The Daily Dirt: Will Crystal Hudson reject NBA player’s shot?

Some real estate stories seem too good to be true.

On Tuesday, pro basketball player Taj Gibson started a company and proposed a Brooklyn project with Alloy Development and two friends from their childhood in Fort Greene.

The 15-year NBA veteran launched “community-driven” GFB Development with Tameek Floyd and Malik Brown. A joint venture of GFB and Alloy will pursue a “transformational project” at 240 Nassau Street, where a two-story brick building hosts a Madison Square Boys and Girls Club.

The plan is to gather input from local residents for a project including a community center and mixed-income housing. The usual model would apply: Market-rate units would generate enough revenue to pay for “a significant number of affordable apartments” and perhaps subsidize the community center as well.

So far, so good.

Enter the local City Council member, Crystal Hudson. The project cannot be built without her say-so because it requires new zoning. She has set a bar for rezonings that will be difficult — some say impossible — to surmount.

Hudson has already killed one project even though it appeared to meet her objectives, explaining that she wanted to comprehensively rezone the area first. No one knows when or if that will happen.

The Council member was criticized for blocking that $115 million development, which would have put affordable housing and a child-care center on a long-vacant lot. But it was politically easier for her to reject that applicant, little-known Nadine Oelsner, than it would be to deny Taj Gibson — a homegrown star — and two others who grew up in nearby NYCHA housing.

Time will tell if Hudson applies the same standards to them as she did Oelsner. Perhaps their community outreach will provide the political cover she needs to say yes. Alloy Development, which owns 240 Nassau Street, is clearly betting on that.

Alloy is also counting on goodwill for buying the shuttered property from the financially troubled Boys & Girls Club in November, donating $2 million and restoring after-school programs.

But optics only go so far. Enough profit will have to be built into the project for it to get financing and investors, to compensate them for the risk they are taking. That is something few elected officials understand, either because of ignorance or because they think their next election depends on them not understanding it.

What we’re thinking about: What conclusion did you reach from Air Mail’s story of developer Brandon Miller’s tragic death? Was this simply a case of a couple living beyond their means in an effort to keep up appearances, even as his real estate investments deteriorated? Email me at eengquist@therealdeal.com.

A thing we’ve learned: The windshield of a Monmouth County family’s Tesla was smashed Sunday when a large fish fell from the sky, NJ.com reported. It was apparently dropped by a bird, perhaps upset that Elon Musk rebranded Twitter as “X.” Last year, a bird knocked out power to Sayreville homes by dropping its meal onto a transformer. Local police released a sketch of the suspect, who remains at large.

Elsewhere…

— The Adams administration sued Mark Tress, owner of the abandoned Windermere apartment complex at 400-406 West 57th Street and 869 Ninth Avenue, for not correcting violations at the property since he bought it in 2009, the Post reported. The building, clad in seemingly permanent sidewalk sheds, had enough violations to earn Tress a place on the public advocate’s Worst Landlord list last year. The city had sued the previous owner in 2008 but settled the case as a condition of the sale to the new buyer, who promised at the time to fix the landmarked property. Tress got a special permit from the City Council in 2021 to convert it into a mixed-use building, but work on the project has been sporadic and remains unfinished.

— Sen. Robert Menendez will resign in late August rather than face expulsion from the Senate, the New York Times reported. The Democrat, now known as Gold Bars Bob, was convicted last week on all counts at the conclusion of his corruption trial. New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy will appoint a replacement to serve until January. Menendez is appealing his conviction, but if it stands, he could lose his federal pension.

— Under a state law that took effect last week, only those who inherit a share of a house can force a sale of the property, The City reported. Previously, an investor could buy an heir’s stake and force a sale, which could push out another heir living in the property. That was the prospect facing Mae Lee Massey, whose mother bequeathed half of her two-story Bronx row house to her and half to an unrelated man. He died and left his stake to his daughter, who sold it to an LLC for $5,000.

Closing time

Residential: The priciest residential sale Tuesday was $15 million for a 5,400-square-foot townhouse at 155 Warren Street in Cobble Hill. Sarah Adler of the Corcoran Group had the listing.

Commercial: The largest commercial sale of the day was $7 million for a warehouse on a 10,000-square-foot lot at 7 Knickerbocker Ave in East Williamsburg.

Note: Yesterday’s biggest commercial sale was a joint venture of Alma Realty, PH Realty Capital and Rockledge.

New to the Market: The highest price for a residential property hitting the market was $33 million for a 3,952-square-foot condominium at 432 Park Avenue in Midtown East. Carrie Chiang, Paul Wexler, Andres Perea-Garzon and Josef Yadgarov of the Corcoran Group have the listing.

Breaking Ground: The largest new building application filed was for a 29,756-square-foot, five-story residential building at 376 Vernon Avenue in Stuyvesant Heights, Brooklyn. Hamish Whitefield Architects filed the permits. — Matthew Elo