Quote:

Some mice encounter structural problems, but it's nothing a motivated mouse can't solve.

They have been busting there butts working on the building. The brick repointing looks terrific.

My cousin just bought and is getting ready to move in Dixon Mills...such beautiful, unique units! I am surely jealous. Everymonth they have promo offers...and parking is not included in the price, but is definitely a good investment for resale I would say! Beats having to find on-street parking and should be more safe.

Also, they haven't re-assesed the building as of yet. I'm still only paying $140 per month in taxes. Prob won't last but I've been here all year.

I bought here and I love it. I'm not going to get into a huge debate but it was the best price per sq ft I found downtown. I have a garage space, the Path is 3 blocks away, Van Vorst 2 blocks away. I've met a lot of great people in the buildings and it's what I always wanted; a converted factory loft.

Now that's a funny question - personally, Dixon Mills would be the last building I would invest my money or live in, actually I'd rather spend the same amount of money on beer and cheap women.

You might want to do some homework on JClist about this place and neighborhood issues, also look at amenities and parking it might or might not offer !

im interested in buying a 2 bedroom duplex at dixon mills but im not sure if i should wait for prices to drop due to market. also tax seemed pretty high since they dont have abatement over $500 month. does anyone have an opinion on this place? i heard there were some mice/structural problems.

Quote:

Not comparable spaces though, most likely. I do know someone who bought a 1-br co-op for $450K in Chelsea at 6th Ave but it was TINY and a co-op, not a condo.

Isn't 350K an enormous price tag for a studio near Journal Square? I have one friend who purchased a studio in Chelsea for 325K, and I have another who bought a one bedroom in the Upper West Side for 400k.

Looks like a nice unit.

Very impressive, now if we can only adapt this to the rest of Jersey City.

Congrats to Paul and Michael. They are really nice guys.

This old factory

by Jennifer Weiss
The Star-Ledger
Wednesday July 09, 2008

When it comes to homes, Paul Thomas prefers old, historic spaces to new, sleek glass and steel.

When he and partner Michael Perkins were looking to leave their downtown Jersey City rental and buy somewhere in the area, they considered both old and new. In the end, they bought at Dixon Mills, a development that was once a factory famous for a product Thomas knows from his school days: No. 2 pencils.

He and Perkins have since made their duplex their own, adding a chandelier above the dining room table, plants on the outdoor terrace and a color scheme inspired by a framed Marc Chagall poster in the living room.

"There's so much development going on in the area here that's all-new high rises and sort of cookie cutter-type buildings," says Thomas, 41, who works in internal communications for a bank in Weehawken. "This was something that was really interesting. The factory character definitely set it apart."

In Jersey City, especially downtown, many new homes are located in buildings that used to serve other purposes -- factories, warehouses and hospitals, to name a few. They offer an aesthetic contrast to some of the new residential construction the city has seen during its recent housing boom.

The adaptive reuse of some of these spaces has meant the preservation of bits of the city's history, industrial or otherwise. In some places, preservation has been mandated by a historic designation; in others, developers have chosen to proceed that way, sometimes after prodding by local residents.

Most of what will become the Hamilton Square development, on Hamilton Park, for instance, used to be St. Francis Hospital. The approximately 125 units available in the first phase of the project range in price from $277,000 to $1.2 million. The former Jersey City Medical Center has become the Beacon, a sprawling complex that ultimately is to consist of 1,200 residences and more than 80,000 square feet of retail space; condos are priced from $310,000 to $2.1 million, and more than 200 people have already moved in. The former home of the American Can Company, in an industrial area near Journal Square, is becoming Canco Lofts; condos are priced at $350,000 to $850,000.

The Park Foundry, now commercial space and rental lofts that go for $1,600 to $3,000 a month, was a brass foundry, then a warehouse. The Majestic condos were built new, but the building includes a lobby salvaged from the old Majestic Theatre -- divided in two, the other side of the lobby is home to the Bar Majestic on Grove Street. (The condos sold in 2004, but the latest one resold cost $570 a square foot.) Several schools have gone condo. There have been other, similar projects, and more are in the works.

"For the most part, we're content with what's going on," says John Gomez, founder of the Jersey City Landmarks Conservancy. "Sometimes, there's a developer who thinks he or she is doing the right thing and then they make a lot of mistakes, but for the most part, we're satisfied. The buildings are still standing, and they look brand new, some of them."

Gomez says he thinks 80 percent of the city's adaptive reuse projects have been "really good," while the remaining 20 percent have been "a disaster," often times because the developer, in his opinion, didn't preserve enough of the existing building.

While developers have been creating homes from old, nonresidential structures in Jersey City for years, it's happening more now, says Maryann Bucci-Carter, supervising planner with the Division of City Planning. "In modern times, more so, we keep everything that's stable enough to be retained," she says. "There's a lot of a sense of place that goes along with keeping some of the fabric of the existing city."

It's not cheap to create something new out of something old. Paul Silverman, who owns the Exeter Property Company with his brother, Eric, says adaptive reuse is more expensive to do than new construction, partly because reuse often includes unforeseen expenditures.

Frequently, making what's old new again also requires expensive remediation of things like lead paint, asbestos and chemicals.

When his company bought the building that would become the Park Foundry, it was filled with bicycles and Chinese food, he says. Exeter finished the renovation in 1999 and has since built Schroeder Lofts, a six-story brick building of rental units and condos, on the foundry building's old parking lot. The company intentionally built Schroeder Lofts to look somewhat industrial, adding exposed pipes, exposed brick and high ceilings, "so it would fit into the neighborhood," he says. Occasionally, people think the building was repurposed, asking, "What was this before?" he says.

Eric Silverman says such adaptations are considered avant-garde now because of the environmental benefits. "There's nothing better than to reuse a building instead of it having it end up in a landfill," he says.

Lisa Shuchman, 53, bought a $650,000 duplex in the to-be-completed Canco Lofts with her husband, Michael, partly because, as her father put it, "they don't build them like this anymore." The Shuchmans recently sold their brownstone in downtown Jersey City, and hope to move into their new place in January.

"There's something romantic about the idea of living in industrial space... the light, the high ceilings... about creating a home that's got pipes running along the ceiling," says Shuchman. "I recognize it's not for everybody, but then again, neither is brownstone living."

The Canco development, as planned, will expand beyond the reuse of the old American Can building, which is to house more than 500 condos, retail space and a restaurant. The developer, Coalco New York, also intends to add new construction, including at least 500 townhouses and rental apartments.

Before its condos, priced from $250,000 to $750,000, offered GE appliances, exposed-brick walls and outdoor sitting areas, the complex that is now Dixon Mills produced pencils as part of the Joseph Dixon Crucible Company. Built in 1847, the factory was converted to rental apartments in 1986 and renovated by the Westchester-based Robert Martin Company last year.

The complex still resembles a factory from the outside, with red-brick facades, lettering announcing the company name and twin smokestacks. The three-bedroom duplex Thomas and Perkins bought is located in the former executive office building and contains old, historic windows, ceilings that rise to 12 feet and interesting crevices (the pair put an umbrella stand in one near the front door).

Thomas likes knowing his home has an unusual history. After all, everyone remembers Ticonderoga pencils, he says. It's been a great conversation topic. "This building was exporting a little bit of itself all over the United States," he says. "Everyone's sort of come into contact with Dixon Mills, whether they know it or not."