In the midst of Downtown Brooklyn’s building boom, the developer behind one of the neighborhood’s newest rental buildings is looking to sell the property for $100 million.
Brooklyn-based CBZ Management put the 110-unit BRiQ apartment building at 237 Duffield Street on the market with an asking price that works out to slightly more than $900,000 per unit, the brokers marketing the property told The Real Deal.
“Downtown Brooklyn and its surrounding environs are exploding and have been for some time,” said David Schechtman of Meridian Investment Sales. “This is ultra-luxury new construction. They did an incredible job and this is a tip-top location.”
Downtown Brooklyn is one of the city’s fastest-growing neighborhoods, with an ever-expanding skyline that’s adding thousands of new apartments. CBZ Management’s BRiQ building sits on Duffield Street between Fulton and Willoughby avenues, a block away from the City Point mega-development and around the corner from amenities like the one-acre Willoughby Square Park the city’s planning as part of the neighborhood’s 2004 rezoning.
Officials last month said they expect to break ground in January on the park, which will include what’s been described as a “vending-machine style” parking garage underneath the green space.
CBZ Management, headed by Shmaryahu Baumgarten and Daniel Gazal, finished construction on its 21-story, 92,000-square-foot BRiQ earlier this year and launched leasing in July. (The name reportedly refers to the building’s red-brick façade, with the iQ part a nod to the nearby MetroTech Center and schools.)
Once the building is fully stabilized, the company is projecting annual net operating income of $4.3 million on net revenues of $4.6 million. Like many other buildings in the neighborhood targeting young renters who haven’t yet started families, 237 Duffield contains a mix of studio, one- and two-bedroom apartments ranging in price from $1,117 to $4,550 per month. Of the building’s 110 residential apartments, 22 are set aside as affordable housing. The project receives a 421a tax exemption that kicks in next summer and runs for 25 years.
As for the street-level space, the developer recently signed the educational-day care and development center Lightbridge Academy to a 15-year lease to 9,700 square feet on the ground floor and lower levels at a blended rent of $70 per square foot.
CBZ Management, based in Crown heights, bought the development site that would eventually be transformed into the rental building in 2007 for $9.5 million. The Des Moines, Iowa-based Principal Life Insurance Company provided a $38 million construction loan in 2015.
The owners are developing the property in partnership with New Jersey-based equity partner Castle Rock Equity Group, which reportedly invests the personal wealth of the founders of PCS Wireless.
Elsewhere, CBZ Management is also looking to sell a nine-building multifamily portfolio in Brooklyn with an asking price of $70 million.
Schechtman is marketing the 237 Duffield property with his colleagues Lipa Lieberman, Abie Kassin, Brian Gladstone, Paul Patafio and Michael Pogoda.