VIP Community Services pays $6.5M for homeless shelter dev site in Ridgewood

VIP Community Services through the entity VIP Cody Housing Development Fund Corporation paid $6.5 million to Philip Paul through the entity Johnson Ingraham Associates LLC for the industrial building (F5) at 16-63 Cody Avenue in Ridgewood, Queens. The buyer is developing a homeless shelter at the building, which will be expanded from its current size.
On the lot, there is one active major alteration construction project, Q00972360, for a 35,584 square-foot homeless sheter building. The project was submitted by Mimi Ho of Apex Investments with plans filed April 28, 2025 and it has not been permitted yet.

At the same time, the developers obtained a $50.9 million construction loan through the The Cody Avenue Contract-Backed Pass-Through Trust.

Zoning Document link.
The deal closed on June 6, 2025 and was recorded on June 23, 2025. The property has 12,061 square feet of built space and 27,658 square feet of additional air rights for a total buildable of 39,796 square feet according to a PincusCo analysis of city data. The sale price per built square foot is $538 and the price per buildable square foot is $163 per the PincusCo analysis. (The price per square foot analysis is the transaction price divided by square feet as reported in public records and assumes no air rights have been sold.)
The seller bought the property on January 3, 2008, for $2.1 million. The signatory for Philip Paul was Philip Paul. The signatory for VIP Community Services was Debbian Fletcher-Blake . The contract date was June 6, 2025.

Prior sales and revenue

Prior to this transaction, PincusCo has no record that the buyer VIP Community Services had purchased any other properties and has no record it sold any properties over the past 24 months.
The seller Philip Paul had not purchased any other properties and had not sold any properties over the same time period.

The property

The industrial building in Ridgewood has 12,061 square feet of built space and 27,658 square feet of additional air rights for a total buildable of 39,796 square feet according to a PincusCo analysis of city data. The parcel has frontage of 177 feet and is 132 feet deep with a total lot size of 19,898 square feet. The lot is irregular. The zoning is M1-4D which allows for up to 2 times floor area ratio (FAR) for manufacturing The city-designated market value for the property in 2022 is $1.2 million.

Violations and lawsuits

There were no lawsuits or bankruptcies filed against the property for the past 24 months. In addition, according to city public data, the property has not received any significant violations in the last year.

Development

The neighborhood

In Ridgewood, The bulk, or 38 percent of the 20 million square feet of commercial built space are walkup buildings, with mixed-use buildings next occupying 29 percent of the space. In sales, Ridgewood has had very little sales volume relative to other neighborhoods with $169.2 million in sales volume in the last two years. For development, Ridgewood has 1.2 times the average amount of major developments relative to other neighborhoods and is the 6th highest in Queens. It had 1.5 million square feet of commercial and multi-family construction under development in the last two years, which represents 7 percent of the neighborhood’s built space.

The block

On this tax block, PincusCo has identified the owners of seven of the 22 commercial properties representing 32,728 square feet of the 110,627 square feet. The largest owner is Donald Hearn, followed by Augustyn Lech and then Dexter Adolphus.
There are no active new building construction projects on this tax block.

The majority, or 87 percent of the 110,627 square feet of built space are industrial buildings, with mixed-use buildings next occupying 13 percent of the space.

Direct link to Acris document. link