This Week’s N.Y. Deal Sheet

The week before Labor Day was expectedly slow in New York City's commercial real estate industry, with a handful of multifamily sales making up the most significant activity.

TOP SALES

New York University has acquired a multifamily building in Kips Bay for $210M, PincusCo reports. The higher education institution spent $210M on the 25-year-old, 209-unit building at 377 East 33rd St. The seller, Verbena Road Holdings, put the 23-story property on the market in April, asking $170M after having bought it for $173M in 2016, The Real Deal reported.  The property had an outstanding $103M loan provided by New York Life Insurance Co. in 2019, which NYU assumed with the purchase. The university's acquisition follows just months after making a $97.5M purchase of a 120K SF office building in Greenwich Village.

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A 75K SF commercial property in Long Island City has sold for the second time in three years, fetching $49M, Crain’s New York Business reported. The property, built in 1949, was once home to the Apex Technical School, a trade school that vacated earlier this year. The Carlyle Group acquired the property at 24-02 Queens Plaza South in 2020 for $40M from Atlas Capital Group, with plans to demolish the existing structure and build a 270K SF commercial center. But Carlyle decided to sell rather than build, offloading the three-story building to an LLC linked to real estate firms Montperia Group — formerly known as Ampiera Group — and JLS Construction. Maxim Capital Group provided a $25M acquisition loan for the purchase, which was first reported by PincusCo. 

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The Broome Hotel New York, located at 431 Broome St. in Lower Manhattan, has sold — reportedly for almost one-third under asking price, Crain’s New York Business reported. The five-story, 14-key boutique hotel sold for $14M, despite a reported asking price of $20M. The buyer was Broome Hotel Owner LLC, with public records showing Adam Glasser as the LLC’s signatory. New York-based 18 Main posted on LinkedIn that it had acquired the building. Real estate investors Vincent Boitier and siblings Jean Claude and Stephane Iacovelli were the sellers. The LLC secured a $9.3M acquisition loan from Transwestern for the purchase, Crain’s reported. The hotel has been in the hands of Boitier, Claude and Iacovelli under a variety of ownership structures for the past 14 years, with the group reportedly seeking to sell the property since September 2020.

TOP FINANCING

A high-rise apartment building in Manhattan’s Financial District has nabbed a $27M loan, Crain’s New York Business reported. Family-owned real estate investor DSA Property Group obtained the debt from Greystone for the 1900-built multifamily property at 9-11 Maiden Lane, which StreetEasy says has 66 units across 15 stories.

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Manhattan landlord Janusz Sendowski scored a $28.7M refinancing deal from Deutsche Bank for a 20-unit residential building in Greenwich Village and for a charter school building in the South Bronx, PincusCo reported. The residential building is 39 Carmine St., a five-story walkup property first built in 1900, according to StreetEasy, while 423 East 138th St., which was built in 2012, spans 78K SF across eight stories per LoopNet, and is currently the Mott Haven home of the New York City Montessori Charter School. The loan retires a $25M sum from Bankwell Bank, according to PincusCo.

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Stellar Management notched a $68M refinancing deal from German bank Helaba for a 247-unit residential building on the Upper West Side, PincusCo reported. The loan replaces a $75M loan on the luxury doorman property — located at 50 West 97th St. and spanning almost 350K SF — that was also originated by Helaba.

TOP LEASES

GFP Real Estate signed three leases totaling 7K SF at its 630 Ninth Ave. office building, according to a release. Visual effects company Zoic Studios, a tenant in the property since 2016, signed a three-year lease extension for its 3K SF space on the seventh floor in a deal brokered for both parties by GFP’s Matthew Mandell. Travel concierge company The Accomplished Traveler signed a new five-year, 2K SF lease on the sixth floor, in another deal brokered by Mandell and with EJMB Commercial representing the travel agency. Talent agency Professional Artists Agency renewed its 2K SF second-floor space for another five years in a third deal arranged by GFP’s Mandell, having first signed for the space in 2018. The Hell’s Kitchen property spans over 275K SF across 13 stories and was first built in 1929.

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Jamaica Hospital Medical Center has expanded its lease in Fresh Meadows, Queens, according to a release. MediSys Health Network, the hospital’s parent company, signed for an extra 7K SF at 176-60 Union Turnpike, giving the hospital a total of 33K SF in the space. The property is owned by Prestige Properties & Development and had asking rents in the mid-$40s, Commercial Observer reported. Jamaica Hospital Medical Center is planning to create a new surgery center in the space, CBRE tenant brokers Roy Chipkin and Joseph Fabrizi, told CO in a statement. The brokers also arranged a $10M purchase on behalf of Medisys, adding a four-story office, 20K SF property located at 143-02 Jamaica Ave. to the company’s portfolio.

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Scandinavian furniture company Carl Hansen & Søn is moving into ABS Partners Real Estate’s 145 East 57th St., Commercial Observer reported. The space has been vacant since department store Hammacher Schlemmer closed its retail space in February, with Carl Hansen & Søn now signing for 9K SF on the ground floor, lower level and mezzanine space, to be combined into a single showroom. Carl Hansen & Søn will keep its original NYC location, at 150 Wooster St., and has already started to move into its new location. Asking rents were between $85 and $90 per SF, with Evan Clements and Amanda Keller of Atlantic Retail NYC representing the furniture seller and John Brod, Mark Tergesen and Benjamin Waller representing landlord ABS Partners Real Estate in-house.

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Dessert shop Sweet Cats Café has signed a 4K SF lease just north of Union Square, according to a release. The lease covers 2K SF each on the ground floor and basement at 21 East 17th St., in a five-story office building owned by 77 NY @ 17th LLC. The space was previously home to a Paragon Sportswear and will now serve as the Manhattan flagship for Sweet Cats as early as this fall, when it plans to open. Sweet Cats also has stores in Flushing and Fresh Meadows, and was repped in the transaction by Nathalie Wang of The Corcoran Group. Resolution Real Estate Partners’ Jonata Dayan and Brett Weiss repped the landlord.