Forest City Ratner to demolish Fort Greene office building for residential use

A Brooklyn office building that Forest City Ratner has owned since 1989 is slated for demolition for the development of housing, according to vociferous Atlantic Yards critic Norman Oder, writing for the New York Observer. The seven-story, 359,000-square-foot property dubbed 10 MetroTech Center has a $40 million mortgage that’s in default.

The information regarding the demolition came from a conference call yesterday with investment analysts.

“An investor purchased the debt from the existing debt holder and we made an agreement with that new investor to take a look at what the best use of the property was,” Forest City Ratner CEO David LaRue said.

However, there are no details on how large the residential property will be. Demolition is slated for September.

The property is located at 625 Fulton Street, between Hudson Avenue and Rockwell Place, on the same parcel as DKLB BKLN, its 36-story rental development at 80 Dekalb Avenue. The building’s $40 million non-recourse mortgage is still in default, according to a quarterly report released yesterday, but Forest City Ratner is not in risk of losing it.

The developer had previously failed to make a payment on the building’s $52 million loan, according to previously published reports. [NYO] —Zachary Kussin