Williamsburg will be the next nabe to welcome Whole Foods.
Sleuths have ferreted out that a stalled site at 242 Bedford Ave. by North Fourth Street will be rejuvenated with the organic grocer and a New York Sports Club in the base with luxe apartments above, rather than the middling mix of Marshall’s and CVS reported elsewhere a year ago.
To complete these deals, Michael Cayre’s Midtown Equities along with Bobby Cayre’s Aurora Capital and Alex Adjmi closed on the purchase of the site from Yahuda Backer for $23 million.
Jared Epstein, vice president of Aurora, confirmed the parties closed the all-cash transaction on Monday. While acknowledging that several national tenants are interested, he would not confirm any retail deals. Epstein did say a third of their $40 million, 150,000-square-foot development will have luxury rental apartments.
Other sources say the Whole Foods will have a 9,000-square-foot entrance on the ground floor with the remaining 30,000 square feet underground. Retail asking rents are $150 a square foot on the ground, with much less for the upstairs and downstairs portions.
Similarly, the New York Sports Club starts out with 700 square feet on the ground and takes up a portion of the second floor for a total of about 15,000 square feet. Ezra Saff of Retail Zone reps Town Sports International, which is the parent of NYSC, also declined comment.
Chase Welles at Northwest Atlantic Real Estate, who reps Whole Foods in the area, did not immediately return a call or e-mail for comment.
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At the same borough’s municipal office building, where 30,000 square feet of retail is being developed on two levels as Brooklyn Heights Plaza, Sephora is close to signing a lease for a 6,500 square foot a corner spot.
Broker Peter Ripka of Ripco Real Estate, who is representing the Laboz family’s United American Land, which bought the retail from the city, confirmed the deal is in progress. Ginny Pittarelli of Crown is representing the cosmetics emporium in this first location for Brooklyn. Asking rents here are also $150 a square foot for the ground floor spaces.
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In what we hope will be a first step towards a new, classy skyscraper, Aby Rosen and Michael Fuchs have recapitalized their major 610 Lexington Ave. stalled development site and modified a loan with RCG Longview.
Documents show RCG Longview, a nimble funding group founded by Peter Cohen, Jeffrey J. Feil, Jay Anderson, Jonathan Estreich, Michael Boxer and Mort Olshan, took over what was a $66,395,143 loan from ING.
Before it went belly-up, the original lender, Lehman Bros., had grown several loans to $145 million prior to ING taking over. RCG further reconstituted a mezzanine loan, leaving RFR owing a mere $64,735,264.
RFR also transferred the property to another entity with a value of $78,041,438.
After Lehman and the markets tanked, a deal with Shangri-La hotels to anchor a towering new luxury condominium project faded into the vacant lot.
In an e-mail, an RFR spokeswoman said the company bought back the 610 Lexington Ave. note and is starting to redevelop the site as a hotel and residential condominium development, as previously planned.“Currently we are going to market to source an appropriate hotel operator,” she said.
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With just one month until the Yankees’ Friday the 13th home opener it is easy to think about buying a Bronx office building.
A rare, 160,557-square-foot Class A low-rise office building with parking on 7.5 acres in Throgs Neck is being marketed by CBRE and could trade for over $40 million or $250 a square foot.
The building at 2500 Halsey St. is on a block also bounded by Seabury, Waterbury and Commerce avenues and is across from a Westchester Creek marina.
This deal is about the credit tenants and cash flow, say CBRE brokers Ned Midgley and Tim Sheehan, who declined to discuss pricing other than to say they expect the sale to be completed in a “mid-sixes cap rate.”
“It’s a cash-flowing asset with good quality tenants and not a lot of competitive product that can provide that cash flow at closing,” said Sheehan.
Developed in 1980 for Loehmann’s on urban redevelopment land and then redeveloped into first-class office space in 2002 by Dedona Construction, the clothing store still maintains ground-floor offices along with the building’s small second floor under a sweetheart deal.
The two other larger office tenants, Affinity Health Plan and the United Federation of Teachers, pay market rents in the low-$30s a square foot. A JP Mustard restaurant sits on its own pad with 18 spaces while the main gated parking lot holds 450 cars. There is also another 172,000 square feet of development rights available.
The building is on a long-term lease that will be extended to 2066 at closing and Midgley says they will be taking offers in April. Batter up!