Forest City Enterprises has agreed to sell its development site at 625 Fulton Street in Downtown Brooklyn to Simon Dushinsky’s Rabsky Group for $158 million.
Forest City bought the property in 1989. In 2013, the company demolished the 359,000-square-foot office building that occupied the site, with plans to construct a new residential tower there.
The developer contemplated selling the property last year for $185 million, and also considered finding a partner to develop a new building there.
CBRE’s Darcy Stacom and William Shanahan represented Forest City in the sale to Rabsky Group, the New York Observer reported. The REIT made the announcement in its quarterly earnings report on Tuesday.
Forest City, one of the city’s most active developers, is developing Brooklyn’s Pacific Park, formerly Atlantic Yards, with majority partner Los Angeles-based Greenland USA, a subsidiary of the China-based Greenland Group.
“We remain as bullish as ever on the Brooklyn real estate market as demonstrated by our four residential buildings under construction today at Pacific Park, Brooklyn,” a spokesperson for Forest City said in an email to the Observer. “This sale is related to our stated corporate commitment to our shareholders to shore up our balance sheet by enhancing liquidity and delivering through strategic dispositions as [Forest City Enterprises] becomes a [real estate investment trust] on Jan 1, 2016.”
The Williamsburg-based Rabsky Group has nearly 1,850 units in the pipeline in Brooklyn, with 400 more planned in Queens. Its two biggest current projects are a 398-unit rental building at 10 Montieth Street in Bushwick and another 777-unit rental property at 249 and 334 Wallabout Street. [NYO] – Ariel Stulberg