When Matt Linde and Udi Kore were first approached to develop the old site of St. John’s College’s campus in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, it was a dream come true for the two men who grew up in the area.
Linde, CEO of People Restoring Communities, and Kore, Founding Partner at Avenue Realty Capital, first walked through the property in the summer of 2017.
The building has had many names over the years since the cornerstone was laid in 1869. It has been known as the College of St. John the Baptist, St. John’s College, and St. John’s University, New York, before relocating to its current campus in Queens, which is now simply referred to as St. John’s University.
It was abandoned by the university after classes ceased in 1972 and had been deteriorating for decades. The Roman Catholic church next door, St. John the Baptist, used it for various purposes over the years, including as a nunnery and a boarding school.
“I think it looked like a great place to shoot a horror movie. Paint was chipping off the walls. Holes everywhere. Debris all over the floor, birds flying through it. It was clearly a severely neglected asset,” Linde tells CNBC Make It.
