Author: Brett
Our whirlwind real estate tour of Riverdale concluded at the massive Briar Oaks Apartment Complex on the Henry Hudson Parkway. Unlike the small, modern Waterford building that we had seen in the morning, Briar Oaks is the old-school apartment building (circa 1950s) where Mom grew up and where you went to visit Nanny and Pop-Pop until they got sick of the New York winters and moved to Boca del Vista with the rest of The Greatest Generation.
The apartment we saw on the 11th floor was a definite “diamond-in-the-rough”. For their asking price in the mid-500s and a maintenance of around $600, you could have a view of the Hudson River, 3 giant (by today’s standards) bedrooms, 1 1/2 baths, a terrace, and ample living and dining room space in addition to a separate kitchen. The downside is that this particular unit needed to be uh, gutted. The paint and plaster walls peeled and cracked and the floor choices in some of the rooms left us puzzled (linoleum tiles in the bedrooms?) while others would clearly need to be updated.
While the Oaks has amenities like a playground, a playroom, a laundry room, storage lockers, and on-site parking, most of what they have to offer also needs refreshing. Parking is $100 a month and there was a wait list for an indoor spot, the storage lockers are also waiting-list-only and the playroom was downright depressing. Each building has a doorman, but the one we talked to didn’t seem to know that there was an open house in the building that day nor where we should park as visitors.
We took the tots downstairs to the playroom for a quick diaper change and I shuddered to think of all of the kid cooties on the ancient toys lining the shelves. I risked their contracting typhoid anyway since my son is in the middle of a motor vehicle obsession.
Ah, but the size of those rooms! And the view! The apartment was definitely in our price range and we would have money left over to really renovate. Andrew, however, was not impressed. While our weekend of apartment-hunting had been informative, he was suddenly thrust back into the realm of maintenance fees and laundry rooms, coop boards and noisy neighbors sharing walls—all of which he realized at that moment that he did not want to revisit. While I would not mind living out my life in a well-maintained apartment and I simpered at the thought of us turning down what could be a kick-ass dwelling, I had to admit that I could no longer make do with a laundry room since I currently do about 2 loads of clothes (and diapers) a day while taking care of the twins myself. There are single-family houses in Riverdale and the area is definitely beautiful, but if we were going to buy a house and fix it up, we might as well look closer to Andrew’s parents, in Brooklyn.
We decided to take a look around Marine Park the following weekend.