Tainted firm out in B’klyn

Walks away from armory

SLATE PROPERTY Group, the developer implicated in a Lower East Side land deal scandal, has pulled out of a big city-backed project in Brooklyn, the Daily News has learned.

The de Blasio administration moved to push Slate out at the Bedford-Union Armory project in Crown Heights because officials believe the developer misled them about its plans for former nursing home Rivington House, City Hall sources said.

Slate bought the Rivington property and is set to turn it into luxury condos — in a deal that has sparked multiple investigations into the de Blasio administration. Investigators found Slate plotted with the seller to keep the plan secret until the city had lifted a deed restriction requiring the property to be used for health care.

De Blasio said this month he’d take a “hard look” at whether Slate should get to keep the armory deal.

After pressure from City Hall, Slate agreed to sell its stake in the project to BFC Partners, sources said. The two developers had been tapped by the city to jointly transform the massive armory into 300 apartments, half of them with restricted rents, along with a dozen private townhouses and a sports center with a swimming pool and basketball courts.

Activists cried foul, saying Slate’s Rivington role showed it couldn’t be trusted with the Brooklyn project.

In a letter to the city, Slate cofounder David Schwartz confirmed his company had “sold its interest in the above-referenced project . . . on mutually agreeable financial terms.”

“We believe this is the right decision. It protects the vital affordable housing coming to this site, and serves the needs of this community,” said de Blasio spokesman Austin Finan.

The project will go forward as planned with only BFC at the helm, officials said.

“We’re focused on doing projects that are going to get done, and focused on doing affordable housing,” Schwartz told The News.

The project has to be approved by the City Council and other officials.

Activists who had protested against the project were not satisfied.“The basic facts here have not changed: the vast majority of the housing that will be created won’t be affordable to the residents of Crown Heights,” said Esteban Giron of the Crown Heights Tenant Union.