14 May 2008

Room for a New Big Box on Smith Street?


Massey Knakal, the Brooklyn development boom's own cheerleading real estate firm, has a juicy new listing in Carroll Gardens. Not one, not two, but three fat lots on the west side of busy Smith Street between Degraw and Douglass. 252, 254 and 260 Smith Street, to be exact. One property is an empty lot. The others are three-story brick jobbies which house such stores as Refinery and Area. They're being sold as a package for $3.5 mil.

The listing crows "Redevelopment opportunity" and "Entire property can be delivered vacant." Hm. Do I sense the arrival of a new big box store, along the lines of the Rite Aid a few blocks to the north or the, uh, er, Rite Aid a few blocks to the south? 2,667 square feet certainly would seem like enough room to build something big and boxy and anonymous. And while I don't know the zoning on that particular strip exactly, I'm guess there's little to prevent a developer from doing whatever the hell he wants.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

It's not an empty lot; it's a small parking lot, which I always assumed was attached to the property on Degraw that abuts it.

Anonymous said...

There's a space for a big box store a block away where the blockbuster used to be on court st. It's been vacant for over a year now, so it seems like an odd business decision to build a similar space here.