Michelle de la Uz, executive director of the Fifth Avenue Committee,
and the Red Hook Homes

Fifth Avenue Committee, a non-profit for community development, and Neighbors Helping Neighbors, a U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development-certified counseling agency in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, are forming a strategic alliance, the organizations announced today.

As The Real Deal previously reported, the two entities have worked together previously, opening Red Hook Homes, an $18 million, 60-unit mixed-income co-op in Red Hook two weeks ago, which FAC developed and for which the two partners worked to advise 40 low- and moderate-income, first-time buyers.

The partnership will mean a new home for NHN’s homebuyer education and mortgage counseling services at the FAC Center for Community Development at 621 DeGraw Street and Fourth Avenue. — Katherine Clarke [more]

Port Authority of New York & New Jersey Executive Director Chris Ward offered somewhat of a strange proposal for the Brooklyn waterfront and Governor’s Island yesterday during a visit to the Time Warner Center at Lincoln Square, the New York Observer reported, calling for the relocation of the Red Hook Container Terminal, currently located at 70 Hamilton Avenue in Red Hook, to Sunset Park.

To fix Governor’s Island, you must first fix Red Hook, he suggested. “Red Hook is in the wrong location if Governors Island is to succeed,” he said.

In Sunset Park, the shipping capacity would be insulated by Industry City, Ward said, and there it could connect with a trans-harbor freight rail tunnel. [more]

The New York State Supreme Court appellate division issued a decision yesterday stating that the city can proceed with the 2009 rezoning of the Brooklyn neighborhood of Sunset Park, Crain’s reported.

The city rezoned a 128-block area in Sunset Park in 2009, putting 50-foot height limits on side streets, but allowing for taller residential projects on Fourth and Seventh avenues. Opponents of the changes — residences, churches and the non-profit Chinese Staff and Workers’ Association — said that the rezoning would displace the area’s low-income families, and filed in New York State Supreme Court against the city’s Planning Department, claiming that the department had not conducted environmental reviews required for zoning changes.
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EDC President Seth Pinsky and Federal Building #2

[Updated at 4 p.m. with comments from Salmar's Martin Schein] The U.S. General Services Administration has completed the sale of Federal Building #2 in the Sunset Park area of Brooklyn to the New York City Economic Development Corporation for $9.1 million, according to public records filed with the city today.

The site of a former navy building was transferred to the EDC before being eventually sold to Salmar Properties on the same date. Salmar will redevelop the 1.1 million-square-foot warehouse building into a state-of-the-art industrial center. The deals both closed Aug. 15. Construction will start at the site in one to two weeks, Salmar executive Martin Schein told The Real Deal. In May, EDC announced that it had selected Salmar to develop the site which spans Second and Third avenues and 30th and 32nd streets, located in the Southwest Brooklyn Industrial Business Zone, across from the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal. – Katherine Clarke [more]

Clockwise from top left: Ariel Property Advsiors’ Jonathan Berman, 5721 6th Avenue and Victor Sozio of Ariel

A Sunset Park building set to house a forthcoming bilingual private school for special needs children hit the market last week with an asking price of $4 million. The four-story, 15,000-square-foot building at 5721 Sixth Avenue on the corner of 58th Street is listed by Jonathan Berman and Victor Sozio of Ariel Property Advisors.

The school, whose name Berman wouldn’t disclose, will rent out the building from whoever purchases it for $290,000 per year, yielding a cap rate of 6.4 percent, based on the terms of the deal and the current asking price, Berman said. He added that the school is looking to sell its stake in the building to free up cash.

The current ownership purchased the building for $2.6 million last July, public records show, and invested more than $1 million in renovating the interior, Berman said. – Adam Fusfeld [more]

Several neighborhoods are changing significantly along ethnic and racial lines, the 2010 census reveals, according to news reports. In Bedford Stuyvesant, for example, the population is only 60 percent black, the New York Times reported, down from 75 percent. And in the older Bedford section, blacks have become a minority for the first time in 50 years.

John Mollenkopf, director of the Center for Urban Research at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, attributes the change in the neighborhood to the fall in the crime rate and improvement of subway conditions. [more]

EDC President Seth Pinsky and Federal Building  #2

New York City Economic Development Corporation and Representatives Nydia Velasquez and Congressman Jerrold Nadler have named Salmar Properties as the developer for Federal Building #2, a vacant 1.1 million-square-foot 1916 warehouse building in the Sunset Park area of Brooklyn, previously used by the Department of the Navy and last occupied in 2000. Plans call for the building, in an area bound by Second and Third avenues and 30th and 32nd streets, to become a state-of-the-art industrial center in what Mayor Michael Bloomberg has dubbed the Southwest Brooklyn Industrial Business Zone.

Salmar is owned 49.5 percent by Marvin Schein’s investment firm Schein Family Partners, 49.5 percent by Selim Rusi’s S. Rusi Family LLC. and 1 percent by an entity of which Schein and Rusi are 50 percent stakeholders. Salmar will have a deed restriction for 30 years, limiting most of the building to light industrial use. TRD [more]

The 99-room Best Western Plus Prospect Park opened this weekend at 764 Fourth Avenue in Sunset Park, according to Brownstoner. The Best Western website says the 10-story hotel will feature a 3,500-square-foot luxury spa, 1,000 square feet of meeting space and on-site parking. Rooms start at $130 per night. The hotel is the latest in a Brooklyn hotel boom that’s transpired over the past few years. Land is cheaper and easier to obtain than it is in Manhattan, but last year, on average, rooms cost $100 less than they did in Manhattan and had far lower occupancy rates. [Brownstoner] [more]

Mayor Bloomberg

A new 486,000-square-foot commercial bioscience research center is being developed at the Brooklyn Army Terminal in Sunset Park, according to the city. The project, which is being developed through a partnership between Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s office, the New York City Economic Development Corporation and the State University of New York, has received $12 million in city funds and an additional $48 million in state capital. The development, which will allow commercial and non-profit biomedical research, will create an estimated 1,000 permanent jobs. Phase one of the project, the construction of the first 56,000 square feet of the development, is expected to be complete in 2011. TRD

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Mayor Bloomberg

A new 486,000-square-foot commercial bioscience research center is being developed at the Brooklyn Army Terminal in Sunset Park, according to the city. The project, which is being developed through a partnership between Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s office, the New York City Economic Development Corporation and the State University of New York, has received $12 million in city funds and an additional $48 million in state capital. The development, which will allow commercial and non-profit biomedical research, will create an estimated 1,000 permanent jobs. Phase one of the project, the construction of the first 56,000 square feet of the development, is expected to be complete in 2011. TRD

[more]