Triangle Sports was about the furthest thing you could imagine from high-end retail — a Savage x Fenty store by Rihanna, for example.
Like many Brooklyn kids, I shopped at Triangle in the 1970s and 1980s for balls, pucks and pads. It had a musty smell and stuff was piled everywhere. Sometimes you had to dig through bins to find what you needed.
But the sporting goods business at 182 Flatbush Avenue had much higher revenue than the Savage x Fenty that signed a lease in 2022 to replace it. I know this because the new outpost still hasn’t opened.
Nor does its debut seem near. The ground floor is boarded up and the upper two floors are bricked up. While the other retail space near Barclays Center has enjoyed a resurgence, Rihanna hasn’t put in the work, work, work, work, work, work at 182 Flatbush.
Signs of progress have been nonexistent beyond a sign reading “Savage x Fenty Signature Script Collection” observed at the site in 2024. Alas, no one secured a permit for the advertisement, resulting in an ECB violation.
When a blizzard hit late last month, plywood boards fell from the building onto the sidewalk, and neither Rihanna nor the landlord, Hidrock Properties’ 182 Flatbush Ave LLC, sent anyone to clear the snow, as you can see from the photograph above.
The city ignored the icy sidewalk but slapped Hidrock with a $12,500 violation for the plywood mishap, which was resolved 12 days later. In 2023, the owner paid a $1,250 fine for leaving a storefront window open three years after a gut demolition of the interior.
This is pocket change for Hidrock’s LLC. All this time, Fenty has been paying “dark rent,” meaning rent for unused space, according to one of the Compass brokers who worked on the lease. Given that the asking rent was $650,000 per year, the total paid so far could be about $2.5 million.
So, while Rihanna has some work to do, Hidrock seems to be doing fine at 182 Flatbush. In 2024, Hidrock’s Abraham J. Hidary reduced the debt to $4 million from $5.2 million as he extended its mortgage with Israel Discount Bank, according to property records.
What we’re thinking about: The name of 182 Flatbush Avenue’s previous owner should ring a bell for TRD readers. RedSky JZ purchased the property for $4.1 million in 2012 and sold it to Hidrock for $7 million in 2019.
That sale was a rare bright spot for RedSky at the time. By then, things were already falling apart for Ben Bernstein and Ben Stokes’ firm, which had partnered with JZ Capital on that deal and others, assembling a $1 billion retail portfolio.
Stokes left RedSky in 2024, but his former Cornell squash team member Bernstein is still a principal, according to LinkedIn. Will either Ben ever make another billion-dollar run? Send your thoughts to eengquist@therealdeal.com.
A thing we’ve learned: Real estate has something riding on the race to succeed retiring Rep. Nydia Velázquez. Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso, who is among the most pro-housing elected officials in the city, is facing off in June’s Democratic primary against Democratic Socialists of America member Claire Valdez, who serves in the state Assembly.
Reynoso is better known, more experienced and has deeper roots in the district, but Valdez has Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s endorsement. It will be interesting to see how much support from the real estate industry Reynoso receives and accepts and whether it funds a PAC to attack Valdez, as it has done with other DSA candidates.
Elsewhere…
Voice of Gowanus, a group that formed in an unsuccessful attempt to stop the neighborhood’s 2021 rezoning, continues to seek revenge against Brad Lander, who, as the local City Council member, spearheaded the new zoning.
This week, the group cheered Rep. Daniel Goldman for objecting to a state cleanup plan and blasted Lander, who is challenging Goldman in this June’s Democratic primary. Voice of Gowanus claimed that Lander wants to locate affordable housing and a school on a polluted site “without the fully enforced remediation required by law, leaving behind a massive reservoir of coal tar underground.”
Whether you like Lander or hate him, he obviously doesn’t want to endanger residents and students. Rather, Voice of Gowanus is trying to undermine his campaign as revenge for the rezoning, which is bringing more than 8,000 badly needed apartments to Brooklyn. It also wants to delay the 950-unit, all-affordable Gowanus Green project.
This is the classic NIMBY strategy of claiming that development would be dangerous to its users. Opponents of a Southern California project I just wrote about made the same argument, citing not only wildfires but also pollution from chemicals used on the golf course where 398 homes would be built.
None of these people worried about golfers playing on chemically treated grass.
Closing time
Residential: The top residential deal recorded Thursday was $15.5 million for a 6,820-square-foot single-family home at 13 East 94th Street in Carnegie Hill. Serena Boardman of Sotheby’s International Realty had the listing.
Commercial: The top commercial deal recorded was $386 million for roughly 368,000 square feet of office space and 28,000 square feet of retail at 555-557 Broadway in Soho. Publisher Scholastic sold the property to Empire State Realty Trust.
New to the Market: The highest price for a residential property hitting the market was $18 million for a 4,898-square-foot condominium unit at 200 East 79th Street on the Upper East Side. Elliman’s Lauren Muss and Lisa Mathias have the listing.
Breaking Ground: The largest new building permit filed was for a proposed 25,895-square-foot, six-story residential building at 2968 Valentine Avenue in Bedford Park. Jakov Saric of Node Architecture filed the permit on behalf of developer Franc Gjini.
— Matthew Elo