This Week's NY Deal Sheet
In our penultimate Deal Sheet of 2016, Blackstone stole the show with the closing of its $620M purchase of the Kips Bay Court apartment complex and associated financing. Here's the rest of what the market did last week.
TOP LEASES
Take Two Interactive Software signed the biggest lease of the week in a deal just announced this morning, for 61k SF at The Durst Org's 1133 Avenue of the Americas. Take Two will occupy the entire second and third floors and get a private entrance to the 1.1M SF previously filled by the IRS. Take Two, repped by Cushman & Wakefield's David Rosenbloom and Maria Travlos, will move from 622 Broadway where it occupies 86k SF.
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Private equity firm Antares Capital signed a lease for 55k SF, to move across Park Avenue, from 299 Park Ave to 280 Park Ave (above), owned by a JV of SL Green and Vornado. Antares was repped by CBRE's Paul Amrich, Neil King and Patrice Meagher. The 1.2M SF office tower is leased by Vornado's Andrew Ackerman, with assists from CBRE's Sam Seiler and Peter Turchin.
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William Kaufman Org signed two leases for a total of 48k SF at 437 Madison Ave in deals brokered in-house by Sage Realty Corp's Michael Lenchner. Law firm Montgomery McCracken Walker & Rhoads signed a 28k SF lease after subletting from Nixon Peabody for the the last five years. The deal, with $90/SF asking rents, is for part of the 23rd and all of the 24th floor. Prelude Capital renewed and expanded its 7k SF lease to 20k SF, now filling parts of the 33rd and 34th floors, which have asking rents north of $100/SF.
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TradingScreen, a firm that specializes in investment and trading technology, has signed a 20k SF lease with Vornado at One Penn Plaza. JLL managing director David Dusek and VP Paul Ferraro repped the tenant, while Vornado’s Craig Panzirer and Jared Silverman repped the landlord in-house.
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Billy Macklowe signed a pair of leases to bring his medical office building at 156 William St—Downtown’s first MOB—to 96% occupancy. William Macklowe Co closed a deal to bring the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey’s Office of Medical Services to 8,500 SF at the building and renewed its 17k SF lease with Riverside Research Institute. Macklowe bought the 1950s commercial building, along with partner LaSalle Investment Management, in 2015 and turned it into a 12-story, 250k SF MOB. At 96% occupancy, one figures other firms could start to follow Macklowe’s lead.
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JEMB Realty has brought 23-story, 276k SF 150 Broadway to full occupancy after closing on three leases this week. The two deals that led the way: 12,500 SF apiece for architecture firm Studio Libeskind, taking up the full 18th floor, and wedding registry site Zola, taking up the 19th floor. JLL repped the landlord in the deals, while Steven Marvin of Olmstead Properties repped Studio Libeskind and Marcus Rayner of Colliers International brokered Zola's lease for the tenant. The building, which serves as JEMB's HQ, is 100% occupied almost 100 years after it was built in 1924.
The Jewish Association Serving the Aging plans to fill almost 37k SF in Newmark Holdings' 247 West 37th St (above) after signing a 16k SF expansion. JASA was repped in the deal to move to the 214k SF Garment District building by Savills Studley's Ira Schuman and Stephan Steiner. Newmark's Matthew Mandel handled the leasing in-house.
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Elsewhere in the Garment District, Open System Technologies is moving to 469 Seventh Ave to occupy 17k SF. Asking rent in the building, repped by Eric Meyer and owned by a partnership of Eric, Martin Meyer and Dan Shavolia, is $59/SF. Open System was repped by Benjamin Blumenthal of Norman Bobrow & Co in the deal.
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French investment firm Eurazeo signed a lease for its first US office at 745 Fifth Ave with landlord Paramount Group. Eurazeo will take 6,200 SF on the 32nd floor of the 35-story, Class-A tower in a deal brokered by Transwestern's Lindsay Ornstein, David Stockel and Chase Gordon with Paramount's Doug Neye.
TOP SALES
Blackstone closed on the year’s biggest purchase, its $620M acquisition of the Kips Bay Court apartments (above) from Phipps Houses. News of the world’s biggest landlord—and buyer of the 2015’s biggest sale, the $5.3B Stuytown-Peter Cooper Village trade—buying the eight-building, 894-unit complex first broke in August, and it took about four months to close. This was also the week’s second-biggest financing transaction (see below).
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Sentry Operating Corp, as Sentry at QB LLC, bought 90-02 Queens Blvd and 87-28 58th Ave for $125M from a partnership of investors Steven Wu and Harry Miller. The two bought a hospital building for $55M two years ago, converted it to apartments and retail, and are selling it and the parking lot across for $75M more than they paid. There was no debt listed on the sale. That’ll make for a happy holidays.
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Chris Jiashu Xu closed on the purchase of a lot in Flushing with 860k SF of development potential. He bought two neighboring properties, 131-35 Roosevelt Ave and 39-08 Janet Place, for $65M and $36M, respectively. The seller was ABS Management and some partners, including Chaim Babad.
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L+M Development Partners bought a 50% stake in 320 Sterling St in Brooklyn from the NYC Housing Authority for $23M. 320 Sterling was touted by the NYC Housing Partnership, which co-developed a rehab of the 106-unit apartment building with the Urban Homesteading Alliance Board, as a “Rags to Riches” story in its spring 2010 newsletter. The building has a long, fascinating backstory and was the subject of a 2002 Village Voice profile. When the partnership started rehabbing it, it was being billed as future co-ops, but it is now a rent-stabilized rental property, co-owned by L+M.
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An entity known as GCS 37C LLC purchased unit 37C in 15 Central Park West. The seller, Westside RE Properties LLC, took a more than $3M loss in the ultra-luxe tower: the unit sold for $20.6M after Westside bought it for $23.4M four years ago.
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Paul Salib’s Castellan Real Estate sold 515 West 168th St, an 82-unit apartment building in Washington Heights, for $18.2M. Castellan founding principal Paul Salib bought the building in 2010 for $6.3M, and almost tripled its value as it sold to Urban American, thanks to an $11.5M loan from Oritani Finance Co.
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Broadway Stage paid ExxonMobil $16M for the fee-simple interest in a two-story industrial building at 306 North Henry St in Greenpoint. ExxonMobil acquired the site from the city for its fuel operations. ExxonMobil still owns the land and the surrounding site, and has permission to conduct its “environmental obligations” on the site, per the agreement.
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Joel Gluck sold the 11-story apartment building at 1340 Stratford Ave in the Bronx to nonprofit Settlement Housing Fund for $14.2M. The 129-unit building is destined to remain affordable.
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Hogg Holdings picked up a church on the Lower East Side for $11.4M from the Chinese Christian Herald Crusades.
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A five-story, 5,900 SF elevator townhouse in Greenwich Village, near the border with SoHo, sold for $9,999,999, a full $999 over asking price. The property, which seller David Danzig bought for $2.9M in 2004, also has a 1,300 SF retail space. 168 Thompson St was once a tenement building with a checkered past, and now it’s owned by an entity known only as Thompson Real Estate LLC, registered to the property’s address.
Sales data provided courtesy of Reonomy.
TOP FINANCING DEALS
In the biggest financing deal of the week, Vornado closed on a $400M financing package from Goldman Sachs to refinance 350 Park Ave (above). Deutsche Bank is also listed as a lender on the deal. The last financing for the 570k SF, nearly full office building, was $300M from New York Community Bank in 2012.
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Blackstone bought the $200M Fannie Mae mortgage on Kips Bay Court. The loan was transferred from original owner Phipps Houses. It also acquired the balance of a $92M Wells Fargo loan on the property.
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NRG Energy, as Astoria Gas Turbine Power LLC, secured a $189.5M mortgage consolidation from Deutsche Bank for its 20th Avenue power plant in Long Island City.
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Simon Dushinsky’s Rabsky Group closed on loans of $74.5M and $18.5M from Bank Leumi for its Rheingold Brewery redevelopment project. Combined with an existing $39M loan on the property, also from Bank Leumi, Dushinsky’s debt on 10 Monteith St in Bushwick is now an aggregate of $132M, according to property records. This week, Rabsky announced a partnership with HPD to bring 100 affordable units to the site when it opens in 2018.
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Raizada Vaid closed on a $58M mortgage from Natixis Real Estate Capital for three parcels at 1204, 1212 and 1214 Broadway. The loan for the three mixed-use buildings consolidates previous financing on the property.
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Chris Jiashu Xu also closed on $55.8M in acquisition financing from Acore Capital for its Janet Place development site buy.
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Hilson Management Corp secured a $50M loan from Signature Bank for 390 Fifth Ave in the Garment District. It’s a refinancing of a 10-year-old, $35M loan, according to property records. The 135k SF property was built 110 years ago and designated a NYC landmark in 1998.
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Broad Street Development closed on a financing package from Bank of the Ozarks on the development of an apartment building at 304 Mulberry St. Three loans from the Dallas-based bank, for $96M combined, will finance the construction of the 62-unit Nolita rental property.
Financing data provided courtesy of Reonomy.
