In the third quarter, condos in an area that includes Wallabout and nearby Vinegar Hill, Fort Greene and Clinton Hill, traded at an average of $1,088 a square foot, according to Halstead sales data.

The three other towers, at Nos. 7 and 45 Clermont and 40 Vanderbilt, were built over the last five years and are made up of affordable rentals. All buildings surround a signature amenity: a long private lawn running down the center of the block framed by cherry, oak and other trees.

Though the complex does not have a doorman, the bike room was made extra-large. Because the nearest subway stops, on the F and G lines, are long, bleak walks away, residents are expected to take advantage of Flushing Avenue’s popular bike lane to ride to Manhattan. “There is always going to be somebody who’s going to say it’s too far from the train,” Mr. Kliegerman said. “But I think this is part of the beauty of the area, that it’s not so congested.”

Image The Sands Street gate, one of the entrances to the Navy Yard. Credit... Pablo Enriquez for The New York Times

Across the way, the Navy Yard may seem a bit more crowded. The 300-acre facility, which wraps around Wallabout Bay, has 7,000 people employed in 330 companies, which are tucked into new and old structures amid rusting cranes, Belgian block lanes and cannons. This head count is a far cry from the 70,000 employed during World War II constructing ships like the U.S.S. Missouri, on whose deck Japanese officials would later surrender.

When the base closed, in 1966, Brooklyn’s economy quickly declined, historians say, despite efforts by the city to reinvigorate the yard. By the early 1980s, just 100 people worked there, said Mr. Ehrenberg, 39, who was raised in Brooklyn and remembers going to the yard to pick up a car that had been towed. A police tow pound is still there, off Navy Street; the yard also is home to a cement company and a dry dock, which was repairing Weddell Sea, a tugboat, on a recent afternoon.

According to its stated mission, the yard tries to lease only to tenants that make things. Smaller, less-industrial occupants are welcome, like Kings County Distillery, which makes whiskey in a Romanesque former Paymaster’s Building. On Saturdays, it offers tastings, which, in the spirit of the more welcoming yard, are open to the public, though visitors must show I.D. at a gate. Similarly, Building 92, which opened in 2011, offers an informative museum and organizes tours.