Bidding war for Concord Street development site

Eye On Real Estate

December 10, 2014 By Lore Croghan Brooklyn Daily Eagle

This is development site 180 Concord St., which inspired a bidding war. Eagle photos by Lore Croghan

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Ka-Ching!

There was a bidding war for 180 Concord St. — one of the last development sites in a corner of Downtown Brooklyn that’s in the midst of a construction boom.

“This area is a little pocket people hadn’t discovered yet,” said Grant Dolgin, a vice president of Kalmon Dolgin Affiliates, the real estate firm that brokered the $4.5 million transaction.

The neighborhood where it’s located, Bridge Plaza, has become a draw for developers since its upzoning several years ago from a light manufacturing district to medium-density districts allowing residential and commercial uses.

Kalmon Dolgin broker Bob Klein represented buyer Greentown Equities and seller Red Rock Resources in the deal.

Klein said the seller got a barrage of offers— for higher and higher sums — for the property, which he was using as a storage facility.

“His intention was never to sell,” Klein said. “But the numbers convinced him.”

The top offer was for $5 million, all-cash. But “we went with the deal that could close most easily,” Klein said.

There’s a 5,000-square-foot building and a 3,000-square-foot parking lot on the property on the corner of Concord and Duffield streets. It had belonged since 1996 to Red Rock, whose president is Richard Carmel, city Finance Department records indicate.

Winning bidder Greentown Equities made its all-cash $4.5 million purchase through an entity called 180 Concord LLC, Finance Department records indicate. City Buildings Department filings identify one of the LLC members as Chris Gonsalves.

The Buildings Department recently rejected construction plans for two four-story buildings with seven residential units each. The application rejection notice on the plans says, “Drawings incomplete.”

Just steps away from the site, there are a number of residential developments underway or recently completed.

* At 49 Duffield St., a small apartment building is partly constructed. A posting by LoopNet.com from a couple months ago indicates that the site is for sale.

* At 177 Concord St., on the corner of Duffield Street right across from the 180 Concord site, a warehouse was converted to a rental-apartment building a few years ago.

* Next to 177 Concord St. on Duffield Street, an apartment building is under construction on a big site that uses 200 Nassau St. as its address.

The project at 200 Nassau entails the conversion of a two-story community facility to residential use plus the construction of vertical and horizontal extensions. It will ultimately be a four-story property with 84 apartments, parking spaces for 31 cars and storage space for 42 bicycles, according to city Buildings Department filings.

An LLC with developer Malky Landau as a member leased the site from Rocklyn Ecclesiastical Corp. for a 49-year term in 2013. The Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn had transferred the property deed to that not-for-profit affiliate in 2012.

Landau has leased several other Brooklyn Catholic Church sites for residential development, as Eye on Real Estate previously reported. These include 17 and 21 Monitor St. and 96 Dupont St. in Greenpoint and 81 Ten Eyck St. in East Williamsburg.

* Construction recently wrapped up at a 102-unit rental apartment building, 180 Nassau St. which is called Brooklyn Warehouse 180. It is on the opposite corner of Duffield Street from 200 Nassau St.

Brooklyn Warehouse 180’s tenant amenities include a library and recreation room, a gym and a rooftop with a reflecting pool and barbecue grill. Rents for available apartments run as high as $6,495 per month, according to the building’s website.