Yesterday Crain’s reported on Pfizer’s “surprise agreement” to sell its manufacturing plant in Williamsburg to a Long Island City-based real estate investment firm called Acumen Capital Partners, which specializes “in buying empty buildings in the outer boroughs and converting them for light industrial and commercial use, as it now plans to do at the Pfizer site.” A couple years ago Pfizer announced that its plan to convert the plant and adjacent parcels into a huge mixed-use development with an emphasis on affordable housing wasn’t economically feasible, and before that happened, Vito Lopez did his best to try to control the site’s redevelopment. Anyhow, while the Crain’s article notes that Acumen’s “conversion should bring jobs back to the area” and the company “emphasizes environmental sustainability when redeveloping properties,” the deal does not include about five acres of land that Pfizer says could still potentially be turned into housing. Combined with the iffiness of the nearby Broadway Triangle redevelopment plans, though, it doesn’t seem like this section of Brooklyn is going to be seeing large-scale residential construction in the near future.
Sprawling Pfizer Plant in Brooklyn Sold [Crain's]
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