The most expensive home in Brooklyn's Dumbo neighborhood is currently under contract and is expected to close in the next few months (at least according to the WSJ). It is a 4,270 square-foot penthouse, with a 500 square-foot terrace, that occupies the full top floor of Olympia Dumbo.

The asking price / contract price is $17.5 million, which works out to be about USD 4,098 per square foot (or CAD 5,486 per square foot based on the exchange rate right now). Based on this price per pound, an equivalent 600 square foot suite would cost you about CAD $3.3 million.

The land was purchased in 2018 for about $98 million. I don't know what the total GFA of the building is, but it does have 76 residences, so that works out to about USD 1,289,473 per suite (or CAD 1,726,624 per suite), for the land cost alone.

This should give you an indication of what the end suite pricing would need to be to make this development feasible, and likely also speaks to its average suite size. New York City tends to build much bigger suites. Certainly compared to here in Toronto.

Also, notice that I didn't say unit?

This week AN announced its 2022 Best of Design Awards, which is intended to celebrate outstanding built and unbuilt architectural projects from around the world. And this year I am excited to share that Studio Gang was awarded two editors' picks: one for 11 Hoyt in Brooklyn (Built-Residential, Multi-Unit) and one for One Delisle here in Toronto (Unbuilt-Residential, Multi-Unit). Selfishly, it of course makes me very happy to see our project being celebrated for its architecture. Go team! But from a less selfish perspective, it also makes me very happy to see Toronto being recognized in these awards. Because this is about city building, right?

I learned this morning that + POOL (pictured above) recently received an official" confirmation to proceed with due diligence." This is after more than a decade of planning, fundraising, negotiations, prototyping and, I'm sure, a bunch of other stuff. City building takes a long time. I'm not exactly sure where this milestone sits in the full spectrum of idea to realization, but it certainly sounds like meaningful progress.

The idea behind + POOL is pretty simple: People like to swim in water. But the East River is dirty and not the best place to swim (supposedly it's been this way -- unswimmable -- since the 1930s). So why not create a dedicated swimming pool in the river and why not make it so that it filters the dirty East River water at the same time. Pretty clever. (The plus sign format is so that it can be split up into four separate uses.)

New York City is in the midst of creating some incredibly unique public spaces. The other big news is that Little Island opened up this past weekend within the larger Hudson River Park. Also more than a decade in the making, the free 2.4 acre public park, which was designed by Thomas Heatherwick, is the result of a $260 million donation from Barry Diller and Diane von Furstenberg.

Start with an idea. Put some money around it. And then fight like hell for many years. That's how these remarkable urban spaces are getting created. This is also pretty much how real estate development works.