Davbel shells out $30M for Borough Park dev site

Davbel Properties has scooped up an apartment building-ready development site in Borough Park for $29.5 million.

The firm, led by Bernard Jacobowitz, purchased 886 Dahill Road, a 1.5 acre development site already approved for a 10-story, 171-unit apartment building, records filed with the city’s Department of Finance on Tuesday show. The previous owners, brothers Edward and Martin Wydra, went through the City Uniform Land Use Reform Process to rezone the property, which was originally zoned for manufacturing use. The city has approved the site for a 314,000 square-foot building designed by omnipresent architect Karl Fischer that includes 3,328 square foot of retail, The Real Deal previously reported.

The Wydras purchased the site in 2007 for $25.3 million and have listed the property at least twice: once in 2012 for $33 million and then again in January 2015 for $38 million. Most recently CPEX Real Estate marketed the property. It was not immediately clear how the two parties arrived at the marked down $29.5 million price tag. Sean Kelly, managing director of CPEX, told TRD that the company started marketing the building in October 2014, then brought the price down to $33 million. The parties arrived at the $29.5 million price tag during negotiations, he said. The brokerage was in talks with a handful of buyers for roughly three months before closing with Davbel.

A message left for Jacobowtiz was not immediately returned.

One of the biggest challenges of selling the property, Kelly said, was the fixed unit sizes of the approved building. There’s a restrictive declaration on the Borough Park property, which requires — among other things — a specific distribution of one-, two-, three-, four- and five-bedroom apartments and sets a minimum size of 700 square feet for one-bedroom apartments. The largest unit in the building is nearly 3,000 square feet, Kelly said.

“It changes your pool of buyers,” he said. “In 300,000 square feet, somebody could probably build 400 apartments and generate more revenue.”

He added that the building would bring much-needed housing for families in Borough Park.

In October, Davbel ranked among Brooklyn’s top 10 condo developers in an analysis by TRD. Davbel ranked ninth with 146 units planned across seven projects.

The Borough Park property sits beside a shopping center owner by developer Abraham Leser.