Boomers Are Moving to the Williamsburg Waterfront

One Domino Square, with its “resort-style amenities” and waterfront setting, has been a magnet for a 55-and-over crowd that’s not looking to settle down or retire to the Villages.
Photo: Evan Joseph

It wasn’t too long after their youngest daughter left for college that Rob Glander and his wife, Colleen, realized they were ready to leave the Poconos, too. Rob, a retired private-equity portfolio executive, had already been making the two-hour drive into New York to catch shows a few times a week, so the city seemed like an obvious choice. They first considered a place in Chelsea or Soho, but they liked Williamsburg, with its sleek, waterfront condos, best. This past fall, they bought a two-bedroom, two-and-a-half-bath at Two Trees’ One Domino Square on South 4th Street for $2.7 million. These days, you can find them getting pancakes at Sunday in Brooklyn or seeing bands just a ten-minute walk from their home at Baby’s All Right that may one day sign on Rob’s nascent record label. “Colleen and I are not the type of people to live in the Villages,” Rob says.

But One Domino is not not the Villages, if you think about it. Florida’s gold-standard retirement community promises residents zero friction: There are “golf cars” in lieu of sedans, shopping centers and golf courses, a spread of swimming pools and pickleball courts with which to cruise into one’s golden years. Luxury condo–ized Williamsburg offers its own ease of living, too: It’s walkable with waterfront green space. There are a handful of local offices for top-tier hospital systems from NYU to Mount Sinai. There’s a Trader Joe’s and a Whole Foods, plus every retail taste imaginable, from an Apple store to Hermès to artisan home goods. The L at Bedford even has an elevator now. One Domino, with its dual porcelain-clad towers designed by Selldorf Architects, is particularly frictionless, offering “luxury resort-style amenities” that include an aquatics center with a swimming pool and hydrotherapy spa, plus an on-site 24-hour concierge and a coffee bar. Per the AARP Livability Index, an ideal living situation includes good public transit and walkability, easily accessible health care, and plenty of retail and social opportunities. Is this not Williamsburg?

Which is maybe why the Glanders aren’t the only empty nesters living it up in One Domino right now. The trend that began with the post-rezoning condo boom has fully cohered over the past 20 years, turning the former industrial hub into an outdoor mall that’s been a magnet for 30-somethings in tech and marketing along with, apparently, their parents. “We’re definitely aware of the fact that we’re on the older side here, but it doesn’t bother us,” says one 55-year-old lawyer, who together with her talent-agent husband downsized from a 4,000-plus-square-foot family home in upstate New York to a two-bed, two-bath rental at One Domino Square last year. “If anything, it makes us feel younger.” Proximity to children who have settled in Brooklyn (and often now have kids of their own) is a major draw, but so are the over-the-top amenities. Who wants to be hiking up and down the stairs of their split-level in Scarsdale or even a Park Slope brownstone to grab their Amazon packages when they could have elevators, concierge desks, and doormen? “The condo lifestyle is just elevated,” Ryan Serhant, whose firm is handling sales at Naftali Group’s competing One Williamsburg Wharf on Kent Avenue, says.

“As my children will testify to it, I never hung out with people my age,” says Marietta Teitler, a retired finance executive. After her husband died a few years ago, Teitler, who is 72 years old, decided her home in Manhasset on Long Island was “really not a good place for me to grow old.” She was familiar with Williamsburg: Her son once lived there, and until January, she had investment property in the neighborhood, which is where she watched the construction for One Domino Square. Teitler ended up buying a three-bedroom pied-à-terre in the building, where she’s a ferry ride away from brunch with her kids in Dumbo. “I didn’t have to do any renovation; I love the view from my apartment — Manhattan and the waterfront — so it checked most of the boxes,” she says.

And the surrounding area — Michelin-starred restaurants with $28 plates of conchiglie, a VC-coded padel club, and an NYU Langone office on South 3rd Street — is a magnet for the kind of person willing to pay around $2.5 million for a two-bedroom or $10,000 a month to rent something similar. “We’re not in that spot yet where we’re retired and looking to slow down and move to a quieter place,” the 55-year-old lawyer says, adding that together with their two older children who are also in the city, “we’ve tried dozens and dozens of restaurants. That’s been kind of like our focus since we got here.”

Of course, the age gap between these empty nesters and their younger neighbors has a funny way of showing up from time to time. Teitler says that after she moved in, she ran into a man who went to high school with her daughter. He turned out to be one of her new neighbors. “There was a strange reconnect, from him playing basketball in my driveway 30 years ago to meeting up with him at One Domino Square,” she says. They’re also something like an RA for their younger neighbors. Rob Glander, with his finance background, has been a go-to resource for investment strategy. Colleen is giving out dating advice and teaching people how to bake. “They feel like they’re talking to a parent,” Colleen says. “It wasn’t something I would have expected, but I really am enjoying it.”