This Week's NY Deal Sheet

As the New York City investment sales market remains sluggish — outside of some major listings and equity stake sales — the office leasing market is always good for a fair amount of activity, including a SoHo fashion company packing up and moving to Brooklyn.

TOP LEASES

Lafayette 148 has agreed to relocate to 68k SF in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, taking 200 jobs across the East River. The fashion firm, which draws its name from the SoHo space where it was founded, will take space at Building 77, but retain its concept store at 148 Lafayette. JLL repped the retailer; it is unclear if it will occupy space that had been reserved for Brooklyn Brewery, which pulled out of plans to locate to the 1M SF project.

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NYU signed a 100k SF lease, to be occupied in stages as certain leases expire, with PGIM Group at 180 Madison Ave. The space is intended to become a research lab, and asking rent was $59/SF. CBRE’s Evan Haskell, Caroline Merck, Alexander Golod and Glenn Isaacson (now with Cushman & Wakefield) repped the landlord. Cushman & Wakefield’s Bruce Mosler and Mark Mandell repped the tenant.

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Calvin Klein has expanded its Plaza District digs at 205 West 39th St. by 28k SF, giving it a total footprint of 196k SF. The building has been owned by the same entity since 1960, which was repped by EVO Real Estate Group’s Mitchell Cooperstock and Albert Wu. JLL’s leasing team of Matthew Astrachan, Mitchell Konsker and Steven Bauer repped CK, which will now occupy the entire 13th and 16th floors in addition to its current footprint.

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Xerox and its subsidiary, Conduent, signed two leases for a total of 27k SF at SL Green’s 420 and 485 Lexington Ave. office buildings. Xerox and Conduent will combine to take 14k SF of the 25th floor at 485 Lex, while Conduent will sublease 13k SF at 420 Lex. Robert Stillman and Conor Denihan of CBRE repped Xerox, while David Kaufman negotiated in-house for SL Green.

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Law firm Greenberg Marder has signed a 25k SF sublease as it continues to grow, taking the space for seven years in 590 Madison Ave. Greenberg will occupy the full 18th floor, where it will move from its 18k SF spread at 1270 Avenue of the Americas in March. Savills Studley’s Jeffrey Peck, Daniel Horowitz, Thomas Capocefalo and Adam King repped Greenberg, while sublandlord Crowell & Moring was repped by Craig Reicher and James Ackerson of CBRE.

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Fairstead Capital will move to Boston Properties' 250 West 55th St., away from its digs in Carnegie Hall Tower on West 57th Street. The real estate investment firm will occupy about 15k SF in a deal repped by CBRE on both sides, including tenant rep Stephen Siegel, who owns a stake of Fairstead.

TOP SALES

Martin Fedor’s Artemis Partners has acquired the nearly 10k SF Pentagram building across Fifth Avenue from Madison Square Park for $29.5M, a price of more than $3k/SF and a cap rate of 2.5%. J.P. Morgan Chase lent Fedor $24M to complete the transaction. Fedor acquired 205 Fifth Ave., a five-story office building that turns 100 this year. Fedor bought the building from an LLC affiliated with Pentagram Design, its occupant since 1978.

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Premier Equities closed on two properties on the Upper East Side, kick-starting a partnership with Thor Equities. The pair plans to turn the properties into a 100k SF residential condo tower. The parcels, at 1297 and 1977 Third Ave., were acquired for a combined $26M from Douglas Schulman, whose real estate firm goes by Natwill Ltd and who also owns Manhattan Shade & Glass.

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The family that owns the 36-unit apartment building at 315 West 102nd St. has sold the property, the first time it has changed hands in more than 60 years, for $23.5M. Cushman & Wakfield senior managing directors Paul Smadbeck and Hall Oster brought the building, which is broken up into half market-rate units and half rent-controlled or rent-stabilized units, to market. Real estate investor Vincent Young bought the property with $8.8M of debt.

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A buyer listed as Diania Zishuo Li has bought Unit 30B in 15 Central Park West for $17.7M. Previous owner Anna Sokolova sold the 2,400 SF condo on the 30th floor of a nine-year-old, 36-story building on the Upper West Side, for more than $7,400/SF. She paid $5.9M for the apartment, and was originally seeking $29M.

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A South Florida firm has acquired 3880 Broadway, a mixed-use building in Washington Heights, for $17.5M. Coltown Properties bought the 44k SF building, which includes 6k SF of retail, at the end of 2011 as part of a $31M portfolio acquisition. 

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Brooklyn Standard Properties has acquired four buildings near Fordham University with 74 apartments, three retail spaces, office space and a parking lot, for $16.6M. The buildings at 2483 and 2476 Cambreleng Ave., 2470 Beaumont Ave. and 615 East 189th St. were owned by Fordham Apartments LLC.

Sales data courtesy of Reonomy

TOP FINANCING DEALS

SL Green has secured a $345M loan from the Bank of China for 1731 Broadway, the 692k SF office component of Random House Tower. SL Green bought the condo, which sits under the Park Imperial Apartments, from Jamestown in 2006 for $509M, and it co-owns the property with Ivanhoé Cambridge.

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Edward J. Minskoff Equities has refinanced its commercial condos at 1166 Avenue of the Americas, where it owns floors two through 21. Barclays provided the $110M loan, which refinances debt that originally belonged to Lehman Brothers.

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The Parkoff Organization secured a $54M loan on 2131 Wallace Ave. in the Bronx from the New York Community Bank. The nearly century-old building has 15k SF of retail and 175 apartments, 139 of which are rent-stabilized.

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The New York City Housing Development Corp. has given Hope Community Inc. a $46.9M loan to rehab 506 units of housing in Harlem, across 39 buildings.

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Fortuna Realty Group scored a package of loans worth $97M on 25-27 West 38th, a 170-key Hotel Hendricks project. M&T Bank provided the financing, which closed before the new year, on the project. The project was planned to be an Aloft Hotel, but a construction death on the project in October 2015 stalled development.

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Signature Bank has given Bronstein Properties a $25M loan for 99-11 57th Ave. in Corona, Queens. The 56-year-old property has 138 apartments and a parking lot. According to Reonomy data, the city assessed its market value at $14.9M in 2016, up from $9.5M in 2013.

Financing data courtesy of Reonomy