NBA player reinvests in Rochester with multifamily real estate purchase

So you’re the starting power forward for the Detroit Pistons and you’re in Miami for tipoff of the National Basketball Association’s regular season.

How do you spend your game-day afternoon? A little sight-seeing? Lunch in South Beach, perhaps?

If you’re Isaiah Stewart, you set out to find a notary public.

Stewart was in Miami with the Pistons to play the Heat when it came time to sign the closing papers on his purchase of an investment property in his native Rochester.

The one-time basketball standout at McQuaid Jesuit High School and later the University of Washington bought Colony Apartments on Lake Avenue in Rochester through a limited liability company, 1361 Lake Ave LLC. The deal closed on Oct. 25.

1361 Lake Ave LLC paid $2,138,409.49 for the four-story property to K Holdings LLC, an entity managed by Pavel Klimovich, according to documents filed with the Monroe County Clerk’s Office.

“I think it’s great to see a Rochester native making good and reinvesting in the community,” said Michael Cobbs, a partner at Brown Hutchinson LLP and the attorney who represented Stewart in the closing.

Colony Apartments contains 51 units. The 33,928-square-foot property was built in 1968, according to the multiple listing service sales post. The property had been on the market since February. K Holdings bought the apartment complex in February of 2017 for $1.78 million.

Two days after the sale to Stewart, K Holdings bought a 300,000-square-foot warehouse in the Buffalo suburb of Cheektowaga for $1.29 million.

Stewart, 22, was selected in the first round of the 2020 NBA draft by the Portland Trailblazers with the 16th overall pick. In reality, however, it was part of a draft-and-trade arrangement that eventually had Stewart joining the Pistons.

In July he signed a four-year extension worth a reported $64 million, the richest contract ever secured by a professional athlete from Rochester.

Stewart spent his freshman and sophomore years of high school at McQuaid, then transferred to a prep school in Indiana for his junior and senior years, winning the Naismith Prep Player of the Year and Mr. Basketball USA awards in 2018-19. He turned pro after just one season at the University of Washington.

He remains committed to his hometown, and not just through the tattoo on his chest that depicts the Cady Street street sign, which is the roadway he grew up on in Rochester. He has held basketball camps in the city and in February brought 50 members of the Boys & Girls Club of Rochester to Detroit for a Pistons game.

“I care a lot about Rochester, I care a lot about the youth here in Rochester, and as long as I’m alive and breathing, I’m going to forever give back to the city,” Stewart said in Under the Hood: Home Is Where The Heart Is, a 2022 YouTube video shot in Rochester and produced by the Pistons.

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