By Billy Gray 5/10 2:21pm

Two Trees Grows In Brooklyn

domino_birds-eye-view

Two Trees’ Jed Walentas Talks Domino Sugar Plans at Brooklyn Real Estate Summit

The new Domino Sugar refinery will redefine the skyline of Williamsburg’s southside and potentially create 3,000 new jobs in the residential area, but its retail tenants will hew closely the neighborhood’s famed (and, at times, mocked) indie mindset, Two Trees Management Company Principal Jed Walentas told a crowd yesterday at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

Two Trees, which helped make Dumbo what it is today, will stress “small-scale independent” retail at the project. One slide in a  Power Point presentation of the Domino site presented by Mr. Walentas had “No Big Box” spelled out in big letters. Two Trees is aiming for dynamic merchants that will increase the all-hours livelihood of the area. “If you build more Duane Reades,” Mr. Walentas said, “you’ll only bring in people who need to buy toothpaste.” Read More

By Billy Gray 4/24 2:43pm

Food & Drink

A photo of Output before it opened. The club strictly prohibits photography.

Output Nightclub’s 2,500-SF “Penthouse,” Roofdeck Opens This Sunday in Williamsburg

On Sunday, just three months after its grand opening, the 11,424-square-foot Williamsburg dance club Output will officially debut its roughly 2,500-square-foot penthouse and rooftop bar.  The underground party promoter ReSolute will break in the space atop 74 Wythe Avenue, with Kiwi house DJ Recloose, along with resident talent, providing the soundtrack.

“It’s in the heart of Williamsburg with an amazing skyline view, and we have a feeling that we’re all going to [be] spending lots of time there this summer,” reads the ReSolute announcement. Plans for a penthouse and roof deck were included in the original Department of Buildings application filed by David Cutler, of Hustvedt Cutler Architects, in September of 2010. Read More

By Billy Gray 2/12 9:00am

Sunset Park

BAT 3 (2)

The Sun Also Rises: Sunset Park’s Booming Artisanal Economy

The Brooklyn Army Terminal plays only a peripheral role in Last Exit to Brooklyn, Hubert Selby Jr.’s dystopian 1964 novel about the Sunset Park and Bay Bridge neighborhoods of Brooklyn. But the compound—still an active base in the book—is the fulcrum around which Mr. Selby’s panoply of broken soldiers, hookers, junkies and hoods circulates.

Last month, the rejuvenated B.A.T. won a major tenant. The artisanal chocolatier Jacques Torres signed for 39,000 square feet in the 95-year-old compound that served as the United States Army’s port of embarkation during World Wars I and II.

“The building has soul,” Mr. Torres said. “When you go there, you touch history. When I visit, I get that cold chill going through me.”

The ghosts of army grunts and the military-industrial complex are not the only historical vestiges that haunt the 4.1-milion-square-foot B.A.T. and the Sunset Park neighborhood that surrounds it. There’s also a residual perception of the forlorn squalor and grit that permeated Mr. Selby’s novel.

“You know, it’s actually not a bad neighborhood,” Mr. Torres said. “You can go there and not get shot.” Read More

By Billy Gray 2/05 11:00am

Power Broker

Geoff Bailey, photographed by Will O'Hare

Heart & Soul: TerraCRG’s Geoff Bailey on Williamsburg’s Next Act

To enter the Pacific Street office of the commercial brokerage firm TerraCRG, visitors must buzz reception and walk a few yards through a parking garage before hanging a right.

There’s Sena, an African hair-braiding salon, next door, and beyond that is a row of brownstones that, with minimal touchups, could be airlifted to Park Slope and go unnoticed.

But TerraCRG also sits practically in the shadow of the Barclays Center, and the eye travels to that rusty bird’s nest as you wait for the welcoming buzz.

This location at the traffic, geographic, demographic, architectural and developmental crossroads of Brooklyn suits TerraCRG, a firm launched by Ofer Cohen in 2008 that keeps a strict focus on the ascendant borough’s commercial real estate market.

Vice President of Retail Services Geoff Bailey joined TerraCRG in June of 2010, with previous experience in Brooklyn from five years in sales at Massey Knakal, where he had worked with Mr. Cohen. Mr. Bailey specialized in southeast Brooklyn back then, but thought there was untapped real estate potential throughout the borough. Read More

By Billy Gray 1/21 3:12pm

On the Market

A rendering of 185 Wythe Avenue

92,000-Square-Foot Retail Space Hits Williamsburg Market

Two floors encompassing 92,000 square feet of retail space at the luxury residential conversion 185 Wythe Avenue in Williamsburg are on the market.

The leasing agency, TerraCRG, claims in the listing that this is the largest contiguous available retail block in the north Brooklyn neighborhood. Asking rents are at $50 per square foot for minimal divisible lot sizes of 5,000 square feet.  Read More

By Billy Gray 1/15 7:45am

Lease Beat

74 Wythe Avenue (Photo Courtesy of Brownstoner)

Output Nightclub To Hit Dance Floor On Williamsburg’s Booming Wythe Avenue

After spawning enough trend pieces last summer to merit its own styles section, Wythe Avenue in northside Willliamsburg continues to churn out high-profile nightlife openings.

The next promising arrival is Output, a 452-person-capacity nightclub at 74 Wythe Avenue opening in the next few weeks that looks to give the neighborhood’s discerning electronic dance music contingent a place other than legally dubious warehouses and lofts to check out its favorite deejays.

A source familiar with the project told The Commercial Observer that Output will be one of two venues operating under separate leases at the 11,424-square-foot building (up from 7,324 square feet after the construction of a second floor). The main club (and restaurant) will be joined by a back room and roughly 2,500 square feet of outdoor rooftop space, together accommodating up to 348 people. Read More

By Al Barbarino 12/06/12 7:15am

ICSC

Could 82 Bogart Street attract... these hipsters?

A Mall Grows in Bushwick?

For more than five years, an exodus of the young and hip from the aluminum-siding-studded homes of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, has been flowing southeast into neighboring Bushwick.

But now a nascent 80,000-square-foot retail and nightlife complex at 82 Bogart Street threatens to cement the neighborhood’s imminent transformation from underground hipness to mainstream retail success once and for all. Read More

By Al Barbarino 12/04/12 7:45am

Sales Beat

250 Bedford Avenue

SL Green, Chinese Government, Follow Hipsters to Williamsburg

First it was the hipsters.  Then it was China.  And now the city’s largest office landlord, SL Green Realty Corp., is finally seeing promise in the residential development of Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

The real estate investment trust and commercial real estate giant announced this morning that it has agreed to purchase a newly completed, vacant residential building in the hip-turned-posh Brooklyn neighborhood — the company’s first foray into Brooklyn’s residential market.

Information in a prepared statement sent by the company suggests that the address is 250 Bedford Avenue, though it was not specified. Read More

By Daniel Geiger 5/09/12 2:02pm

Sales Beat

Apple Store

Imperium Buys Williamsburg Building

Imperium Capital, a real estate investment company, has acquired a roughly 16,000-square-foot building in Williamsburg for $3.4 million, the company’s principals revealed to The Commercial Observer. The firm bought the building in partnership with Great Point Properties, another investment firm.

The property, 174-180 North 11th Street, sits on a parcel that can accommodate about 36,000 square feet of development the firm’s executives said, though they said they plan on operating the existing building there for the foreseeable future in large part because of its retail space.

“We are very bullish on Williamsburg, especially the northern end near McCarren park,” Sam Schneider, a managing partner of the company, told The Commercial Observer. “We love that area specifically for residential and retail.” Read More

By Michael Ewing 3/30/12 12:10pm

Lease Beat

The Edge at the waterfront (Courtesy of World Property Channel)

The Edge Slices Three New Lease Deals

The Edge, one of Williamsburg’s newest condominium buildings and fastest selling apartments in the city, just signed three new retail tenants to occupy their ground floor spaces: Fabbrica, Ride Brooklyn, and the Brooklyn Harvest Market.

From the same owner as Acqua at Peck Slip Restaurant and Wine Bar in Manhattan, Fabbrica, an Italian espresso bar Read More

By Daniel Geiger 3/12/12 5:07pm

Sales Beat

Domino

Domino Sugar Factory Site Up For Sale

The Domino Sugar factory is for sale a little more than a year after the development team that controls the 11-acre site that the landmark building sits on won a hard fought battle in the City Council and the Department of City Planning to erect a series of mixed use towers on the large waterfront parcel.

According to several people with knowledge of the offering, the Community Preservation Corporation and partner, the Katan Group, have been shopping all or portions of the potentially $2 billion multi-building development to potential buyers. Read More

By Daniel Geiger 2/21/12 9:00am

Investment Sales

77 Commercial Street. (Courtesy Property Shark)

Chetrit Eyes 77 Commercial Street

Joe Chetrit is leading a partnership of investors in the acquisition of 77 Commercial Street, a development parcel in Greenpoint, Brooklyn that can accommodate about 270,000 square feet of residential development.

It’s not clear what Mr. Chetrit has negotiated to pay in the deal, but the property was being marketed by a Massey Knakal team led by the company’s chairman, Robert Knakal, that sources said was aiming to net a purchase price in the high $20 millions. Read More

By Laura Kusisto 6/15/11 4:59pm

Lease Beat

West Coast classic.

Red-Sauce Sushi Joint

Raw fish is a dish we generally prefer with a side of irony. Thus, in our second-favorite reason this week to mock BroBillies, the nabe is getting that snooziest of cuisines, an Asian fusion restaurant.

Indeed, the press release contains more signs of the Apocalypse than we can count. To wit: ”Fushimi offers a family-friendly, yet Read More

By Laura Kusisto 4/29/11 2:16pm

Lease Beat

Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Joint in New Williamsburg Studio

Don’t be fooled by the potbellies and mustaches, Williamsburg residents haven’t gone soft yet. 

Indeed, nothing caps off a Saturday afternoon at the Brooklyn Flea like a round of Brazilian ground wrestling. Or so we gather given that Williamsburg Brazilian Jiu Jitsu has just signed a 2,800-square-foot lease at 42 Dobbin Street, between Nassau and Norman avenues. The studio is run Read More