Partners plot 45-story resi towers in Newark

Developers are reaching new heights in New Jersey.

A partnership between KS Group’s Yehuda Kotkes and Daniel Spiegel and Giga Holdings’ Jeff Blau scooped up a parking lot in downtown Newark last week for $14.5 million.

The development team announced their plans for the site at 315 Mulberry Street include a pair of 45-story residential towers and 1,300 new luxury units.

If approved, the residential towers will be neck and neck with Israel Weiss’s proposed 45-story, mixed-use development at 571 Broad Street to become the highest point in the city.

Both properties will easily surpass the National Newark Building, which at 35 stories held the trophy for Newark’s tallest property for nearly 100 years.

Development filings by the Newark-based KS Group have been cropping up all over the state’s most populous city, with Real Estate New Jersey reporting a development pipeline of more than 3,700 residential units.

In March, the group closed on a $50 million construction loan to create a 15-story rental property with Tona Development at 50 Sussex Avenue, in Newark’s University Heights neighborhood. The group was previously approved to build another apartment complex in the neighborhood, combining eight addresses across the street from the New Jersey Institute of Technology to create a 77-unit residential building at 380 Central Avenue.

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In another arrangement with Giga’s Jeff Blau and Pride Investment Group, KS picked  in April up the city’s oldest hotel, the 101-year-old Divine Riviera Hotel, for $8.5 million. 

Plans for that property are still unknown, though an October proposal to convert the 220-key hotel into 99 apartments with ground floor retail was shot down by the city’s zoning board, JerseyDigs reported.