A trio of longtime Brooklyn real estate executives is launching a firm that aims to bring 10,000 new housing units to the city over the next five years.
Ofer Cohen, chairman of Brooklyn-focused brokerage TerraCRG, along with Tucker Reed and Vivian Liao, principals at Brooklyn-focused developer Totem, have joined forces to create the platform, called Ailanthus. It will focus on developing projects at sites that are not shovel-ready and may need to go through the city’s often-lengthy and contentious rezoning process in an effort to dispute the assumption that such projects are riskier bets to support.
“Unless you have a shovel-ready site, meaning a site that’s ready to go, capital markets aren’t able to really mobilize,” said Cohen, “and that’s a fundamental problem in solving the acute housing crisis.”
Real estate projects in the city that require rezonings virtually always need the support of their local City Council member to move forward. This often translates to tense negotiations over issues like affordability levels that can occasionally kill the projects outright.
The Ailanthus team plans to focus on strong engagement with community members and elected officials over such issues to help ensure its housing pushes are successful.
“Not only do we happen to think it’s the right thing to do—it also makes better developments,” Liao said.
The company already has roughly 1,500 units of housing in its pipeline through Totem projects, such as a 456-unit building at 1057 Atlantic Ave. in Crown Heights and a 187-unit project at 737 Fourth Ave. in Sunset Park. It plans to take advantage of the new tax breaks and policy reforms in the state budget’s housing package as well, and it will donate at least 1% of its profits to Brooklyn Org., a philanthropic organization that distributes funding to local nonprofits.
Mayor Eric Adams and Gov. Kathy Hochul have both laid out ambitious targets for boosting housing production, with Adams calling for 500,000 new homes in the city and Hochul calling for 800,000 new homes in the state over the next decade. The state budget package includes several policies the Adams administration supports in pursuit of this goal, such as raising the city’s residential density cap and a pilot program to legalize basement apartments.
Adams officials are now pursuing their own policy changes through the City of Yes for Housing Opportunity initiative, which aims to increase the city’s housing supply through measures including eliminating parking mandates and allowing backyard apartments.
Eddie Small , 2024-05-13 12:03:04
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