CROWN HEIGHTS — A former commercial laundry facility near the Brooklyn Botanic Garden and Medgar Evers College has been sold to a real estate company with experience in multimillion-dollar development projects in Brooklyn and Manhattan.
Cornell Realty Management bought 46 Crown St. on March 27 for $14.5 million, according to public records. The lot contains three one-story buildings and a smokestack on the eastern half of a city block split by the Franklin Avenue Shuttle.
The buildings once housed Sea Crest Linen, a commercial laundering company also known as Central Laundry Service Corp. The 38,000-square-foot site has been used by various laundry companies since at least 1935, according to building records.
Central Laundry Service Corp. filed for bankruptcy in the fall, according to a report by Crain's New York Business. The buildings are now vacant.
The site is residentially zoned to accommodate a building of up to seven stories, according to the Department of City Planning. That zoning would allow a potential developer to build "as of right," or without getting approval from the City Planning Commission or the local community board.
Cornell Realty is based in Red Hook but has property all over the city, according to reports. Last year, the firm sought a buyer for a $38.5 million Williamsburg rental building and bought an empty lot on Kent Avenue for $12.3 million. This year, the group filed plans with the Department of Buildings to develop a mixed-use building on 34th Street in Manhattan bought in January for $31.5 million.
No plans for new construction at the Sea Crest Linen site have been submitted to the Department of Buildings. Cornell Reality did not return calls seeking comment about its plans.
