Walk the length of Smith Street from the Cobble Hill border down through Carroll Gardens and you'll pass two blank pharmacy storefronts within about ten blocks of each other. Both used to be Rite Aid. Both went dark as the chain worked through its 2025 bankruptcy and shed stores across the city. If you've been assuming those windows stay papered over for a while, you're behind the news. Each space has a new buyer or tenant, and neither is expected to remain an empty pharmacy.
That's the part worth paying attention to. This isn't a story about a national chain pulling out of the neighborhood. It's a story about who showed up with a checkbook the moment it did.
What Actually Sold
The bigger of the two deals closed on the Carroll Gardens side of the border. An entity called Happier Grocery President LLC paid $21.5 million for 320 Smith Street and 336 Union Street, the entire west side of Smith Street between President and Union, directly across from Carroll Park and steps from the Carroll Street F stop. The deed filed on September 1, and the purchase itself happened in early August. Public filings show the deal was financed with a $22 million loan from S3 Capital, a number that's worth sitting with for a second: the construction loan is bigger than the purchase price. Whoever's behind this isn't planning to leave the building as it stands.
And as it stands isn't much. The existing structure is a two-story, roughly 16,000-square-foot building holding a ground-floor storefront and five market-rate apartments. It went up in 2008, which means the pharmacy building itself was never the main event on this lot. Property records trace the site's prior life back to the 1940s, when it operated as a parking lot and used-car sales yard. A pharmacy was just the most recent short chapter on a site that's spent most of its history underbuilt for where it sits: across from a park, at a subway stop, on one of Brooklyn's busiest commercial strips.
No permits have been filed yet, and the buyer hasn't said publicly what's coming. But the name on the deed tells you more than a press release would.
Who's Behind Happier Grocery President LLC
The LLC traces to a developer named Dawson Stellberger, working with a group called 99c that also includes Canadian biotech entrepreneur Francesco Bellini and his son Carlo. Stellberger isn't a stranger to turning overlooked buildings into places people want to be. His portfolio includes:
- Elsewhere, the Bushwick music venue
- SAA, a private members club
- 99 Scott, a performance space
- 53 Scott Avenue, a photo studio and events venue
- A geothermal hotel with a wellness center, which broke ground in 2025
- Happier Grocery itself, a Manhattan boutique grocery brand
- WSA, a creative office building
Every one of those projects took a building that used to do something ordinary and gave it a second life as a destination. Carroll Gardens is new territory for Stellberger and his partners, which means this purchase isn't a routine landlord swap. It's a bet from someone whose entire track record is repositioning space for foot traffic, culture and events, made on the single most visible retail corner in the neighborhood.
The Corridor He's Betting On Was Already Heating Up
Here's the part that makes the Rite Aid purchase make sense: Smith Street didn't need convincing that people would show up. The restaurant scene along this stretch has been on a run for the better part of the year, and it's not a handful of unrelated openings. It's operators with track records choosing this specific corridor on purpose.
Trudie's opened this past July in the space that recently held Buttermilk Channel, at the Court Street end of the neighborhood. It comes from Nate Adler's RAD Restaurants group, the same team behind Gertrude's in Prospect Heights and Gertie on Vanderbilt Avenue. Carroll Gardens is their third Brooklyn address in a short run, which is its own kind of vote of confidence.
A few blocks over on Henry Street, Bar Ferdinando opened this spring from the team behind Cafe Spaghetti, the Union Street pasta spot that turned into an instant local favorite and put chef Sal Lamboglia's name on the map here. Bar Ferdinando is named for a restaurant that once occupied the same address, an Italian breakfast and all-day aperitivo cafe with pastry from Jackie De La Barrera. Just down the block, Bar Bruno reopened under new ownership around the same time, with chefs Orion Russell and Peter Juusola behind the stove.
None of these are pop-ups testing the water. They're operators with existing followings choosing to plant a second or third flag on this exact stretch of Smith and Henry and Court.
Two Rite Aids, Two Different Bets
The other former Rite Aid, a few blocks north at 182 Smith Street on the Cobble Hill and Boerum Hill border, tells a parallel version of the same story.
| Address | Former Tenant | New Buyer or Tenant | Deal Terms | Current Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 182 Smith Street | Rite Aid | Whole Foods Market | 35,000-square-foot lease signed June 2026 | Confirmed grocery use |
| 320 Smith Street & 336 Union Street | Rite Aid | Happier Grocery President LLC, tied to developer Dawson Stellberger | $21.5 million purchase, financed with a $22 million loan | No permits filed, plans undisclosed |
Two former pharmacy sites on the same commercial spine, both vacated within roughly the same window, both taken up, one by a buyer and one by a tenant, rather than left to sit as for-lease signs. Whole Foods signed a 35,000-square-foot lease a few blocks north. Whoever's shaping the Carroll Park corner wants something bigger than a two-story building with unused air rights above it, and financed accordingly.
What This Actually Means If You Live Here
None of this is confirmed as a restaurant, a market, a venue or anything specific yet. Stellberger hasn't filed permits and hasn't said what's coming. What is confirmed is the pattern: a national pharmacy chain's retreat from Smith Street didn't create dead space, it created an opening that operators with real track records moved on within months. That's not typical of every retail corridor working through a Rite Aid closure. It's typical of one where the surrounding demand is already proven, which is exactly what the last year of restaurant openings on this same stretch has been demonstrating one lease at a time.
If you've watched the Carroll Street F stop corner sit boarded for months and wondered whether Smith Street was cooling off, the paperwork says the opposite. The bigger question, and the one nobody outside Stellberger's office can answer yet, is what actually goes into that corner lot once the permits start showing up. That's worth watching, whether or not you ever plan on selling.
If you're the kind of neighbor who wants to know what's happening on your own block before it shows up in a headline everywhere else, that's the kind of local read Steve Schaefer keeps close watch on across Carroll Gardens and the rest of Brooklyn. Let's Connect.
