Anyone walking to the Carroll Park Fair passed the same boarded-up storefront they've been passing all year. The old Rite Aid at 320 Smith Street, the one that anchors the whole west side of the block between President and Union, has been dark for months. What changed on September 1 wasn't the storefront. It was the deed.
A newly identified buyer, an entity tied to Manhattan developer Dawson Stellberger, closed on the entire block face, both 320 Smith Street and 336 Union Street around the corner, for $21.5 million in early August, with the sale hitting public records on September 1. Crain's New York Business put the number closer to $22 million. Either way, it's a large check for a building that's been sitting empty, and the buyer has not announced what happens next.
The open question is what the purchase covers. The site carries far more buildable space than the current building uses, leaving room for a larger project.
The Site Can Nearly Double In Size. Nobody's Filed A Permit.
The existing building on the site is a two-story structure built in 2008, when Rite Aid replaced what had been a parking and used-car lot going back to at least the 1940s. It totals 16,091 square feet and currently holds a retail space and five market-rate rental apartments.
The zoning tells a different story than the building does. According to Hoodline, the parcel carries an R6B designation with a C2-4 commercial overlay, which allows up to 28,500 square feet as-of-right, or as much as 34,200 square feet if the developer uses the city's Universal Affordability Preference inclusionary bonus for adding affordable units. That means the current structure occupies well under two-thirds of what's legally allowed there. The site could grow by 12,000 to 18,000 square feet without a single variance.
As of this writing, no permits have been filed. Stellberger has not announced what he plans to build. The available zoning capacity is clear, but the site's eventual use has not been announced.
Two Former Rite Aids, Six Blocks Apart, Two Completely Different Deals
Smith Street lost two Rite Aids this year, and the two replacements are structured nothing alike.
In June, Whole Foods signed a straightforward 35,000-square-foot lease at another former Rite Aid location, 182 Smith Street, on the Cobble Hill and Boerum Hill border. A lease has a known tenant, a known format, and a known timeline. There's no ambiguity about what's moving into that building.
The deal six blocks south is the opposite of that. Stellberger's LLC didn't lease space from an owner. It bought the land outright, along with whatever's left of the zoning envelope, across seven separate row-house lots. That's a land bet, not a retail commitment. Rite Aid's national collapse left more than 200 shuttered stores across New York City by this summer, with well over a hundred still sitting vacant, so two conversions on the same half-mile of Smith Street isn't as strange as it first looks. What's strange is that one of the two conversions came with a name, a tenant, and a square footage, and the other came with none of that.
Who Actually Signed The Deed
The buyer's paperwork lists Happier Grocery, a boutique health-focused grocery and lifestyle retailer whose flagship store sits at 365 Canal Street in SoHo, selling prepared food and wellness products alongside groceries. But the LLC behind the purchase, known as 99c, includes more than a grocer. It includes Stellberger, his brother, fashion designer Wells Stellberger, and billionaire biotech entrepreneur Francesco Bellini along with Bellini's son Carlo.
Stellberger's actual track record isn't in groceries. His firm, Bushwack Capital, spent the 2010s building out Bushwick and Williamsburg real estate before pivoting away from residential management entirely to focus on an events and creative corridor around Scott Avenue in Bushwick. That corridor now includes the music venue Elsewhere, the private members club SAA, the performance space 99 Scott, the photo and events studio at 53 Scott Avenue, and a geothermal hotel with an attached wellness center currently under construction. Happier Grocery itself fits that same mold more than it fits a conventional supermarket mold. Its Canal Street location functions as much as a gateway to upstairs workspace and community programming as it does a place to buy groceries.
None of that guarantees Carroll Gardens gets a nightclub or a members club. It does mean the safest assumption, that a grocery name on a deed means a grocery store is coming, isn't the assumption Stellberger's own history supports.
What Could Shape the Redevelopment Timeline
Redevelopment here isn't close, whatever it ends up being. The current building still houses five occupied market-rate apartments, and no permits have been filed with the city as of this reporting. Converting or demolishing a mixed-use building with existing residential tenants takes time under any zoning scenario, long before construction ever starts.
That timeline matters for a neighborhood that already has plenty of grocery options within a short walk of Carroll Park, including Union Market and Park Natural Foods. One hyperlocal newsletter that covers Cobble Hill, Carroll Gardens, and parts of Red Hook flagged this directly, noting the area already has roughly ten grocery stores of varying formats and questioning why the corner needs another one. That question is part of a broader debate about what the site should become. If the eventual use leans toward Stellberger's events and hospitality pattern rather than a straight grocery format, the debate over "do we need another store" may turn out to be the wrong debate entirely.
What To Watch On That Block This Fall
The corner will stay boarded through at least one more visible marker of the neighborhood's fall calendar. Trade + Prosper's Makers Manifest craft market returns to Smith Street between Sackett and Degraw on Saturday, October 17, part of a run of neighborhood markets the organizer is holding across the city this year. Anyone shopping that market will walk within a few blocks of a construction site that, as of today, still has no filed plans attached to it.
The site sits at the Carroll Street F stop, directly across from Carroll Park, on a block that turns over dozens of foot-traffic decisions a day. Whatever eventually replaces the old Rite Aid there will shape that corner for longer than any single market weekend. Right now the deed is the only public record of the owner's plans, and no permits have been filed.
If you're weighing what unresolved commercial development like this actually means for property near that stretch of Smith Street, or anywhere else in Brownstone Brooklyn, Brooklyn Brownstone Sales offers a complimentary, no-pressure market consultation to help separate zoning speculation from what it actually does to underlying value.
This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your situation.
