Bell tolls for Toll Brothers

From the Brooklyn Paper:

The “Superfund stigma” has claimed its first victim, as a development company that once envisioned a 500-unit complex along the banks of the fetid Gowanus Canal has officially bailed on its five-year pursuit of the project saying that it can’t wait for the federal government to complete its proposed 10-plus year clean-up.

Toll Brothers walked away from a $5.75-million down payment it had made on canal-front land just south of the Carroll Street bridge, making good on a promise to abandon its plan if the federal government designated the waterway a Superfund site, as it did in March.

Toll had entered a contract to purchase the property from Joseph Phillips and Citibank in 2004, and made its down payment on the eventual purchase price of $20.6 million, according to court papers filed last year.

Had the project advanced, Toll would have purchased a total of three parcels on two adjoining blocks to build a mixed-income project with 477 apartments in a complex of townhouses and buildings scaling as high as 12 stories.