Kiryas Joel, NY – Is Camp La Guardia Purchase Linked To KJ?

Kiryas Joel, NY – The real estate broker pushing to buy the sprawling grounds of the former Camp La Guardia homeless shelter has insisted his clients are unconnected with the Village of Kiryas Joel, regardless of what local officials were murmuring.

Bob Lawrence also insists he can’t identify his prospective buyers, although he sharply narrowed the possibilities last week by saying they’re with a New York City-based developer called Waterfront Realty LLC.

And who might that be? Waterfront Realty II LLC — bears the Brooklyn business address of Isaac Rosenberg, a prominent ally of the Kiryas Joel leadership.

But Lawrence won’t say if the company listed at 470 Kent Ave. in Williamsburg — where Rosenberg owns the Certified Lumberyard — is the one seeking to buy the 256-acre shelter property from Orange County. He suggested his clients’ business might be registered in another state, but wouldn’t say which one.
Rosenberg, 58, belongs to the Satmar Hasidic community of Brooklyn and Kiryas Joel and helps lead one of the movement’s two warring factions — in tandem with Kiryas Joel’s leaders.

He has gained notoriety for his involvement in a massive 1998 federal fraud case and his admission in 2001 that he had helped launder money — unwittingly, his lawyer said — for a mob-controlled, Manhattan strip club. [Record]