Park Slope 5th Avenue Key Food Developers Part Of Team Planning Mixed-Use Tower At Brooklyn Law School Building
Last Friday, Brooklyn Law School hosted The Next Hundred Years of Brooklyn Zoning, a conference which took a look at development zoning, the future of manufacturing and Industrial Business Zones (IBZ) and other topics that addressed community, commerce, and the rise of Brooklyn’s massive development boom.
With a bit of irony, Brooklyn Law School (BLS) has sold their property just across the street from their main building at 250 Joralemon Street where the conference took place.
According to the Wall Street Journal, an investment group paid $76.5 million for One Boerum Place, a 40,000 square-foot triangular parcel which is bounded by Fulton Street, Red Hook Lane, and Boerum Place in Downtown Brooklyn. The building has served as an office space for BLS. They plan to lease offices nearby to make up for the lost space.
The developers include Avery Hall Investments, Allegra Holdings, and Aria Development Group. Park Slope and Gowanus neighbors are particularly familiar with Avery Hall (AHI) as they are the developers for the Key Foods site located at 120 5th Avenue in Park Slope.
Ever since AHI’s purchase of the Park Slope supermarket and parking lot about a year ago, neighbors, politicians, and community advocates have been fighting to keep a sizable supermarket as part of the plan for the development. At a November 1 meeting, the stakeholder group announced that the revised negotiated proposal for a grocery space almost tripled in space from its original proposal to 22,000 square feet. In addition, the lease for the store jumped to 20 years instead of the original 15.
Plans for One Boerum Place have not yet been finalized, however, WSJ notes the team is planning on a 160,000-square-foot mixed-use tower that would replace the current building, which measures 13,290 square feet. As of now, the new building is slated to include both residential and office space.
YIMBY reports that demolition plans have yet to be filed, but the team has tentatively estimated a groundbreaking in 2017.
Brooklyn Law School has been actively selling properties in the recent past. In 2013, they sold off six properties in Brooklyn Heights for $36.5 million, reports the New York Law Journal. Jared Kushner’s Kushner Companies purchased those buildings.
Add the $35 million sale of their 2 Pierrepont Street residential property in 2015, and BLS has raised their endowment to $225 million which is “double what it was five years ago,” writes NYLJ.
According to BLS Dean Nicholas Allard, the BLS residence Feil Hall opened in 2005, which “negated the need for the school to retain so many properties,” and allowed the school to condense their footprint around Brooklyn.