Developer Wants You To Buy All Their Bushwick Real Estate So They Can Afford To Turn A Church Into Luxury Apartments
So, A+ news for any of you burgeoning real estate tycoons out there who also happen to have $14 million kicking around. And I guess for free market capitalists and jerks with unlimited funds who don’t really care where they live?
While it’s not exactly “half of Bushwick,” as Bushwick Daily puts it, it is a pretty staggering amount of prime neighborhood real estate that’s about to hit the market courtesy of Cayuga Capital, one of Bushwick’s earliest and most successful property investors.
Real Deal reports that the company, which has been quietly accumulating buildings in the area over the course of the past decade, is selling off a 90 percent interest in their seven building stake in the neighborhood, to the tune of $14 million. Properties in the portfolio include buildings at 36 Wilson Avenue, 369 Menahan Street, 1399 Greene Avenue, and 297 and 311 Troutman Street.
The decision was partially driven by the neighborhood’s current real estate desirability. Or, as David Behin of MNS, the brokerage firm representing Cayuga put it, “Bushwick is like Williamsburg on crack.” So, unstable, in crippling disrepair, and a bad investment? Or I guess that’s not what people mean when they make crack jokes these days. “Williamsburg took 10, 11 years for it to get to where it is now — you had to cross a river,” Behin explains. “You just have to go three, four [subway] stops down” to move the whole operation on out to Bushwick. Oh.
Anyway, the idea here is to raise funds to pay back Cayuga’s initial investors and create cash flow for a planned 99-apartment development at St. Marks Lutheran Church on Bushwick Ave., once a beloved arts and event space (and I suppose, house of worship and general source of refuge). Studios in the new space would go for $1,900 and two-bedrooms for $2,750.
I don’t know if it does a whole lot of good to tear into Cayuga for this—they had the insight to invest early and are now doing everything the market, our mayor, and our current social mores would dictate they do with this windfall—but then, the idea of putting $2,000 studios in a space where artists and actual religious types used to congregate and enjoy themselves free of charge does land pretty heavy. Maybe not quite as heavy as comparing your lucrative real estate holdings to a devastating drug epidemic, but still. It’s a lot.
Follow Virginia K. Smith on Twitter @vksmith.