It looks like Brooklyn’s famous Cascade smokestacks will soon go up in a puff of nostalgic memory.
That Bedford-Stuyvesant location that was a linen-supply factory for more than 110 years is slated for a large new residential and commercial development.
The former General Linen Supply & Laundry plant at 835 Myrtle Ave. has been sold to an investor group led by Mike Kohn’s Alliance Private Capital Group for $27 million.
The site, home to the Cascade brand linen company from 1898 until 2010, can support up to 251,505 square feet of residential development plus 101,000 square feet of commercial space as part of the city’s new Bedford Stuyvesant North rezoning district.
The sale comes at a time when Bedford-Stuyvesant property values are rising, driven by young professionals priced out of other parts of Brooklyn and by Hasidic Jewish families moving from neighboring Williamsburg.
Alliance is not a developer, but describes itself as an “intermediary” firm specializing in real-estate financing through a variety of instruments. It has originated and closed more than $3.5 billion in financing, according to its website.
The Myrtle Avenue sale was brokered by Newmark Grubb Knight Frank Capital Group Senior Managing Director Kenneth L. Zakin, who did not return calls.
Cascade’s white-and-blue delivery trucks were long a familiar sight, making their drops at hotels, restaurants and banquet halls around town.
The property that’s been sold comprises nine different buildings totaling 137,386 square feet, all vacant since Cascade shut down two years ago.
The assemblage is bordered by two city housing projects as well as by fast-redeveloping Myrtle and Stockton avenues. There’s a G train stop right outside.
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The three big tenant deals that will get Related Cos.’s first Hudson Yards tower off the ground appear to be imminent.
You’ve been hearing and reading that for months, but sources said signings of the lease/purchase by Coach Inc. and L’Oreal and German software giant SAP are truly, finally, at hand — possibly this week.
It’s unclear whether other sign-offs Related chief Stephen M. Ross needs — including with the MTA, financial partner Oxford and construction lenders — will also be done by then.
Because the various deals are so complex and prone to last-minute minor glitches, Related has wisely declined to schedule an announcement until the deals are all wrapped up.
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In welcome news for the sluggish Sixth Avenue corridor, State Street Bank has signed a new lease for 105,951 square feet at Vornado’s 1290 Sixth, aka the AXA Financial Center.
The lease for the entire sixth floor more than doubles the bank’s space in the building, where it’s consolidating its New York operations. State Street is leaving behind about 70,000 square feet at Brookfield’s 2 World Financial Center as well as part of the 10th floor, which it occupied under a sublease at 1290 Sixth.
The new, 10-year commitment starts in the mid-$50s, according to Midtown brokerage sources not involved in the transaction, but the full value couldn’t be determined. Online databases list asking rents of $65 a square foot on other floors.
State Street Bank was repped by Jones Lang LaSalle New York Region
President Peter Riguardi and JLL’s Cynthia Wasserberger and Paul Mas.
Vornado was repped in-house by Glen Weiss and Thomas Costanzo. The brokers either couldn’t be reached or failed to return calls.
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Last week’s column about the success of speculative office towers in the city stated that “competing landlords and Mayor Bloomberg howled” when Larry Silverstein broke ground on 7 World Trade Center.
I goofed: Bloomberg attended the groundbreaking, as I should have remembered since I was there, too. And he had only praise for the project that day in November 2002.
The mayor has also strongly supported commercial development generally, including of spec projects such as 7 WTC.
What Bloomberg did grumble about was Silverstein asking for a higher rent at 7 WTC than elsewhere downtown, at a time when the developer was struggling to overcome skepticism over the viability of new WTC office buildings.
In May 2005, Bloomberg said: “I think if Larry would reduce his rents to the going rate [$35 a foot downtown at the time], he’d rent [7 WTC] in a second.”
It does a new, $1 billion building no favors when the mayor of New York City publicly says, in effect, that it’s overpriced. (Cheaper competitors charging the “going rate” were 30 to 50 years older.)
But later in 2005, Bloomberg tempered his view by saying Silverstein was “a private developer and he has to judge what he can get today . . . and I don’t question his judgment.”
Within two years, 7 WTC was mostly leased at rents above $60 a foot.