EDGEMERE — A real estate developer and an affordable housing corporation have teamed up to buy the former Peninsula Hospital site for $19 million, according to city records.
The Arker Companies and the Northeast Brooklyn Housing Development Corporation bought the site in May from Congregation Zichron Yitzchok Vmoshe Eliyahu, a non-profit based in Borough Park and owned by Yosef "Joseph" Brunner, records show.
They bought it under two recently-formed limited liability companies, Peninsula Rockaway Housing Development Fund Corp., affiliated with NEBHDCo; and Peninsula Rockaway Limited Partnership, affiliated with the Arker Companies, records show.
The new owners plan to build multi-family housing and commercial buildings, according to paperwork filed with the city.
The project — which applied for a mortgage tax exemption because the developers exclusively build affordable housing, according to documents — would need to go through the city's ULURP rezoning process before it could move forward.
The Arker Companies is owned by the Arker family, and NEBHDCo.'s president is Jeffrey Dunston, whose name was listed on a $14 million mortgage for the deal.
Peninsula Hospital, from Beach 50th to Beach 53rd streets between Rockaway Beach Boulevard and Beach Channel Drive, has been closed since 2012 although a nursing home still operates at the location. Sources said the nursing home was not part of the sale and will remain open.
Brunner, along with three others, bought the hospital and its holdings in a bankruptcy sale after it closed in 2012.
Last August, The Arker Companies broke ground on the city's first affordable housing site for low-income seniors in Bayswater, about a mile from the former hospital.
Calls to The Arker Companies and NBHDC were not immediately returned.
