Thor Equities nabs financing for Amazon warehouse in Red Hook

Joe Sitt’s Thor Equities is one step closer to bringing Amazon to Brooklyn’s Red Hook neighborhood.

Thor Equities nabbed $76 million construction financing and a $155 million joint venture equity recapitalization for its warehouse property at 280 Richards Street, according to the Commercial Observer. The warehouse is 100 percent pre-leased to Amazon.

Funds managed by Apollo Global Management provided the seven-year construction loan. The joint venture equity recapitalization was provided by a foreign entity, according to the Observer.

The e-commerce giant signed a 20-year deal with Thor last year for 311,796 square feet.

Thor initially planned to build a 800,000-square-foot office development at the site. Known as “Red Hoek Point,” for the name Roode Hoek given the area by the Dutch who settled there in 1636, the project was pegged to include retail and a waterfront esplanade. But in 2019, the developer dropped that plan in favor of turning the property into a last-mile warehouse.

That might have been a wise move, given that the neighborhood’s City Council member, Carlos Menchaca, killed a similar rezoning bid by Industry City the following year.

Prior to the pandemic, New York-based Thor was in the process of shifting its core business from retail to industrial. In 2019, Sitt’s firm started a new business, ThorLogis, to purchase and develop logistics properties.

Amazon is expanding rapidly in New York as demand for e-commerce has exploded in recent years. Last year, the tech company signed a 975,000-square-foot warehouse lease at the Matrix Global Logistics Park in Staten Island.

[CO]  — Keith Larsen