Pierre Downing presents Khalil Companies background and project vision
Pierre Downing of Khalil Companies describes the firm as a mission-oriented, five-year-old developer with 15 years of initial work, $2 billion in city business across 5,000 housing units. The partnership aims to provide senior affordable housing, deliver a state-of-the-art masjid and school, with the masjid as joint venture partner and owner-operator of the school.
And I'm going to pass it on to Pierre Downing.
Good afternoon, Madam Chair and Council.
My name is Pierre Downing, just testifying on behalf of the Masjid Khalifa Project.
So as Imam put it, this is a partnership about recognizing community, making sure that the
seniors and aging population of Bed-Stuy can age gracefully, remain in our community without being pushed out.
This has been a labor of love for the past five years or so now since we first crossed paths through just our various relationships because we're known as a mission-oriented and aligned
for-profit developer and 100% of our business essentially has been done in partnership with nonprofits and other for-profits and city agencies.
But a little bit about Kal-El.
We are a five-year-old firm, gone gone five years, but our initial kind of work started 15 years ago.
And to date, we've done about $2 billion in business with the city across 5,000 units of housing.
And we can't be more than excited just to be able to do this and bring history, like a refreshment of history to the site.
Next slide.
You can go over the next one.
One more.
And just so the overall vision for the Masjid has been through, you know, our discussions and our design team discussions to maximize the development potential of the site with provision of senior affordable housing.
approximately 145 units, inclusive of one super.
And that unit mix and massing is required here so that we're able to deliver a state-of-the-art masjid facility and school back to the community and to Masjid Khalifa.
And they are both, you know, the owner-operator of the school and they are joint venture on the real estate.
But without this vision and without this action, then this would not be made possible.
And we can move on to the next slide.
And here you can just see a nice rendering before I hand it over to Shaniqua Henry from SLM of the proposed site on the massing of the residential structure and the masjid.
And with that, I'll turn it over to Shaniqua.