From left: ERG's Richard Guarino, American Development Group's Brian Lockner and a rendering of 271 Seabreeze Ave.
A Coney Island development site ready for a 22-story building is hitting the market for $14 million, ERG Property Advisors, the site’s exclusive marketers told The Real Deal.
The property is located at 271 Seabreeze Avenue, near the Atlantic Ocean and adjacent to the Coney Island boardwalk and Seaside Park. It is zoned for residential, hotel or senior living use, and plans drawn up by owners American Development Group would sustain up to 153 apartments, or 183 extended-stay hotel rooms, and 102 parking spaces.
American Development Group has been looking to unload the property for more than a year and ERG’s Richard Guarino, Vlad Loktev and Shawn Campbell are the latest to lead the effort.
The developer acquired the site in 2006 for $13.8 million, city records show, and laid the foundation for the building and an automated parking garage. But when the real estate market crashed the developers couldn’t secure financing for construction.
As The Real Deal previously reported, American Development Group put the property up for auction last May but were ultimately unsatisfied with the asking price, according to Guarino. Next Massey Knakal Realty Services took a shot with the listing, originally asking $14.9 million but eventually cutting the price to $11.95 million.
Now, after a few months off the market, it is reemerging with ERG. “Massey Knakal listed it at a time, in my opinion, when the development market was not as strong as it is today,” Guarino, a managing director, said. “A lot of developers are dying to find their first project in the new Brooklyn market.”
Brian Hanson, a director of sales at Massey Knakal agreed with Guarino’s assessment. “The market just wasn’t ready,” he said. About 10 offers did come in, according to Hanson, but not at a price American Development Group was willing to accept.
As The Real Deal reported last month sales of residential development sites in Brooklyn quadrupled in the first half of this year on a square-foot basis. American Development Group remains determined to unload the property, even though it will take “a little bit of a haircut” in a deal at the asking price, the firm’s head of investments, Brian Lockner, admitted.
“We couldn’t do the project we had hoped to do because of financing constraints. We felt we could have built condos very successfully for the Russian community,” of Brighton Beach and Coney Island, Lockner said. Financing was available for a rental project, according to Lockner, but the firm shied away from that option. “We feel this cash could be better deployed elsewhere,” Lockner said.
Hanson said the pricing, at more than $100 per buildable foot, was a little bit high, but acknowledged that the potential product, with its oceanfront location, was unique. He also said interested buyers might be overlooking the fact that a foundation is already mostly in place at a cost of $4.5 million.
The group had explored amenities such as a rooftop terrace on the lower floors with a tennis court and penthouses that each included infinity pools overlooking the ocean on the roof deck, according to Guarino, who said he believes the site will sell by the fall.
