NEW YORK CITY — Ofer Cohen of New York City-based brokerage firm TerraCRG, as well as Tucker Reed and Vivian Liao of Brooklyn-based developer Totem Brooklyn, have launched Ailanthus, a platform that aims to create 10,000 apartments in New York City over the next five years. The platform is named after the Ailanthus tree, a common street tree in New York City and a reference to Betty Smith’s 1943 novel “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.”
As of May 13, Ailanthus has approximately 1,500 apartments in its pipeline, including a 456-unit mixed-income development at 1057 Atlantic Ave. and a 187-unit mixed-income project at 737 Fourth Ave. The firm also plans to commit a percentage of its profits to local nonprofits through Brooklyn Org, a local community foundation that does participatory grantmaking solely focused on Brooklyn.