Williamsburg development site on sale for $210M

UPDATED, 11:32 a.m., June 25: Developer Isack Rosenberg and his brother Abraham have put a once-controversial Williamsburg waterfront site slated for residential development on the market for $210 million, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The 3.75-acre site at 462-490 Kent Avenue, near South 11th Street, is zoned for 754 apartment units. There should be 29,000 square feet of retail, and 226 of the apartments will be designated as affordable housing, the Journal said, if all goes as planned. Gabriel Saffioti and Nicole Rabinowitsch of Eastern Consolidated are the brokers.

Some residents, as well as City Councilman Stephen Levin, opposed the Rosenbergs’ plans to rezone the site in 2009. The developers increased the project’s allocation of affordable housing from 20 to 30 percent, after City Council approved the plans in 2010, in response to fall out from the community. Two rival factions within Hasidim’s Satmar sect, known as the Aaronites and the Zalmanites, disagreed vehemently over the issue at the time, although the rezoning was successful in the end.

“There was no reason for [the controversy],” Abraham Rosenberg told the Journal, pointing to a rezoning for a residential development next door to the Rosenbergs’ at an unspecified address which he said went forward without any notice from the community.

The Rosenbergs are followers of the Aaronite faction, the Journal said. [WSJ] – Mark Maurer