Avery Hall Lands $73M Loan for Gowanus Project

Avery Hall Investments scored a construction loan for a project in Gowanus, where it recently sold a separate development to the Brodsky Organization.

TD Bank supplied a $72.5 million loan to Avery Hall and its partners, Bridge Investment Group and Declaration Partners, for the joint venture’s project at 544 Carroll Street, the Commercial Observer reported. The loan was arranged through Bridge Investment’s qualified opportunity zone fund.

JLL’s Christopher Peck and Peter Rotchford arranged the financing.

The 17-story rental development is slated to include 133 units, 25 percent of which will be affordable. Amenities are expected to include a rooftop lounge, fitness center and event space. Construction is expected to be completed in late 2025.

Elsewhere in Gowanus, Avery Hall earlier this year sold a development also expected to be completed in 2025. Brodsky acquired the 350-unit mixed-use development at 499 President Street. Avery Hall did retain a stake in the project, which is expected to span 322,000 square feet and include 20,000 square feet of retail space on the ground floor.

The firm, led by Brian Ezra and Avi Fisher, paid $30 million in 2019 to buy a development site at 204 Fourth Avenue, which formerly had a Speedway gas station.

Developers piled into Gowanus during and after the 2021 rezoning of the Brooklyn neighborhood. The 82-block rezoning permitted development on sites mostly limited in the past to industrial use. Officials estimated the rezoning would lead to the delivery of 8,500 apartments by 2035, approximately 3,000 of which would be income-restricted.

The neighborhood is on pace to shatter those expectations. More than 8,000 apartments are already in the works, though obstacles remain in the form of high interest rates and beating the 421a construction deadline or securing an alternative tax subsidy recently rolled out for the area.

— Holden Walter-Warner