Carmel corrals $233M for Crown Heights project

Carmel Partners can move ahead with a Brooklyn project after landing hundreds of millions in construction financing.

The San Francisco-based developer secured a $233 million loan from Goldman Sachs for its development at 54 Crown Street in Crown Heights, Crain’s reported.

Plans for the site date back several years to an affiliate of the firm. The firm proposed a 395,000-square-foot property with 569 apartments spread across most of that space. There will also be 7,500 square feet of commercial space and 1,300 square feet of community space. The 17-story project will also include a 182-car parking garage.

Under the city’s Mandatory Inclusionary Housing law and the state’s 421a tax exemption, 143 of the apartments will be permanently affordable, according to Rosenberg & Estis, a law firm that advised Carmel on the project.

JLL brokers Christopher Peck and Geoff Goldstein represented the borrower.

Carmel acquired the site as part of a three-lot assemblage in 2018 for $41 million. The site was part of a heated rezoning effort that kickstarted that same year. 

San Francisco-based Carmel has several ongoing New York City developments. Last year, Ron Zeff’s firm landed a $365 million loan from Wells Fargo for a 66-story residential tower in Queens’ Long Island City. The 900-unit project joins an Upper East Side site the firm acquired last year for $74 million. 

Carmel is also busy on its home coast, filing plans last month for a six-story complex in Long Beach, California, looking to replace a 1970s office building with nearly 400 apartments. It would be the third apartment complex planned for its section of the Pacific Coast Highway.

Isaac Hager and Daryl Hagler in November purchased a Crown Heights site where Bruce Eichner’s Continuum Company sought to build a 1,500-unit residential development, paying $43 million in the all-cash deal for the former Spice Factory site at 960 Franklin Avenue.

That site was also part of the rezoning, which was spearheaded by Eichner. The rezoning faced fierce public pushback as community groups claimed the shadows from his project would kill plants at the nearby Brooklyn Botanic Garden. Then-Mayor Bill de Blasio also announced his opposition, foiling the rezoning.

— Holden Walter-Warner

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