Williamsburg is getting just what it needs: A seven-story single-family mansion

The thing to remember about real estate in New York is that it involves a decent amount of compromise. We have a whole lot of people in not a whole lot of space, so you don’t always get to have all the square footage and private elevators and infinity pools that you want. Well, except if you’re the person who decides to buy the new building going up on North 7th Street and Kent Avenue, a 9,771 square-foot single-family residence that takes up three lots. 

The news of this sinful indulgence of a building comes from Curbed. They also noted the amenities the building would have, which include a private elevator, an underground parking garage (so no one keys your car we guess) and an infinity pool. We had to look that last one up. Ordinarily, gauche bullshit like this is at least spread among a few rich families. This time though, there’s going to be a single family unit living in this building. Unless of course it becomes a pied-á-terre, which we could see happening. Then it’ll merely be vacationed in by a single family!

Beyond the chutzpah it takes to decide that you need three lots to yourself in a city where the real estate situation is coming close to producing Hunger Games-level competitions for affordable places to live, it also violates an unspoken agreement the city was moving towards with rich people. You warehouse yourselves in glass-walled gigantic luxury condos that we wouldn’t want to live in even if we could afford it, and you leave the normal apartments to everyone else. Projects like this rob New York of the most precious finite resource it has, its land, all so that someone can say they own half a city block.  If Mayor de Blasio was half the communist the Post says he is, he’d immediately seize this building and turn it into a women’s shelter the moment it’s finished. It’s about all we can hope for at this point.