Developer Partners With Mosque on Bed-Stuy Senior Housing

A mosque in Brooklyn is getting into the housing game with the help of a New York-based developer.

Kalel Companies and the Masjid Abdul Muhsi Khalifah mosque are pursuing a mixed-use redevelopment of the latter’s space at 1166 Bedford Avenue in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Crain’s reported. The mosque has owned the site, alternatively addressed at 120 Madison Street, since the 1980s.

The venture aims to raze the three-story property and replace it with a 12-story, 94,000-square-foot building with 144 senior housing units, according to a rezoning application submitted to the Department of City Planning.

The development would include more than 13,000 square feet of community space and nearly 5,000 square feet of commercial space; the former would be reserved for the mosque and the Clara Muhammad School, both of which currently occupy 44,000 square feet at the site.

The project is expected to cost at least $90 million, according to a post on the developer’s website, which detailed a project smaller in scope than what’s planned now. Neither the developer nor the mosque immediately responded to requests for comment from the outlet.

Pierre Downing’s Kalel Companies is largely known in New York City for its projects under NYCHA’s Permanent Affordability Commitment Together program, putting public housing developments under private management. The firm has several projects in the works, according to its website, including a first foray into New Jersey via Jersey City.

Elsewhere in Bed-Stuy, Jacob Fulop filed plans in June for a 120-unit project at 1445 Fulton Street, which would span 76,000 square feet and rise 12 stories, reaching 119 feet tall. Fulop purchased 1445 Fulton Street, 1439 Fulton Street and 484 Tompkins Avenue last April for $5.5 million.

Other examples of religious buildings being repurposed for housing include a shuttered church at 181 Avenue D in the East Village, which the Archdiocese of New York agreed to sell to Spatial Equity and Community Access for a minimum of $58 million last year. The buyers hope to turn the one-and-a-half-acre lot into a 570-unit, fully affordable housing community.

— Holden Walter-Warner