●massey knakal
Selling the upgrade
Massey Knakal’s James Nelson last week brokered the $57 million sale of 200 East 11th Street to Jordan Vogel and Aaron Feldman, principals of Benchmark Real Estate Group.
The 12-story elevator apartment building contains 55 free market units and three ground floor retail units.
The retail is occupied by M2M, a grocery store, The Smith, a restaurant and bar, and a copy shop. All retail spaces have useable lower levels.
Since the building was built the area has been up zoned, meaning that there is potential to expand the ground floor retail and potentially expand the residential above.
“When we began marketing, we weren’t sure if the building would stay rental or go condo. There is great potential for both,ˮ said Nelson, who handled the deal with colleagues Mitchell Levine and Matthew Nickerson.
“Rarely does a property come up that is all fair market with so much upside. Ultimately, Benchmark… will benefit by expanding the retail and upgrading the quality of the apartments above.”
Century Realty Investors advised the seller on the transaction, 200 Eleventh Associates.
●cbre
Dunne deals in retail
Jeffrey Dunne and David Gavin of CBRE’s New York Institutional Group represented Whitestone Grocery Shopping Center, LLC, an entity controlled by Onyx Equities and Crow Holdings, in the sale of Waldbaum’s Shopping Center in Whitestone, New York for $23.9 million.
The team was also responsible for procuring the buyer, Feil Whitestone LLC, an entity controlled by The Feil Organization.
Waldbaum’s Shopping Center is a 100% master leased, 62,000 s/f grocery anchored shopping center at the intersection of 10th Avenue and 154th Street in Whitestone, Queens.
Waldbaum’s anchors the center and master leases the entire property on a long-term NNN basis, occupying the majority of the space and subleasing the remaining portion to a mix of local tenants.
“The Feil Organization recognized this highly unique, generational opportunity to acquire an irreplaceable site in Queens,ˮ said Dunne.
“The center offers stable in-place income, while also providing potential NOI growth over the long term.” The sale is the latest in a series of retail trades orchestrated by Dunne and his team in recent months.
They sold the Pelham Manor Shopping Plaza in Pelham, and Fordham Place, in the Bronx, to Retail Properties of America, Inc. for $192.4 million and the Big Y Shopping Center, in Bethel, CT for $34.5 million.
●cushman & wakefield
Suburban office sales back in vogue
Cushman & Wakefield has completed the sale of Cityview Corporate Center at 160 Chubb Avenue in Lyndhurst, N.J.
The firm’s Metropolitan Area Capital Markets Group (CMG) team of Andrew Merin, David Bernhaut, Gary Gabriel, Brian Whitmer and Nick Karali represented the seller, working in conjunction with Cushman & Wakefield’s Curtis Foster.
Rugby Realty Co. Inc. of New Rochelle, N.Y., purchased the property.
The three-story office building totals 135,418 s/f on 8.36 acres with direct access to Routes 17 and 3. Originally constructed in 1979, the property was taken down to the steel and renovated in 2006, with common areas upgraded again in 2012.
“Cityview clearly outperformed the marketplace with respect to leasing achievements,” Gabriel noted. “It is now 80 percent leased and is easily considered to be one of the best buildings in the neighborhood.”
“The sale represented a win-win for both buyer and seller,” Gabriel added. “Rugby benefitted from an attractive basis while the seller was able to monetize its recent leasing achievements at the property.”
Gabriel described the transaction as a counter-cyclical office investment that is also a positive sign for the suburban office markets of New Jersey. “Investors had become less enthusiastic about investment in suburban office markets through the past recession, and it is a good sign to see them venturing back to seize opportunities like this,” he said.
Maurice Ades, managing partner at Rugby, said, “It is the 15th property we have acquired in the last 24 months, and we believe the first of many for the New Jersey office market.”
●azad property group
Fulton site fetches record price
A developer has paid a record $186 psf for a Fulton Street site just six blocks from the Barclays Center.
Mansour Tabibnia, partner at Azad Property Group, along with senior broker Dennis Gelin, represented both the seller, White Memorial Chapels, and the local developer (who declined to be named) in the sale of the vacant lot at 882 Fulton Street in Brooklyn.
The site is a 106 x 107ft. and has 215 ft. of frontage along Fulton Street and Waverly Avenue. It is located in a R7A/C2-4 zoning district which benefits from
approximately 41,148 as-of-right build-able square feet. An Inclusionary Housing bonus allows for a FAR of 4.60, giving the site an additional 13,316 buildable square feet for affordable housing development, totaling 54,864 buildable square feet.
“To date, the sale marks the highest per square foot price in the area,” said Tabibnia.
“This transaction will have a great impact on the Fulton Street corridor. With almost no available development sites in the immediate area of Barclays Center, the developers’ desire for a site in close proximity to the center was quite a tall order.”
Gelin added, “The owner was firm in his price, and from the very beginning he told us that this was the number he was looking for — not a dollar less — and he also wanted to close before the year’s end. So within 30 days, we found him a buyer who had a grand vision for the area.”
● mack-cali / fisher bros.
Mack-Cali / Fisher JV buys apartment project
Mack-Cali Realty Corporation, in a joint venture with Fisher Brothers, has acquired a 50 percent interest in a luxury multi-family project currently under construction at 701 2nd Street, NE in Washington, D.C.
The 377-unit project includes 25,000 s/f of retail space and a 309-space underground parking garage.
Mack-Cali has acquired a 50 percent interest in the project for a purchase price of approximately $46.5 million. The venture has 20-year in-place debt of $100.7 million.
It is expected that the project will be completed by mid-2015, with leasing beginning in the first quarter of 2015.
The Mack-Cali/Fisher Brothers joint venture includes specific provisions, including a “right of first offer” on all development deals in the D.C. metro area that involve either party.
The venture will also form a property and asset management platform responsible for the property and the joint venture’s future assets. The platform will be run by Mack-Cali’s Roseland subsidiary.
● eastern consolidated
Schechtman drives Corona deal
Eastern Consolidated arranged the sale of 112-21 Northern Boulevard, in the Corona neighborhood of Queens, for $17 million.
Property owner Dick DiBlasi sold the parcel to a private Chinese investor.
The entire triangular-shaped parcel — which includes two structures making up DiBlasi Ford, the largest and oldest Ford car dealership in the Northeast — is zoned for up to 357,000 s/f of developable land.
The new property owner is preparing for major new construction on the site, situated on the Corona/Flushing border in close proximity to Citi Field.
DiBlasi Ford currently leases its space and is actively negotiating to relocate within Corona.
David Schechtman, a principal with Eastern Consolidated who represented both the buyer and the seller, said DiBlasi Ford will relocate nearby, keeping those jobs local. “And the new owners are under discussion to bring a major project to Corona, which itself will create hundreds of local jobs,” he added.
