United Land Unloading Bridge Street Site to Avalon Bay?

With all the retail tenants now cleared out of the Al Laboz-owned buildings at Bridge and Willoughby Streets, the way should have been cleared for Laboz’s United Land to embark on a massive development project on the site. Or, as has been speculated, he could sell the cluster of properties to another group, which is what it’s starting to look like might be happening. At the beginning of this month, it turns out, Laboz sold one of the buildings that sits smack in the middle of the footprint to none other than Avalon Bay, the national REIT that’s already developing a large rental project at the corner of Flatbush and Myrtle. Avalon closed on 381 Bridge Street, a 3,800-square-foot tenement building, for $5,125,000, a price that looks expensive until you realize that it comes with an extra 26,000 square feet of air rights, courtesy of the Downtown rezoning. So far, there are no records of any of the other 10 lots in the footprint changing hands, but it’s hard to believe that this isn’t the first step in a larger transaction that would see Avalon putting up a project approaching 800,000 square feet next door to City Point. Mr. Laboz did not respond to our request for clarification.
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