On the Bay Street transaction, Zegen says Madison had purchased the defaulted first mortgage note and second mortgage note with an unpaid principal balance of $2.9 million from a local bank. The previous ownership had acquired the land for approximately $4.5 million and had spent an additional $2.5 million on improvements when construction halted during the downturn. “This is a case of us being able to buy an asset significantly below replacement cost, well below what the actual land traded for in 2006 or so,” he adds.

Zegen says MRC is currently in the process of finishing the project, which is expected to be completed by the end of 2013. Once the construction is finalized, the property will have 22,000 rentable square feet of space on the ground floor and 20,300 rentable square feet of space on the second floor. Casandra Properties – the same broker at 224 Richmond Terrace and BFC’s project – has been appointed as leasing agent.

Zegen expects national, local and franchises will be attracted to the property. “There’s been a lot of retailers interested,” he says, noting that a new supermarket and Deals, a unit of Dollar Tree, recently opened nearby. “When I talk to brokers, they are getting a lot of unsolicited calls for space in the St. George market. For 20 years, they all talked about things happening on Staten Island, and it is actually coming to fruition. It was always one of these concepts that ‘it’s coming it’s coming,’ and then it finally came.”