Pintchik family, longtime owners of properties near Barclays Center, sells 26 buildings, with retail at base. New owners have opportunity to build bigger.

Blue markings indicate buildings sold.
Yellow indicates buildings kept

In a transaction transforming the ownership of two retail and residential strips near the Barclays Center, the Pintchik family--longtime investors, landlords, and neighborhood stewards--has sold 26 buildings for $102.5 million.

The sale involves 28 retail spaces--most but not all occupied by relatively new businesses--and 84 apartments. 

Of the buildings eight are on the west side of Flatbush Avenue between Dean and Bergen streets and four are on the east side. Eleven are on Bergen Street, west of Flatbush Avenue. Another building is on Dean Street, at Flatbush.

Among the retail outlets within the properties are Chip City, Versailles, Gino's Pizza, Sofreh Cafe, Babeland, Ride Brooklyn, and Joe Coffee.

(See map excerpt at right, and full map below, which adds two other buildings in the sale, further down Flatbush.)

Bigger buildings coming? 

While the buyers, investor brothers Michael and Edward Ostad, have not revealed their plans, they've acquired a notably contiguous number of buildings near transit, in a steadily gentrifying area.

“It took the previous seller a generation to assemble this portfolio,” Michael Ostad told the Commercial Observer. “We feel so fortunate to have the opportunity to acquire it all at once in such a premier Brooklyn submarket with unmatched geographical proximity and scale.”

Looking north at cluster of buildings sold at Bergen St. and Flatbush Ave., with 38 Sixth
Ave., 18 Sixth Ave., and 662 Pacific St. in the background. Photos: Norman Oder

Though the buildings contain modern retail space--some now empty (see "for-rent" sign in the left center of the photo above--and mostly market-rate apartments, the sites are underbuilt under current zoning and thus offer the potential to add floors or even be replaced by newer structures.

For example, the cluster of three-story buildings in the photo above, located at the northeast intersection of Flatbush Avenue and Bergen Street, could, under current

Looking east up Bergen Street toward Flatbush
Avenue. The Invictus building wasn't sold.

R7A zoning, have eight or nine stories.

Just up Flatbush, the recently constructed mostly residential building at the southeast corner of Dean Street and Flatbush, Heritage Dean Street, is eight stories, built on the site of a longtime Bergen Tile store. 

(Part of that building is across the street from the 32-story 461 Dean Street, part of Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park. )

On more modestly scaled Bergen Street west of Flatbush, a row of three-story buildings has R6B zoning, allowing four or five stories, though other buildings closer to Flatbush appear to have mixed R7A/R6B zoning. 

More on the deal

Raven Property Advisors, LinkedIn

The sale was announced by the broker, Raven Property Advisors.

 "Portfolios like this, consisting of small- to mid-sized mixed-use buildings, are rarely aggregated on this scale, particularly in the same neighborhood," said Rich Velotta of Raven, in the press release, later picked up by The Commercial Observer, The Real Deal, and Crain's New York Business.

Despite a report in the Real Deal claiming that the portfolio included 162-170 Flatbush Avenue, a busy strip opposite the Barclays Center that includes Snipes, Chick-fil-A, and Shake Shack, they were not included, according to Michael Pintchik, who manages the family portfolio.

“This is a significant transaction," Velotta said in the press release, "that highlights the continued demand for predominantly free market assets in primary submarkets." Of the buildings sold, two contain rent-regulated apartments, as far as I can tell.

Looking at the west side of Flatbush Avenue, north from Bergen Street.

A family decision

The properties had been acquired by a family with deep roots in the Park Slope/Prospect Heights neighborhood, branching out from the eponymous paint and hardware store at Flatbush Avenue and Bergen Street. 

Grandfather Nathan Pintchik began the business, while his son Jack Pintchik once told young Michael, around 1958-59, of Flatbush Avenue, in his son's recollection, "'One day something great is going to be built here.'"

Looking west on Bergen St. from Flatbush Ave.

Michael Pintchik, who manages real estate holdings co-owned with his siblings, said in an interview that the sale was "bittersweet," but was a family decision: "everybody's getting a little older, there was a way that people could pursue things in their lives that they wanted to pursue."

He said the sale was less than half the family portfolio, which has been concentrated in but is not exclusive to Park Slope/Prospect Heights. 

He will be investing more in the area himself: "I'm doing 1031s"--exchanges that allow buyers to defer capital gains taxes--"and I want to keep it in the neighborhood. This is what I know and love." 

While Pintchik mentioned a few properties retained--the strip including Shake Shack; the TD Bank site at 482-484 Bergen Street; and the Union Market building at 342 Flatbush-- he didn't want to provide a full list, because he's been inundated with investors' inquiries. "And I have no intention to sell the rest of the buildings."

 

(Note: in the map above, the blue indicates buildings sold. The yellow indicates buildings retained, but does not include the full scope of family holdings.)

Local commitment

In a 2017 interview with the Commercial Observer, Pintchik said, “Our goal is to have very artisanal, unique tenants,” Pintchik said. “We feel a certain responsibility, because we have almost contiguous blocks of buildings. Because we can shape things, we have been really careful.” 

Indeed, Bergen Street has a very "curated" look, with coordinated signage, as shown in the video below.

"We're in the fortuitous position of being able to hold out for people we really want to come in," Pintchik told an interviewer in 2008. Notably, the landlords rebuffed Hooter's and McDonald's, but did later rent to Chick-fil-A, which attracted an unruly level of delivery bikers--at least until the franchise owner opened another location on Atlantic Avenue.

Two buildings on Bergen were omitted from the sale. One, 456 Bergen, houses Invictus Bakery, which trains and employs autistic adults, a charitable focus of Matthew Pintchik, Michael's brother. Another is 460 Bergen, home to Beer Witch.

"How it came that we sold this group, I'm still trying to figure out," Michael Pintchik said. "They wanted a critical mass. We gave them that."

Below is a walk north on the west side of Flatbush Avenue from Bergen Street.

  

"Each of the 26 buildings,"  Raven said in the press release, "had individual considerations—including nuanced lease expirations and individual building conditions and mechanical systems—requiring meticulous planning to fully understand and highlight the distinct value of each property."

234 Flatbush (center), with Muteki Udon, was in the sale

In 2008, Pintchik talked about constructing new multi-story buildings on parcels the family owned, but that didn't happen. "

Rather, they converted buildings, such as renovating a one-story building and adding a floor at 342 Flatbush, home to Union Market and Core Power Yoga. 

"That building was reborn," he recalled. "I guess what we do is adaptive reuse. I really didn't have a mind to tear down perfectly good buildings."

What next?

The Ostads, based in Great Neck, operate Flatiron Realty Capital, a "tech-enabled real estate portfolio lender." (Michael Ostad last year paid $11.3 million--a significant discount off an earlier listed price--for a condo at the supertall 432 Park Avenue.)

The Commercial Observer noted noted that Derby Copeland Capital supplied not just an $90 million acquisition loan to the buyers but also $8 million for capital improvements. That could presumably be used for repairs, renovations, and perhaps new construction.

266 Flatbush, with Eladia's Kids, was in the sale

"It's too early to tell" the new owners' plans, Pintchik said, but "they will hopefully perpetuate where we started." 

A different reputation

While the Pintchiks, with a low cost basis, have not sparked headlines from dissatisfied tenants, a quick web search turns up some pushback toward Edward Ostad, at least. (I am unable to assess their full record.)

At a Sunset Park building acquired by Edward Ostad in 2021, efforts to raise rents 30% prompted pushback from a tenant association and a letter from Council Member Alexa Aviles. 

On that tenant association website, tenant organizer Sander Hicks stated that, despite having a lease from the previous owner indicating his unit was rent-stabilized, the new landlord was able to evict him, given that his unit was no longer rent-stabilized, justified by previous major capital improvements. He contended that the eviction was used "to silence a tenant organizer."

Last August, the New York Daily News reported NYC landlord used fake repair scheme to overcharge tenants: lawsuit, citing an effort by seven rent-stabilized tenants to certify a class-action suit again the owners of three buildings in Harlem and Hamilton Heights.

The defendants, according to the suite, are three limited liability companies whose managing member is Edward Ostad, though the defense countered that information, regarding one company, was inaccurate.

The legal complaint regarding 736 Riverside Drive, 629 West 135th Street, and 609 West 151st Street alleges that the owners and operators had schemed to evade rent regulations "by either: (a) taking increases for unperformed, or underperformed, Individual Apartment Improvements (“IAIs”) in order to justify deregulating units; or (b) improperly deregulating units after the end of a temporary exemption."

In a legal answer, the defendants denied the allegations, saying that the increases were within legal boundaries. The case, Megan Campbell, et al., vs. AHA Realty Partners, et al., is unresolved, with the last filing Nov. 25.