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We posted this on Curbed yesterday and weren’t sure whether to laugh or cry when we saw the language in this ad that is appearing in New York Magazine for 80 Metropolitan, a development in Williamsburg we’ve covered to death. What’s the problem, you ask? Well, it says the developer has “converted the Old Dutch Mustard warehouse” to condos. Uh, we spent an entire fall stopping at Metropolitan and Wythe as they demolished the Old Dutch Mustard factory to build 80 Met. In fact, the developer said it “behooved” him to tear down a landmark industrial building that we loved dearly. The reason was simple. It was cheaper to tear it down than to figure out how to incorporate it into to the utterly pedestrian new building. And, now, they’re running an ad saying they “converted” it. It would be as if we bulldozed your home and put up an entirely new building, then smiled at you and told you we’d converted your shithole of a house into a luxury residence. We’ve seen a lot of ballsy claims in real estate advertising, but the 80 Met Dutch Mustard “conversion” ad is a prize winner.

GL ANALYSIS:
We had made our peace with 80 Metropolitan, at least in terms of having lost some of our rage at the senseless destruction of the Old Dutch Mustard Factory and the sadness we felt every time we walked up Metropolitan Avenue because we knew what a better developer than Steiner Equities working with less hack architects could have done with Old Dutch. Now, we are enraged at the duplicity in this ad and the sheer gall of using something that one deliberately destroyed to market the new product to ignorant buyers (assuming any are stupid enough to be buying in this market at their hyper-inflated prices guaranteed to lose 30-50 percent of their value by the end of 2010). This would be one of the most laughable marketing tactics we’ve ever seen if it weren’t so despicable and deplorable. The converted Old Dutch Mustard Factory? Have you no shame, Mr. Steiner? We wish bankruptcy and financial ruin on this entire abomination of a project for using a building that was barbarically destroyed to sell its vile, ugly and nauseating replacement. We may be among a handful of people that feel this way, but we consider the demolition of the Old Dutch Mustard Factory an embodiment of the wretched excess of the early 2000s building boom on par with the burning of the Greenpoint Terminal Market. It was the most grotesque and senseless demolition in all of Williamsburg. Why doesn’t someone level Steiner Studios, put up a crappy condo and call them “luxury condos converted from an old movie studio.” Oh, and by the way, we sure hate to bring this up again, but are buyers aware that part of the project on Kent Avenue is built on the site of a factory that stored toxic pesticides and is across the street from a paint factory that is so toxic that it almost qualifies as a Federal Superfund Cleanup site? Yeppers. Read the Environmental Section of the 2005 rezoning document–which whitewashed most environmental issues in the area–but couldn’t avoid the poisonous nature of this site.