Rendering of Est4te Four’s project in Red Hook, Brooklyn. The buyer, Sitex, will keep the properties for industrial use.
UPDATED, May 1, 8:55 a.m.: Red Hook’s most ambitious mixed-use project will not see the light of day.
Italian developer Est4te Four has abandoned plans for a $400 million, 1.2 million-square-foot megadevelopment along the Brooklyn waterfront, and will instead sell its six-building site for $110 million to Sitex, a firm that specializes in industrial properties.
Sitex will not go through with Est4te Four’s ambitious redevelopment plans, and will instead keep the buildings industrial, the Commercial Observer reported.
“We intend to reposition what’s there and modernize the buildings and rent them out,” Brian Milberg, a principal at the firm, told the publication.
Est4te Four paid $66 million for the properties – at 219 Sullivan Street, 68 and 100 Ferris Street, and 202 and 242 Coffey Street – and hoped to build a project dubbed the Red Hook Innovation district, with offices, shops and a promenade. But the Milan-based developer struggled to secure financing and had been on the lookout for a capital partner.
Industrial real estate has “become the investment darling for institutional investors,” CBRE’s 
Kevin Welsh recently told The Real Deal, particularly in the field of logistics, which is seeing a boom driven in part by more e-commerce stores offering same-day delivery. [CO] — Hiten Samtani