A large development site along the North Williamsburg waterfront could soon sprout Brooklyn’s latest megaproject.
The family behind an office-equipment empire is looking to sell a site spanning nearly one full city block and a parcel just across the street.
Ko-Rec-Type, which manufactures carbon paper and typewriter ribbons, owns six parcels bordered by North 9th and 10th streets and Kent and Wythe avenues, as well as a nearby site at 96 North 10th Street. For more than five decades, the Barouh family has owned and occupied the low-rise industrial buildings as its plant.
The primary site offers 350,000 buildable square feet, and the sister site offers 86,000 buildable square feet. The six parcels on the primary site have the combined addresses of 67–81 Kent Avenue, 106–126 Wythe Avenue, 45–57 and 67–81 North 9th Street, and 44–84 North 10th Street, records show.
The one parcel on the city block not belonging to Ko-Rect-Type is a one-story plumbing-supply building at 61-65 North 9th Street, which Yoel Goldman’s All Year Management acquired in 2012 for $4.5 million. That property comes with 36,000 buildable square feet.
An Eastern Consolidated team led by Peter Hauspurg, Andrew Sasson and Chad Sinsheimer is marketing the Ko-Rec-Type sites for sale as one big potential development.
In the vein of Rubenstein Partners and Toby Moskovits’ nearby 25 Kent Avenue project, the site is being marketed as another rare ground-up office-centric project on the Williamsburg waterfront, sources said. The potential buyer could too benefit from a special permit within North Williamsburg’s manufacturing zone, which 25 Kent received in 2016.
Sources said the brokers are the pitching the primary site as an office-and-retail complex and the sister site as an office-and-residential property – two structures that could be affiliated.
The sites do not have a formal asking price, though recent sales in the area have fallen between $200 and $300 per buildable square foot. Simon Dushinsky’s Rabsky Group paid $217 per buildable foot for the site at 500 Kent and Isaac Hager’s Cornell Realty Management paid $300 per buildable foot for the site at 200 Kent. At those prices, the Ko-Rec-Type sites could sell for between $90 million and $130 million if they go to the same buyer.
Vic Barouh, a sixth-grade dropout, founded Ko-Rec-Type in 1955 and died in 2008. Robert Barouh now runs the company, long headquartered in Williamsburg. If the properties sell, the fate of the company is not immediately clear.
A Ko-Rec-Type representative could not be reached, and Eastern Consolidated declined to comment.