Manhattan Just Won’t Do It For Simon Dushinsky
We live in interesting times when a developer decides to try out a project in Manhattan but retreats back over the bridge to Brooklyn before anything gets built.
Such was the case when Simon Dushinsky’s Rabsky Group pulled back last month after dipping its toes into the Manhattan market for the first time. The developer has sold a development site it owned at 644-652 East 14th St to Opal Holdings, for $23M, The Real Deal reports.
The Rabsky Group, which in recent years has made a name for itself as a prolific ground-up residential developer in several emerging Brooklyn submarkets, bought the site in 2014 for $15M. It then tore down the existing single-story warehouse building that had occupied the site.
The developer had plans for a 62k SF building that would have risen 15 stories and contained 50 rental units, with five stories devoted to a community facility—possibly a school.
The firm is keeping busy on the side of the river where it evidently feels more comfortable, with undertakings like its 500-unit rental project on the former site of the Rheingold Brewery in Bushwick. [TRD]
