.

The units themselves are fairly well laid-out and not obnoxiously (not reasonably either) priced. 1BRs float mostly around the $800,000 range which does not include the sponsor's offer of 5% cash back at closing. The 2BRs are all around $1.2 million, although we did see a unit under $1 million that unfortunately had a tiny second bedroom and a view of the aforementioned graffiti-covered building.

Inside, the apartments have very bright finishes - light wood floors and white countertops, which we personally don't like but lots of people do. The floor-to-ceiling windows are quite nice (except for the aforementioned view issue) as are the stackable washers and dryers in each unit. The 1BR units mostly have a deep soaking tub/shower combo (we've always loathed loved the idea of climbing into these) while the 2BRs have separate showers and tubs. Another interesting feature of this building is that each unit comes with it's own HVAC system in a closet - so you can literally open one of your interior doors and see it.

Overall, we thought the maintenance in this 421-a tax abated building was still a tad high (at $1.30 per sq ft) given that there are few amenities (although there is a doorman).

We're taking a pass on this building (at least for now) however it's not a bad deal if you'd like to be near Tribeca and don't have an issue with dark building views.