Washington Square President Paul Travis and a City Point rendering

Century 21 has agreed to open a store at the Fulton Mall in Downtown Brooklyn, the Wall Street Journal reported, expediting the groundbreaking of the long-awaited City Point development. The discount retailer is the first new traditional department store to open in Downtown Brooklyn since the 1970s and will serve as the anchor tenant for City Point, a planned development of 675,000 square feet of retail and commercial space and 690 housing units at Dekalb and Flatbush avenues. [more]

From left: Jeff Sutton, president of Wharton Properties, and Danice Stores storefront at 482 Fulton Street (credit: Google Street View)

Retail investor Jeff Sutton is in a dispute with a former discount clothing store owner who recently vacated one of Sutton’s building’s on the rapidly changing Fulton Mall retail stretch of Downtown Brooklyn.

Sutton’s company at the site, 482 Fulton Street LLC, filed suit last Thursday against an individual named Barry Group, who is president of Brooklyn-based value-priced chain Danice Stores at 482 Fulton Street. Sutton is seeking $153,140 in alleged back rent and $25,000 to cover legal costs and other expenses, the papers filed in New York State Supreme Court show. [more]

National retailers at the Fulton Mall

A Gap Factory Store that opened last week became the latest suburban-style addition to Brooklyn’s Fulton Mall, and according to the Brooklyn Paper, the opening is renewing tension among Downtown Brooklyn residents.

The Gap joins Aeropostale, Aldo, a forthcoming H&M and other national retailers on the strip once home to delis, small shoe and apparel stores and jewelry merchants. [more]

From left at the Brooklyn Real Estate Summit: Tim King of CPEX, Joe Chan of the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership and Michael Phillips of Jamestown; Michael Zazza of the Zazza Development Group and Susan Pollock of CPC Resources

Though the price disparity in their residential markets may be narrowing,
Brooklyn still lags far behind Manhattan in the number of big national
retailers. That was a major discussion point at the 2011 Brooklyn Real
Estate Summit held yesterday at St. Francis College in Downtown
Brooklyn. Not coincidentally, commercial real estate veterans pointed
to the very neighborhood where the conference took place, Downtown
Brooklyn, as crucial to landing those retailers.

“Brooklyn is too spread out to achieve national retailers in every business
district in the borough,” said Michael Phillips, managing director at
real estate investor Jamestown, which has stakes in Be@Schermerhorn in Downtown Brooklyn and four Manhattan buildings. But, by trumpeting Downtown Brooklyn, where retail traffic is already evident, Brooklyn
can lure the big-box national retailer willing to be a pioneer. [more]

Downtown Brooklyn is showing no signs of ceding its title as the city’s fastest-growing neighborhood, even though shopping and public services have yet to catch up with residential development, the Post reported. According to new data from the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership, there are now 12,000 residents of DoBro’s 16-block core, including the Fulton Mall, MetroTech complex and the Jay and Willoughby street corridors, up 50 percent from just one year ago. And the neighborhood is barely recognizable as its decade-ago self, when it had a mere 400 residents and a streetscape peppered with 99-cent stores. [more]

Fulton Street

From the February issue: Fulton Mall’s days as a sneaker store Shangri-la could be numbered. National retailers, as well as Brooklyn’s favorite hip-hop and up-and-coming real estate mogul, Jay-Z, are taking notice of Brooklyn’s busiest, and recently refurbished, retail corridor. This could mean promising days ahead for a tight-knit group of landlords controlling many of the street’s major properties.

Several surnames carry considerable weight when it comes to Fulton Mall real estate–Laboz, Chera, Jemal and Sutton among them. “These families will buy anything that comes available in the area,” said Marcia Rose Yawitz, who has worked with Fulton Mall investors for years as a principal at Eastern Consolidated Real Estate Investment Services. After the jump, a look at the properties, and respective owners, who stand to benefit most from changes underway on Fulton. [more]

Merged discount retailers Filene’s Basement/Syms have signed on to open a 40,000-square-foot store in early 2012 at Eli Gindi and Stanley Chera’s newly-acquired 490 Fulton Street in Downtown Brooklyn. Terms of the deal were undisclosed, but according to the Post, ground-floor asking rents on the Fulton Mall have been around $250 to $300 per square foot. Chera said that the Fulton Mall building, which he bought through his Crown Acquisitions earlier this year for over $60 million, has attracted “a lot of national tenants,” and that 80,000 square feet of retail space remains unclaimed. Long Island University is turning the top three floors into student housing. This isn’t the only new Filene’s/Syms store on the horizon: the brands are also opening a store called fbSY on Fifth Avenue at 43rd Street in Manhattan next spring. [Post]

[more]

City Point, a long-stalled retail and housing development project in downtown Brooklyn is expected to break ground by the end of the month, thanks to a $20 million bond from the federal government’s stimulus plan, the Wall Street Journal reported. City Point, which is planning 1.5 million square feet of new construction at the Fulton Mall, is the first private project in New York City to receive funding from the stimulus plan, according to the city’s Economic Development Corp. The previous mall at the site was demolished in June 2008, after which financing and tenant interest dried up. The bond will provide most of the $24 million in financing for the first phase of development, consisting of 50,000 square feet of retail shops to be completed by early 2012. Officials say they expect the project to create jobs downtown and provide 120 units of affordable housing. City Point is the first commercial building to be constructed in more than 30 years at Fulton Mall, according to the developers. Other retailers, including Barneys, H&M and Aeropostale, have also made plans to open shops at Fulton or nearby in downtown Brooklyn. [WSJ]

[more]

City Point, the multi-use complex that is slated to be built in
Downtown Brooklyn, will now be constructed in two phases. The
developers, a consortium of Acadia Realty Trust, MacFarlane Partners,
Rose Associates, P/A Associates and Washington Square Partners, will
start building the first phase at the east end of Fulton Mall, on the
site of the old Albee Square Mall. It will include affordable housing
and several big-box retailers such as Best Buy. The second phase will
include market-rate housing, office space and additional retail space.
The original plans for City Point, which have been changed due to the
credit crunch, called for a 1.5 million-square-foot development to be
completed by 2010. [more]