Northside Piers Construction in Williamsburg

This past Saturday was Toll Advantage Day at the Northside Piers project in Williamsburg. The Toll Brothers company is building a huge glassy building on the water and Toll Advantage Day was an opportunity for friends and families of Toll employees, prospective buyers, and the just plain curious to check out the building's progress.

Of course it takes a little more than just an invitation to lure people down to a construction site, so Toll offered up a big picnic for all. Free local Mexican food (great guacamole!), free hotdogs, free hamburgers, free popcorn, free cotton candy, free sodas, free facepainting for the kids, free magician, free spin art, free caricatures, free hardhat construction tours, free parking, free raffle for a 42 inch plasma TV, free swag bags (included Toll-branded notepads, water bottle, pen, coffee mug, house shaped mints), free shuttle from the subway or Manhattan, and the major draw for me (besides guacamole of course)- free beer! 5 or 6 types of bottled Brooklyn Brewery beers for the taking.
After a few beers, dogs, and a softball sized mound of guacamole, I was ready for the hardhat tour. Signed the disclaimer and off we went to the 27th floor. The views were pretty spectacular- 4 bridges in sight in this southerly direction (Verrazano is tucked away at the far left corner):Great views west (well sort of northwest really, but whatever), Empire State building, East River, 59th Street Bridge and the whole Manhattan skyline- must be gorgeous at night:
As you can see looking mostly east- the Northside Piers building completely towers over everything in Williamsburg and beyond.
Here's looking straight down towards the tented festivities and the sales office. The sales office had some model kitchen and bathrooms that had real beautiful fixtures, particularly the kitchen countertops- very nice stone. They also had a scale model of the entire complex which will include a rebuilt pier and 2 other large buildings to be built somewhere within the frame of the picture below.
Of course the big question that potential buyers were asking was- how will the 2 buildings alter my (currently) awesome view? From what I could overhear, Toll representatives were being extremely honest, and pointing out what their exact views would be on the scale model. They also mentioned "view corridors" which I suppose means limited views between the other buildings- perhaps they are being carefully positioned on the site to preserve views from each line of apartments? Very interesting day.