Donald Capoccia, Joseph Ferrara and Brandon Baron
Donald Capoccia, Joseph Ferrara and Brandon Baron
Principals at BFC Partners
Last year's rank: 96
When famed New York Times critic Michael Kimmelman heaps praise on your latest project, calling it the “anti-Hudson Yards,” which he ripped into months prior, mark it as a good year.
Kimmelman wrote that the Lower East Side’s Essex Crossing — which BFC Partners developed with L+M Development Partners, Taconic Investment Partners, the Prusik Group and Goldman Sachs Urban Investment Group and opened phase one of last year — was the city’s “most promising new mixed-use development” and a “testament to the virtue and value of arduous, upfront negotiations and plans.”
“That only happens once in a career,” BFC’s Donald Capoccia said. “That was one of the most exciting things I’ve seen written about any project we’ve ever done.”
But the $1.9 billion, six-acre project is far from the only thing BFC has in the cooker. The developer has construction ongoing in each of the five boroughs (yes, even Staten Island) with 14,050 units and 500,000 square feet of commercial space.
“I think that’s a pretty unique distinction,” Capoccia said. “It’s something that we’ve been trying to do for a long time.”
These include the mixed-income Bronx Commons, Essex Crossing, the Bedford Union Armory in Brooklyn, the Jamaica Avenue Apartments in Queens, and Empire Outlets and 475 Bay Street in Staten Island.
And in December, BFC finished the 17-story Stonewall House in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, the city’s first affordable housing for LGBTQ seniors.
With plenty of other affordable housing in the works, BFC was able to keep 350 contractors working during the coronavirus pandemic and put measures into place to only have one COVID infection on its staff.
But the company has also been trying to lease the final 100,000 square feet in its outlet mall Empire Outlets, which it opened in May 2019 after five years of development, something that might be more challenging with retail taking a beating during the pandemic.
BFC’s Joseph Ferrara said the opposite has proven to be true for the project because it’s an outdoor center, and even though some tenants have filed for bankruptcy or went out of business his phone has been ringing off the hook.
“People just want to be outdoors,” Ferrara said. “Right now, I’m negotiating probably about 60,000 square feet of deals.”
And in the wake of the virus, BFC has tasked its designers to look over all its projects and make sure they meet post-COVID health standards, Capoccia said.—N.R.
