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Red Apple Group Lands Construction Loan for Coney Island Resi Project

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John Catsimatidis’s Red Apple Group landed a construction loan for its under-development residential project in Coney Island, records filed with the city Monday show.

Bank of America lent the developer $130 million for the 425-unit project at 3514 Surf Ave., according to records that hit the city’s Department of Finance. Reached for comment, Catsimatidis told The Real Deal that construction on one of the three buildings at the site has already reached the seventh of an eventual 21 floors.

The package included a loan from Bank of America and additional money from Spanish bank Santander, Catsimatidis said. An additional $50 million in financing through the EB-5 visa program is also coming into the project, he said. “We expected the [EB-5] money to come in five or six months, but the Chinese are throwing money at us already,” Catsimatidis said.

The buildings at 3514 Surf Avenue, dubbed “Ocean Dreams,” will span 432,000 square feet in total, including 23,000 square feet for ground floor retail. A trolley service would take residents to the Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue subway stop, which is located more than a mile away from the development.

The Real Deal describes Red Apple Group as “a real estate investment firm. Red Apple, which was founded as a grocery store in the early 1970s by John Catsimatidis, also owns the Gristedes supermarket chain (which it began purchasing in the 1980s; in 1986, it completely bought out the chain). The company also owns Kwik Fill gas stations and convenience stores. In 2015, Forbes magazine ranked Red Apple as America’s 156th-largest private company, with revenue closed to $3 billion.”

The real estate group also built the Andrea, a 95-unit building on Myrtle Avenue in Brooklyn, and at one point planned to build three residential buildings in Coney Island, according to The Real Deal. It also has developed buildings around Manhattan and wants to build in Queens as well.

Coney Island, which looks out onto the outer extremes of New Jersey, Staten Island, Queens, and at the Atlantic Ocean can feel like miles away from City Hall. Catsimatidis tried his hand in politics when he ran for mayor in 2013 when he lost in the GOP primary to Joe Lhota. He personally financed part of the campaign with more than $10 million. “I have name recognition. I can write a check,” he said.

The Jewish Voice has previously reported about how the billionaire talk show host, businessman, and former Republican mayoral candidate added a property to his real estate group’s collection in February with a recently developed Brooklyn apartment building by the Barclays Center in Prospect Heights for $69.2 million, an eight-story, 86-unit building at 670 Pacific St.

Catsimatidis granted The Jewish Voice an exclusive interview back in March. He has long been a friend of the Jewish community. “Every year I light the menorah on Fifth Avenue for the last twenty years,” he said.

By Marshie Brumet

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