MANSION --- The Market: Where Teardowns Sell For Millions --- For some Brooklyn buyers, Ocean Parkway is the only option

Those unfamiliar with Brooklyn's Ocean Parkway may be confused by its designation in 1975 as a "scenic landmark" by New York City's Landmarks Preservation Commission.

Homes along this 6-mile stretch of road range from humble to haute, with modest single and multifamily homes remodeled into a mashup of architectural styles, with limestone quoins, stucco arches, stone balustrades and Spanish-tiled roofs. Yet the demand for such homes -- renovated or not -- is so intense that most sell for top dollar via private "pocket listings" or word-of-mouth. Here, a teardown or an empty lot can go for as much as $3 million, according to StreetEasy.com, a New York real-estate listings website.

Almost all of the owners belong to the tightly knit Sephardic Jewish population. Because they can't drive on the Sabbath, they have a much more acute sense of location, location, location than even the savviest real-estate shopper.

The closer they are to their families, schools and synagogues, says Jack Sardar, a real-estate agent with Madison Estates who represents nearby properties, "the more valuable the property. You can go up one block and get a $1 million discount." People will overpay, he adds, to get anything on the block they want, knowing they can renovate to suit later. "You'll see something sell for a crazy number. To a certain point it's not worth it for anyone else."

According to StreetEasy, 19 single-family houses have sold for more than $1 million since 2010 and eight sold for over $3 million along this section of Ocean Parkway; 47 multifamily homes sold for more than $1 million in that same time frame and two vacant lots sold for over $3 million.

Once a property sells, the new owner may spend millions more on extensive renovations and modern upgrades. Up and down the street, especially in Brooklyn's Midwood and Gravesend neighborhoods, many humble semi-attached single and multifamily homes have been reinvented and sometimes wildly reimagined into bigger, bolder, more ornate and elaborate iterations.

The buyers are intensely private -- all of those contacted for this article declined to be interviewed. Architectural designer David Cohen is currently overseeing two projects on Ocean Parkway and has worked on more than 80 others on or near the street, which runs north to south from Prospect Park to Brighton Beach. Today's buyer, he says, looks for "a spin on an English- or Mediterranean-style house with some modern elements and contemporary transitional features."

Some clients want to stand out: A few homes would look more contextual in Miami than Kings County, with floor-to-ceiling windows amid white facades. One thing they all have in common: the new homes are bigger. The noise of construction permeates the street as contractors push up and out, combining two-family homes to one, expanding dormered crawl spaces into full-fledged third stories and even meshing two lots to build homes as big as 9,000 square feet. According to data provided by the New York City Department of Buildings, 35 homes along Ocean Parkway have been enlarged -- some by more than 5,000 square feet -- since 1995. Dozens more have been similarly altered on surrounding streets.

And while the phenomenon happens elsewhere in these neighborhoods, it is particularly remarkable along Ocean Parkway itself.

The road -- with benches, paths and game tables along it -- was designed by Central Park's Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux. In their preliminary plans from 1866, Olmsted and Vaux envisioned a road "of a picturesque character . . . neither very straight nor very level, and should be bordered by a small belt of trees and shrubbery." In a report submitted two years later, Olmsted and Vaux described a wide road divided by a grassy median for pedestrians and coined it a "parkway," with influences from boulevards in Paris and Berlin. Construction began in 1874, and the road opened in 1876, according to the Landmarks Preservation Commission. The median was split in 1894 to create what is said to be the first bike path in the U.S. In the 1950s, about a half-mile of the parkway was replaced with the Prospect Expressway; the commission's designation prevented further changes on the historic road.

Homes were first built on the perimeter of the parkway in the 1900s, especially after World War I. Later, many of these homes were subdivided into multifamily properties or replaced entirely with apartment buildings.

The 1920s and 1930s single-family homes that survived into the 2000s are undergoing the greatest transformations. "They were nice homes, don't get me wrong," said Brooklyn historian Ron Schweiger, who grew up a block away from Ocean Parkway. "But tearing them down to the foundation and building these mansions -- they're magnificent, gorgeous homes."

Credit: By Lisa Selin-Davis