A big apartment building sale that quietly closed in the last days of 2007 reflects enduring confidence in Manhattan’s condo market – but first, it had to overcome a hiccup caused by the credit crunch.
A subsidiary of Mets owner Fred Wilpon‘s Sterling American Properties bought architecturally distinguished Devonshire House in the Village for $110 million, we’ve learned. Its 131 units are now slated “for conversion to condos,” said Eastern Consolidated’s Eric Anton, whose team represented the sellers, a family that owned the building for 60 years.
The stately Devonshire, designed by Emery Roth in 1939, stands at the corner of University Place and East 10th Street. Curbed.com had its eye on the property since it went on the block last summer, and recently reported that a sale was imminent.
“It’s a super-valuable building, historically interesting and with excellent retail as well,” Anton told us yesterday.
But Anton said his team – which included Eastern’s Ronald Solarz, Daniel Glaser and Sam Schneider – had to “start from scratch” when a Connecticut group bailed on a deal to buy the Devonshire for $123 million last July.
“But, we ended up with a great buyer,” Anton said.
Sterling is controlled by Wilpon and co-managed by his brother, Richard. Their real estate company owns or has developed 17 million square feet of office space nationally and owns 45,000 rental apartments.
“The fact we were able to close the deal even with the credit crisis shows great confidence in the market,” Anton said. He said about half the apartments are currently market-rate and half are either rent-stabilized or rent-controlled.
Anton, Solarz and Eastern’s Deborah Gutoff brought in the buyers.
Meanwhile, the same Eastern team brokered the sale of the 6-story loft/retail building at 176-177 Lafayette St. for $21 million from Edwin Bass to the Eretz Group. The 35,287 square-foot property at the bustling corner of Lafayette and Grand streets boasts 170 feet of retail frontage.
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NYU Medical Center, which is based on First Avenue in the 30s, needed more elbow room for its administrative offices. And like many nonprofits, it found what it needed Downtown.
The hospital center took 36,400 square feet – the entire 10th floor – at Capstone Equities’ 14 Wall St.
Capstone, which bought the landmark tower last year, has signed leases for some 170,000 square feet there over the past eight months for the 1.1 million square-foot address.
Cushman & Wakefield repped the landlord and CB Richard Ellis repped the medical center.
Terms were not released.
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KBS Realty Advisors, the new owners of the former Movielab Building at 619 W. 54th St., have landed a new tenant as they convert the former office/warehouse property to all-office use.
CUNY signed a lease for 31,000 square feet for the administrative offices of the university’s John Jay College, which needs more space for classrooms at its campus.
Cushman & Wakefield’s Mitchell Konsker, Matthew Astrachan and Robert Gallucci repped the landlord; Grubb & Ellis’ David Schneck repped the tenant.
“We’re seeing the high rents in Midtown pushing more tenants to the west side,” Konsker said.
Asking rents at 619 W. 54th St. are in the low $50s.
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Innovative advertising agency The CementWorks is more than doubling the size of its Manhattan operations.
The firm just subleased 35,682 square feet at 162 Fifth Ave., which will be in addition to the 20,000 square feet it already has at 641 Sixth Ave.
CementWorks specializes in healthcare industry advertising. It was repped by Cushman & Wakefield’s Alexander Chudnoff and Haley Klein, who said the new space’s “high ceilings and large open floor plates promote a collaborative work environment” for employees.
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The Palm steakhouse will open its fourth and largest Manhattan outpost at Jack Resnick & Sons’ 200 Chambers St., their luxury condo tower near Ground Zero.
The lease, first reported by my colleague Lois Weiss last month, was just signed, company Chairman and CEO Burt Resnick said yesterday.
The 9,000 square-foot beefery “adds cachet to our building, and I think it’s going to great business with Goldman Sachs across the street,” Resnick said, referring to Goldman’s new headquarters now under construction.
Resnick said the new Palm is even larger than the one in his family’s building at 250 W. 50th St.
“We’re helping them with the build-out,” he said. The new place should open by mid-sum mer.
Newmark Knight Frank’s Jeffrey Roseman repre sented the Palm; Robert K. Futter man Associates repped the land lord. The asking rent was $150 a square foot. steve.cuozzo@nypost.com