Eliot Spitzer Looking To Buy Kedem Winery Site In Williamsburg
Former site of the Kedem Winery. Image: Brooklyn 11211
Once you lose the election for comptroller, what is a politician to do? Shuffleboard? Game of Thrones marathon? Nope! If you’re Eliot Spitzer, you think about buying a winery!
Yes, Eliot Spitzer and his company Spitzer Enterprises, upon which he’s been at the helm since the 2008 prostitution scandal that forced him to resign as governor of New York, is currently working overtime to purchase the former site of the Kedem Winery on the Williamsburg waterfront. And it looks like he’s pretty damn close.
According to The Real Deal, Spitzer Enterprises is currently in “advanced negotiations” to snatch up the 2.8 acre site at 420 Kent Avenue following an unsuccessful attempt by developer Rector Hylan Corp. to build a mixed-use project. Hylan Corp. purchased the acreage, which sits between S. 9th Street and Broadway, for $11.3 million in 2003, but failed to put even a concrete slab on the site while its permits were active. And now, with the Domino Sugar redevelopment going on a few short blocks away,the site is worth much, much more than it was in 2003 and has become more attractive to prospective buyers.
If all goes as planned, Spitzer & Co. would be the proud owners of enough space to house what would have been 600,000-square-feet of mixed-use space (26,400 s.f. for retail) had the Hylan Corp. plan worked out. Hylan has until June 2016 to renew their permits on the land.
Meanwhile, the Kedem Winery, one of the largest producers of kosher wine and grape juice in the the country, is far away from the day-to-day drama of the Brooklyn real estate game, chugging away in manufacturer-stealing Bayonne, New Jersey.
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