Local Public School, Several Non-Profits Interested in Longterm Leasing
By Linda Collins
Brooklyn Daily Eagle
BROOKLYN HEIGHTS — Regal Investments Inc., after several attempts to get its plans for the former 84th Police Precinct at 72 Poplar St. in Brooklyn Heights approved by the Landmarks Preservation Commission and the Department of Buildings (DOB), has abandoned efforts to convert the building to residential use.
Bill Punch, a partner with Maurice Laboz at Regal Investments Inc., the building’s owner, told the Eagle Wednesday that conversion is no longer economically feasible.
“LPC and DOB restrictions coupled with a lack of cooperation/enthusiasm from neighbors and the Brooklyn Heights Association made the ownership seek other development options such as net leasing the entire building,” he said in an email.
Punch also told the Eagle that Brooklyn Heights’ P.S. 8, nearby at Hicks and Middagh streets, and several non-profit agencies, including the League Treatment Center in DUMBO, have made inquires regarding the site as have various developers.
P.S. 8, however, although interested in leasing the building as an expansion to its current building, has been “unable to get support from the School Construction Authority to date,” Punch said. As for the League Treatment Center, “we are in the early stages of negotiating.”
Neither the school nor the League Treatment Center, both a school and a day-care center for children with emotional problems and learning disabilities, could be reached for a comment by press time.
As previously reported in the Eagle, Laboz purchased the long-empty, circa-1913 building for $9.6 million at a city auction in 2004. Then, because he had not realized it was in the Brooklyn Heights Historic District and had a 50-foot height limit, put it on the market. Eventually, he decided he would develop it himself.
Regal has already done a considerable amount of work on dismantling the interior of the 30,000-square-foot building, which is three stories in one half and four stories in another and has an attached garage/carriage house. Regal planned to create 38 rental apartments in the building.
“All of our interior demolition work is completed, new staircases have been installed, and an elevator shaft has been constructed,” he told the Eagle earlier this year.
Punch also said, “Rumors that the ownership has an exclusive sales agent marketing the property are not true.”
© Brooklyn Daily Eagle 2007
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