This Week's NY Deal Sheet
The second week of the year in NYC did little to allay concerns that the commercial real estate market will flatten, if not decline, in 2017 — there wasn't a single building trade of more than $20M closed in all five boroughs.
TOP LEASES
In a deal that closed just before the end of 2016, TJX signed a 68k SF retail lease for part of the ground floor and two lower levels at the Verizon Building at 140 West St in downtown Manhattan (above). The space is expected to be a Marshall’s, and adds to the wave of retail that has been hitting the area around the World Trade Center over the past year. Peter Ripka and Richard Skulnik of Ripco Real Estate repped TJX. Cushman & Wakefield’s David Tricarico repped Ben Shaoul, who owns the retail space in the building. Asking rent for the ground floor was $350/SF with the lower level at $100.
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The biggest leases of the past week were signed by two public agencies — the MTA and the city’s Human Resources Administration — in Vornado’s 33-00 Northern Blvd, known as the Center Building. MTA renewed and expanded for a 152k SF lease, repped by Cushman & Wakefield's Josh Kuriloff and Jodi Roberts. The HRA signed a renewal for 150k SF, and dealt directly with Vornado’s leasing team, Glenn Weiss and Josh Glick. Asking rents in the building are $45/SF.
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RSM US is shrinking its footprint, but doing its part to fill a big vacancy in a high-profile building. The tax firm signed a 95k SF lease at The Durst Org’s 4 Times Square last week, in part of Condé Nast’s former space, moving out of 165k SF in 1185 Sixth Ave. The lease came just a few days after SS&C signed for 140k SF a couple of floors away. Savills Studley's Richard Schuham and Greg Taubin repped RSM, and Durst's Tom Bow and Rocco Romeo repped the landlord in-house. Asking rent in the building is $85/SF.
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11 Times Square has a new name and two new tenants. Now branded as Eleven | X, the 1.1M SF office building signed a 31k SF lease with E-Trade and a 12k SF lease with Synechron last week. The JLL team of Paul Glickman, Mitchell Konsker and Dan Turkewitz repped the landlord, SJP Properties, in both transactions. PGIM and Norges Bank also own stakes in the technologically forward tower. E-Trade will move from 1271 Avenue of the Americas, and was repped by CBRE’s Mark Ravesloot, Scott Sloves and Michael Wellen. Synechron was repped by Michael Tesser and Sheena Gohill. Asking rents for the eight-year-old tower are about $90/SF.
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Johnson & Johnson signed a 30k SF sublease with the New York Genome Center in SoHo for the first NYC iteration of its JLABS innovation centers. The deal is a partnership between the two entities, and the home goods giant will take a chunk of the NYGC’s 170k SF spread in 101 Avenue of the Americas. The 435k SF building’s owner is Edward J. Minskoff Equities. The project received $17M from the state, and the space is expected to open in 2018.
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Nonprofit NADAP has re-upped its 16k SF lease with the Rudin family at 355 Lexington Ave for another 10 years. NADAP will continue to occupy the entire second floor at the 22-story, 250k SF Midtown tower. Newmark Grubb Knight Frank’s Jason Greenstein repped the tenant while Rudin Management’s John Darin repped the landlord. Asking rent was not disclosed.
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L&L Holding has signed Monomoy Capital to a 12,500 SF lease at its 600 Third Ave property, moving and expanding from its digs at Metropolitan Tower, also owned by L&L. Monomoy will occupy the entire 27th floor. Silvio Petriello and Ben Friedland of CBRE represented Monomoy Capital Partners and David Young and Andrew Wiener repped L&L in-house.
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Rioult Dance Co, a Manhattan-based dance company, will start practicing in Astoria. The group signed an 11k SF lease at 34-01 Steinway St for studio space in the Kaufman Arts District, where its neighbors will be the Frank Sinatra School of the Arts, the Joffrey Ballet School (no relation to the one-time king of Westeros, we assume), the Museum of the Moving Image and the Kaufman Astoria Film Studios. Rioult’s new landlord is Schuman Properties, and it was represented by Denham Wolf Real Estate Services' Paul Wolf.
TOP SALES
It was one of the least active weeks for capital markets sales in recent NYC memory. The biggest deal of the week was a $17M sale in the Bronx. Somerset Partners bought the property, at 2413 Third Ave (above), from James Giddings’ GLS Real Estate Co. The deal was agreed to back in September, but closed last week. It’s another piece of the Mott Haven puzzle that the Chetrit Group and Somerset, behind founder Keith Rubenstein, have been assembling for years.
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In Kips Bay, along buzzy 23rd Street, Stefano Farsura paid $15M for a pawn shop he plans on turning into a 15-story residential building. Farsura bought 139 East 23rd St from Eric Modell, whose family has owned Modell Pawn for more than a century. Farsura filed demolition permits earlier this month.
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A vacant Williamsburg plot with plans for a nine-story residential deal traded hands for $11.5M. Rybak Development's Sergey Rybak purchased the lot, a former Paramount Studios warehouse, at 88 Withers St from Caro Enterprises.
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The record price-per-SF sale in Flushing that Cushman & Wakefield broker Stephen Preuss told us about late last year has closed. The deal, for 136-25 41st Ave in Queens, cost $8.7M for a 15k SF site that can be built up to 21k SF if it includes a small community facility, Preuss said. The buyer is local developer Wing Fung Home Realty Group, and the seller was a family that had owned the site for generations.
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The Orbach Group sold the 16-unit walkup at 309 West 111th St for $8.6M to Castellan Real Estate Partners as part of a broader sell-off in Harlem for the firm. Orbach has disposed of three walkup buildings in Harlem for $21M.
TOP FINANCING DEALS
Column Financial finalized a loan to New York REIT for $500M at a large number of properties, including 229 West 36th St and 216-218 West 18th St. The loan is the big mortgage that will go toward funding the REIT’s dissolution. The financing comes a week after it closed on a $260M mezzanine loan from Column, backed by three buildings, including Twitter’s East Coast HQ.
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MDG Construction paid $109M for a 99-year ground lease of a 25-building housing complex owned by the New York City Housing Authority in Far Rockaways. To finance extensive renovations and repairs on the 1,395-unit property at 440 Beach 54th St (above) — which will remain affordable — MDG secured three loans from the New York State Housing Finance Agency for each housing complex it now controls: for $213.3M, for $105.4M and for $66.5M.
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Extell Development secured a $143.4M mortgage from Bank of the Ozarks for 201 West 54th St. The properties are part of a planned redevelopment in which Gary Barnett’s firm is seeking to build a 29-story residential building. According to The Real Deal, it's a refinancing, rather than a construction loan.
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Simon Baron Development picked up a $113.2M construction loan from AIG for its 500k SF rental project at 29-32 Northern Blvd in Long Island City. The project will rise to 43 stories and 467 units and include 11k SF of ground-floor retail, and the construction was up to 16 stories earlier this month.
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Princeton International Properties has landed an $80M loan from Wells Fargo Bank for 90 Broad St in the Financial District. Princeton bought the property from JPMorgan Chase in 2014 for $128.6M. The 24-story, 336k SF office building was built in 1930, and could be in line for some upgrades.
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The NYC Housing Development Corp has loaned $53M, the biggest of several financing transactions, to Bronx Commons LLC for the development of 305 affordable apartments, a 14,000-seat concert hall and 22k SF of retail. The LLC is a JV of WHEDco and BFC Partners. The project broke ground last week.
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The mystery buyer of The Related Cos’ 50 Varick St penthouse secured a $51.4M loan from Column Financial for the purchase.
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Perlbinder Realty secured $49M for River Court, a 37-story tower at 429 East 52nd St, from Apple Bank for Savings.
