Federal acquires center in little-known Brooklyn neighborhood

Calling it a New York “real estate secret” in a 2017 piece about the neighborhood, the Brooklyn Paper noted that “the Georgetown Shopping Center is the center of it all.”

Its announcement that it had purchased the 147,000-sq.-ft. Fairway-anchored property, Federal Realty Investment Trust’s fascination with the center appeared to be the “surface parking on 9-acres in Brooklyn, New York.”

Federal paid $83.7 million in cash for the center in the east Brooklyn neighborhood near Mill Basin that is not reached by the New York Subway system. Most residents own cars in Georgetown, a neighborhood of single-family homes engineered in the Sixties by famed urban planner Robert Moses. 

Georgetown Shopping Center is currently 90% occupied and, besides Fairway, houses a small-shop roster led by Five Below, Starbucks, and Chipotle. Federal noted that it intends to increase the value of the property over time through continued remerchandising and space lease-up with the potential of adding square footage.

Georgetown is a subdivision of Bergen Beach and is located 7.5 miles from downtown Manhattan and 6 miles west of John F. Kennedy International Airport. More than 88,000 people with an average household income of $102,641 reside within a 1-mile radius of the shopping center.

Federal Realty's portfolio is located primarily in strategic metropolitan markets in the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, and California.