Parke Place Progress Report
We were strolling up the Avenue of the Arts last week and decided to check in on the Parke Place townhouse development in the 1300 blocks of Kater and Bainbridge streets.
We noticed that the development had one piece missing – namely, the easternmost home on the Bainbridge Street side of the project.
It turns out that the foundation with no home on it is the first piece of the next phase of the project, according to listing agent Jim Onesti of the Mike McCann team at Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Fox & Roach Realtors.
As of now, eight of the 22 townhomes in the development are built out, with minor exterior work such as balconies remaining to be completed along with fitting out of the interiors.
That empty foundation, Onesti said, is Lot #5, the first lot in Phase Two of the development. “Lot #5 just has a foundation and will be completed by July 30th,” he wrote us via email. “We have an offer on it and it looks like it will be sold pre-construction.
“The builder is building Lot #5 before the other Phase 2 homes because he needs Lot #5’s facade to be installed in order to complete Lot #4’s facade.”
Onesti says that sales of the first phase are going strong. “So far we have two pre-sold, five current offers on the table and Phase Two should be breaking ground this spring.”
This development is the most luxurious yet to pop up in Hawthorne, yet it sits just to the west of the mixed-income rowhouse project that occupies the site of the former Martin Luther King Plaza towers. The demolition of those towers in the 1990s, and their replacement by the current housing development, has sparked a surge in construction of market-rate housing in Hawthorne; this development defines the top end of that market.
The homes are huge: 4,000 square feet on seven split levels, all served by an elevator, with two-car garages. The homes have either four bedrooms and 3.5 bathrooms or five bedrooms and 4.5 bathrooms; all have dramatic 15-foot-high living rooms and basement dens with 12-foot ceilings. They also come with European kitchens and green roofs offering dramatic city views. The homes are also fully customizable. Prices start at $1.25 million.
The homes are being built by Clarke Real Estate Development L.P., headed by African-American builder Donovan Clarke. This is Clarke’s second luxury development in the vicinity; his first is the Le Fleur condominium in the 1200 block of Bainbridge.