TF Cornerstone scored a $385 million construction loan from Wells Fargo for its massive Pacfic Park development project in Prospect Heights.
The financing allows the developer to move forward with its plans to build two apartment towers totaling 558 market-rate units and 240 affordable units at 595 Dean Street, two blocks from the Barclays Center.
Plans also include ground-floor retail, a health club and a below-ground garage with 455 parking spaces. It will also include an open space, according to a release from the law firm Rosenberg & Estis, which represented TF Cornerstone in the transaction.
Handel Architects is designing the project. The development site has already been excavated, concrete foundations have been finished and construction cranes have appeared, development news publication New York YIMBY reported over the weekend.
In February 2019, TF Cornerstone paid $143 million to a joint venture between Forest City Realty Trust and Greenland Group to acquire two adjacent development sites for the project. A few months later, TF Cornerstone secured $73 million in initial financing for the site from M&T Bank.
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Forest City and Greenland had once planned a 25-story condo tower as part of Pacific Park, which spans several development sites across multiple blocks south of Atlantic Avenue and west of Vanderbilt Avenue. Plans for the site were first revealed in 2003 by real estate scion Bruce Ratner. But after land seizure lawsuits, the Great Recession and a shakeup in the development team, less than half of the project was complete by 2020.
Ratner reduced his exposure to the megaproject in January 2018, selling all but a 5 percent stake to its joint venture partner, Greenland USA, a subsidiary of Chinese giant Greenland Group, which had bought a 70 percent stake in the project in 2014.
Since then, the joint-venture entity Greenland Forest City has sold off some parcels to other developers, such as TF Cornerstone. Greenland Forest City has an agreement with the city and state to complete 2,250 below-market rental units at Pacific Park by 2025.
TF Cornerstone, led by the Elghanayan family, is very active in Long Island City, Queens. The developer filed plans in December to build two massive apartment buildings totaling 1,400 units in the neighborhood.