12 adjacent Park Slope parcels including Grand Prospect Hall sell for $30M

Grand Prospect Hall has a new owner.

According to city documents, Angelo Rigas, through the entity Gowanus Cubes, purchased the banquet hall at 263 Prospect Avenue in Park Slope and 11 other properties for a total of $30 million, according to city records posted today and yesterday. The 12 properties are between 5th and 6th Avenues along Prospect Avenue.

The banquet hall and its previous owners Michael and Alice Halkias gained notoriety in the 1980s after they starred in commercials airing on local TV. The commercials were parodied by Saturday Night Live in 2019. Michael Halkias died of complications related to the coronavirus last year at the age of 82.

The building, added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1999, became a known event space in the area and was used in several films. In 2015, the Halkiases opened Brooklyn Bavarian Biergarten and Restaurant on the property.

In 2020, the industry and the hall were hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic, according to a New York Times obituary. Grand Prospect Hall and the biergarten remained closed through the pandemic and after the death of Halkias.

Alice Halkias was the signatory for the sale, which closed on June 24. Rigas did not immediately respond to a PincusCo request for comment.

The properties have a combined 73,104 square feet of built space, according to a PincusCo analysis of city records.

Within a 400-foot radius of 257 Prospect Avenue, PincuscCo identified two commercial real estate items of interest occurred over the past 24 months. They were all for building rehabilitation or alteration that require a change to the certificate of occupancy. They were one permit applications with a total initial cost of $851,209 and one initial temporary certificate of occupancy issuance for a project that initially cost $765,000. The most recent of these two items was the filing on September 26, 2019 for a 4,955-square-foot R-2 building with four residential units at 262 17th Street.

Direct links to Acris documents. link, link