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The Brooklyn Paper / Bess Adler

Collegetown? Joe Sitt, who owns the land next to the Ikea in Red Hook, hopes to turn it into a mini-college town with dormitories serving Manhattan and Brooklyn students.

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Red Hook already has a furniture store and a supermarket — how about some frat houses?

Developer Joe Sitt sent shockwaves through a monthly gathering of real estate executives on Tuesday by sharing news that he hoped to convert his waterfront land between the Ikea superstore and the Fairway supermarket into a student housing complex.

“Ask any university, they’re starving for student housing,” Sitt, the CEO of Thor Equities, told the development big wigs at the Real Estate Roundtable at the Brooklyn Historical Society.

“[It could be] quasi-residential student housing if we can tempt a nearby university.”

The property, which once housed the Revere Sugar factory on Beard Street, has been the subject of much speculation since Sitt bought it in 2005.

Last year, Sitt — best known for selling most of his vast Coney Island holdings to the city last year — was considering turning the Red Hook site along Beard Street into a mega-mall complete with a BJs Wholesale Club. There was also talk of a flea market.

But structural problems with the remaining edifice on the site killed those plans, along with the building itself, Sitt said.

Noting the enormous profitability of the Fairway and the Ikea, as well as the convenience of the nearby water taxi service, Sitt added that he wanted to “best utilize” the property.

He added that the land would have to be re-zoned before Sitt could do anything with it — a potential sticking point, though there are few neighbors to complain about loud parties.

A spokesman for New York University, which now runs Polytechnic University in Downtown Brooklyn, said the university would likely seek student housing in that neighborhood, not distant Red Hook. Long Island University said it wasn’t interested in Sitt’s dream because it is already working with another developer.

©2010 Community Newspaper Group