Toll Brothers, the Elephant of Housing, Comes to Dumbo

Toll Brothers, a national homebuilder that has struggled to implement its plain-vanilla housing formula in New York City's most populous borough, has paid $8.6 million for a parcel near the Brooklyn waterfront.

The company plans to build a 70-unit condominium in the hip, industrial Dumbo neighborhood, according to Brownstoner.com, but the plans have not become public.

News of the sale, which came right before Christmas but was only recently disclosed, follows talk of another residential development further north along the Brooklyn waterfront: the long-bruited redevelopment of the former Domino Sugar factory in Williamsburg by Community Preservation Corporation. In addition to converting the historic sugar refinery into housing, a $1.5 billion plan calls for new towers to be built for a total of 2,200 units of mixed-income housing.