This Week’s N.Y. Deal Sheet
Leases and lending slowed to a crawl this week, with multifamily dominating this week’s sales.
TOP LEASES
GFP Real Estate signed three leases spanning 21K SF at its 20-story FiDi office tower, 40 Exchange Place, according to a release. Digital media company a360 Media signed for 15K SF for four years, taking the entire eighth floor with representation from Helmsley Spear’s James Emden. The space was previously occupied by Knotel, but will now serve as a360 Media’s general and executive offices.
Residential real estate management company Siren Management Corp. took 3K SF on the 19th floor in a four-year lease extension, with representation from Cushman & Wakefield’s Jon Fein. The Epilepsy Foundation of Metro New York signed for 3K SF for 10 years on the 17th floor of the building, with GFP agreeing to build out offices, a kitchenette, a conference room and a computer lab for the nonprofit ahead of a planned July move-in date. JLL’s Ellen Herman repped the tenant, while GFP’s Allen Gurevich represented the landlord in-house in all the transactions. Asking rents were $45 a SF at the property, originally built in 1893.
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SL Green has signed law firm Cohen Clair Lans Greifer & Simpson LLP to 18K SF at its 919 Third Ave. office property, according to a release. The 47-story, 1.5M SF building in Midtown East was completed in 1970 and is home to tenants including Bloomberg, Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky and Popeo P.C and Shulte Roth & Zabel LLP. The 10-year lease was brokered by CBRE’s Robert Alexander, Ryan Alexander, Emily Chabrier, Taylor Callaghan, Alex D’Amario and Nicole Marshall on behalf of the landlord, while Craig Reicher and James Ackerson, also of CBRE, repped the tenant.
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Tishman Speyer has signed indoor golf entertainment venue Golfzon Social and Troon to its luxury Brooklyn residential development, 11 Hoyt St. The 18K SF space will be Golfzon Social’s first NYC location, with 16 golf simulator bays, and is scheduled to open in the fall of 2023. Approximately 70% of 11 Hoyt’s 40K SF of retail space is now leased following this deal, with other tenants including Taim Mediterranean Kitchen and Jack’s Stir Brew Coffee. JLL’s Don Cafero brokered the deal on behalf of the tenant, while Tishman Speyer had in-house representation.
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Mattress seller Saatva has signed for 7K SF at RCLCO’s 893 Broadway, the New York Business Journal first reported. The deal, a 10-year lease covering the ground floor, lower level and mezzanine, will serve as a showroom and retail space as well as office space, with rent coming in at $1.5M per year, Commercial Observer reported. Saatva is replacing Korean restaurant Barn Joo in the space. It opened its first brick-and-mortar store in Midtown East in 2019 before expanding to 11 other retail locations throughout the country, including in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. Cushman & Wakefield’s Sean Moran, Christopher Schwart and Steven Soutendijk repped RCLCO in the deal, while Joseph Hudson of CBRE repped Saatva along with former colleague Greg Covey.
TOP SALES
Aya Acquisitions acquired a trio of contiguous properties with 75 feet of frontage on West 42nd Street for $20M. A press release didn't identify the seller. Crain’s New York Business reports the properties were previously owned by Thera Realty. The century-old, five-story properties are located at 321-325 West 42nd St. and have 36 residential apartments, most of which are market-rate, in addition to ground-floor retail space. Aya Acquisitions may redevelop the buildings as a 90K SF mixed-use development, still across three buildings and composed of housing and retail, under the site's existing zoning. The properties are across the street from the Port Authority bus terminal, which serves 225,000 people every weekday. A JLL Capital Markets team led by Bob Knakal and Jonathan Hageman arranged the sale.
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Barry Diller's digital company IAC has bought the land under its 555 West 18th St. building from the Resnicoff family, The Real Deal reported. The Resnicoff family has long owned the West Chelsea land, ground leasing the property to the Georgetown Co. in 2004, which in turn developed the headquarters for IAC’s media companies, including The Daily Beast and Dotdash Meredith. The all-cash deal was negotiated by a Marcus & Millichap team featuring Steven Siegel and Eric Anton after the Resnicoff family put the land on the market last year.
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New York City’s School Construction Authority has purchased 23-10 43rd Ave. in Long Island City from Stawski Partners for $50M, The Real Deal reports. The SCA will build a 547-seat school building on the 21K SF Court Square site, delivering a concession struck in the 2018 deal for the Long Island City Ramps project. The property had been in Stawski Partners’ possession since 1994, when billionaire investor Axel Stawski bought the site from the Bank of Austria for an unknown sum. The proposed school would sit in between two properties that Carmel Partners bought from Stawski last March for $200M.
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An entity tied to property manager MD Squared paid $54M to an entity tied to the Pinnacle Group for 13 prewar buildings with a total of 312 condo units, The Real Deal reported. Most of the buildings face the Hudson River along Riverside Drive. Pinnacle, run by Joel Wiener, acquired large swaths of rent-stabilized buildings and converted many to condos. This bulk sale amounts to a $173K-per-unit transaction, per TRD.
TOP FINANCING DEALS
Moujan Vadhat’s Elmo Realty scored a $26M construction loan from Metropolitan Commercial Bank for 2535 Frederick Douglass Blvd., where the developer is planning an eight-story, mixed-use property, Commercial Observer reports. The loan is split into a $17.3M building loan plus an $8.7M project loan. The property will deliver 53 residential units and 24K SF of commercial space one block from St. Nicholas Park in Harlem, using the now-expired 421-a tax break. Elmo Realty bought the property in 2015, previously home to church Healing From Heaven Temple, for $1.5M, per public records.
Delays to developing on the site followed its purchase, however, after Vadhat was accused of acquiring church sites via illicit sales schemes, New York YIMBY reported. Vadhat's planned development would feature a glass facade on the ground floor and is being designed by Koh Architecture.
