A partnership between the real estate investment groups Midtown Equities and East End Capital has secured an option to purchase the most closely watched development site in Brooklyn, according to sources.
The two firms have signed a contract to acquire CitiStorage, an 11-acre parcel on the Williamsburg waterfront where they can build retail and office space. It wasn't immediately clear what the two firms are negotiating to pay. Norman Brodsky, who owns the land and built the warehouses on it, told Crain's earlier this year that he had received offers for more than $250 million for the site.
Reached on Friday, Mr. Brodsky said he could not comment on the contract. Midtown Equities and East End Capital could not immediately be reached for comment.
Though CitiStorage has attracted some of the city's largest developers, many have backed away from its sizable hurdles. The site was initially promised by former Mayor Michael Bloomberg's administration in 2005 as a key piece of Bushwick Inlet Park. But the city hasn't yet moved to acquire the site and spent far more than was originally budgeted for the park, acquiring neighboring parcels as property values have soared. However, after a fire at the end of January burned down one of the site's two large document-storage warehouses, neighborhood activists and Councilman Stephen Levin renewed their demands that the city fulfill its pledge to purchase the site and incorporate it into the park.
Mayor Bill de Blasio's administration is said to favor a plan in which a private developer covers the cost of acquiring the site and converts a portion of it into parkland in exchange for the right to build high-priced residential towers with affordable housing on the remainder. Advocates of the park, including Mr. Levin, have rejected such a compromise.
6 comments:
Sure next thing you will want is treas in the park
Trees don't pay Taxes!!
You do the hokey- pokey...and that's what it's all about.
Which services will Levin cut or which taxes will he raise to cover the cost of the land? Thought so. He can "demand" and "reject" all he wants; it's not city property.
Soon they'll be building inside of cemeteries. corrupt real estate developers.
I recall St. Michaels cemetery in Astoria digging up old graves...which they said were not claimed by family members for about 99 years. They built condo looking multi story burial vaults in their place.
That was in the late 80s or early 90s.
Is the Vallone firm advising them?
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