Tishman Speyer has completed its first office acquisition in its hometown since before the pandemic.

The New York City office giant, which owns Rockefeller Center and The Spiral, spent $105.5M on a fully leased, 12-story office building in Lower Manhattan.

148 Lafayette St., a fully-leased office in Lower Manhattan, which became Tishman Speyer’s first NYC office acquisition in more than half a decade this week.

Tishman Speyer acquired the 153K SF building, which was built in 1913 and renovated in 2017, from EPIC, it announced Monday. The boutique office tower is Tishman’s first U.S. office purchase since 2021 and its first in New York since 2019. 

Current tenants in the building include venture capital firm General Catalyst and cosmetics and beauty company Charlotte Tilbury. The acquisition was partially funded by a $68.3M loan from Blackstone Real Estate Debt Strategies.

 

A Newmark team led by Adam Spies and Avery Silverstein represented EPIC. It’s unclear who represented Tishman Speyer. 

TOP SALES

The Hotel Bossert has changed hands for $100M, Commercial Observer reported. The 282-key, 1909-built hotel at 98 Montague St.’s new owner is Nashville-based developer SomeraRoad, which plans to convert it into housing. The trade marks the end of a chapter for the historic, troubled Brooklyn property, which Chetrit Group lost control of in February after lender Beach Point Capital acquired it in a foreclosure action. Chetrit had owned the Hotel Bossert since 2012, when it bought it in a joint venture agreement with Clipper Realty before buying Clipper out in 2019. But Chetrit then defaulted in 2022, eventually leading to the foreclosure. Beach Point acquired the $112M note for the building last year.

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Clipper Equity has acquired 1800 Park Ave., a vacant Harlem lot owned by The Durst Organization since 2017, for more than $50M, The Real Deal reported. The 680K SF plot has changed hands four times in recent years: Vornado Realty Trust bought it for $39.5M in 2007 and sold it to Continuum Cos. for $66M in 2013. But Continuum, which had planned a 700-unit apartment building, fell behind on its loans, leading to the Durst Org. swooping in and buying $100M of the building’s debt. The Dursts then acquired the lot itself for $91M a few years later but failed to kick off its own plans to build housing before the 421-a tax break expired. 

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A Midtown office building has sold from one Milanese family to another for $22.4M, Commercial Observer reported. Pierluigi Tortora, founder of PLT Energia, bought 30 W. 56th St. from Massimo and Alberta Ferretti, who own luxury fashion brand Ferrim USA. The sale price is a whopping $19M above the $3.8M that the Ferretis paid for the 22K SF office building in 1994, PincusCo reported. PLT Energia plans to take over the building and use it for its own offices.

TOP LEASES

Atlantic Terminal, where Nike signed a 16K SF retail lease this week.

Nike has signed a 16K SF retail lease at Atlantic Terminal and Center adjacent to the Barclays Center, according to a release. The retail space with a street-facing entrance adds the athletic apparel maker to the roster of brands nearby, including Sephora, Uniqlo, and Dave & Buster’s. Inline Realty’s David Alani represented Nike, while Atlantic Terminal and Center ownership was represented by Cushman & Wakefield’s Alan Schmerzler, Diana Boutross and Ian Lerner.

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Consulting engineering firm Jaros, Baum & Bolles has signed a 68K SF lease in the Financial District at 55 Water St., Commercial Observer reported. The firm will relocate to the 53-story tower, which is owned by Retirement Systems of Alabama, from 80 Pine St., according to Colliers’ May Manhattan office report. The tenant roster at Jaros, Baum & Bolles’ new digs includes The Legal Aid Society, the New York City Board of Education Retirement System and human resources service Justworks. 

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Fisher Brothers signed tenants to 67K SF at 299 Park Ave., a 1.3M SF office tower in Midtown East, according to a release. Investment firm One William Street Capital Management has added 15K SF to its existing 30K in the 42-story building, bringing its total footprint to 45K SF. One William, which relocated from 1290 Sixth Ave. in 2018, was represented by Scott Gottlieb, Andrew Sussman, Ben Friedland and Lewis Gottlieb of CBRE. Private equity investment firm P10 Intermediate Holdings, expanded its space by 9K SF with representation from CBRE’s Silvio Petriello. Consulting firm Tailwind Management is moving to the building in a 14K SF deal. Tailwind was repped by Savills’ Greg Taubin. Newmark’s David Falk, Peter Shimkin, Andrew Sachs and Eric Cagner repped the landlord in all three deals, along with Fisher Brothers’ Marc Packman and Clark Briffel.

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AI-driven marketing intelligence firm AlphaSense is moving its NYC headquarters to the Hudson Yards neighborhood, New York Business Journal reported. The firm, which supports tech companies, signed a 10-year lease for 50K SF at CommonWealth Partners’ 441 Ninth Ave., relocating to the 25-story office building from its current home at 24 Union Square E., Commercial Observer reported. Savills’ Allyson Bowen and Erik Schmall repped AlphaSense.

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Elderserve Health, a senior care nonprofit that does business as RiverSpring Health Plans, renewed its 15K SF Midwood office lease, Commercial Observer reported. The nonprofit first moved into the Brooklyn office space at 1630 E. 15th St. in 2020. Asking rents in the new deal were $45 per SF. The building was owned by Urban Edge Properties, but the property was put into foreclosure in 2023 and last year was handed over to the special servicer of the CMBS trust that holds the mortgage. The tenant was repped by Cresa’s Bert Rosenblatt, Peter Sabesan and Alex Gerome. Ownership was represented by Michael Taylor of Lincoln Property Co. 

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Law firm Foster Garvey has signed a 10-year, 11K SF lease at Jack Resnick & Sons’ One Seaport Plaza, according to a release. The landlord intends to renovate the 1.1M SF tower later this year. Other tenants include WeWork, Seaport Entertainment and insurance firm Allied World Insurance. Foster Garvey was repped by Savills’ Nicholas Farmakis and Steve London. The landlord was repped in-house by Brett Greenberg and Adam Rappaport and by John Cefaly, Ethan Silverstein, Stephen Bellwood and Rachel Rosenfeld of Cushman & Wakefield. The law firm plans to relocate from 100 Wall St. to the 35-story 199 Water St. building in the fall, Commercial Observer reported.

TOP FINANCING DEALS

222 E. 34th St., in Kips Bay, where owner the Hakim Org. scored a $99.8M refinancing deal from Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Co. this week.

The Hakim Organization nabbed a $99.8M refi for 222 E. 34th St., a 480-unit residential building in Kips Bay, from Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Co., PincusCo reported. The capital replaces a loan for the same amount from the same lender, with an extended maturity date of June 15, 2030. 

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Rockrose Development scored an $80M loan for 110 Horatio St., a 10-story, 94K SF West Village multifamily property, according to a release. The financing — a 10-year, fixed-rate loan — was provided by investment manager AXA IM Alts, which was acting on behalf of its clients. The 152-unit property, which is a mix of studios, one- and two-bedroom units and five penthouses, is 99% occupied. A JLL team that included Geoff Goldstein, Steven Klein and Chris Pratt arranged the financing.

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Pro-H Development notched a $77M loan from Urban Standard Capital to finance a 101-unit condo project at 842 Sixth Ave., Commercial Observer reported. The vacant lot was once expected to become a 26-story hotel, but last year 842 Enterprises sold the lot to Pro-H for $30M after the planned hotel wound up facing a $33M preforeclosure action from lender Avana Capital. Now, the 27-story condo tower that will take the would-be hotel’s place is slated for completion late next year. A Ripco Real Estate team of Adam Hakim, James Murad and Alexander Korolik arranged the financing.

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New York Life Insurance Co. has loaned $60M to Altitude Capital Management for the 273-room Courtyard by Marriott New York Manhattan hotel at 135 W. 30th St., PincusCo reported. The sum replaces a previous $60M loan from Voya Financial.

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Community Preservation Corp. provided a $44.1M mortgage to Lemle & Wolff Cos. for a residential development in Sunnyside, PincusCo reported. Lemle & Wolff is in partnership with nonprofit Elmcor Youth & Adult Activities for the 42K SF development, which will deliver 55 units at 43-12 50th St. The construction loan also replaces a previous $6.6M loan on the property from Webster Bank.

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John Catsimatidis’ Red Apple Group refinanced its 86-unit residential building at 670 Pacific St. for $38.1M with M&T Bank, PincusCo reported. The loan on the 84K SF Prospect Heights property replaces a $49.5M sum from the same lender that matured May 30. Red Apple was required to make a $5.1M principal payment and a note modification fee of $190K. Its new loan has to be no more than 80% loan-to-value based on a new appraisal, and has a new maturity date of Sept. 1, 2027.

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Elmord Management netted a $34.3M construction loan for a nine-story multifamily rental project in Astoria, Commercial Observer reported. The two-year bridge loan for 34-20 38th St. came from BridgeCity Capital. Elmord bought the five-parcel development site for $12M from the Pinto Family, PincusCo reported. The development, which is expected to deliver at the end of 2026, will include 89 units and 31 parking spaces.

As New York City led in 2024 CMBS conduit issuance for multifamily properties, so it is also leading an increase in multifamily conduit delinquencies, Kroll Bond Rating Agency reported.

The overall KBRA distress rate for apartment-backed conduit loans, which includes loans that are delinquent or current and in special servicing, was at 8.5% as of year-end 2024. NYC multifamily currently represents 43% of the multifamily distressed balance, with a distress rate of 14.4% at year-end. That’s more than double the city’s year-end 2023 distress rate of 7%.

The city’s multifamily distress rate was distinctly bifurcated by property age, according to KBRA. Pre-1974 NYC properties, which have a much higher proportion of rent-stabilized buildings, had a 25.1% distress rate by balance, compared to post-2000 properties with a distress rate of 2.9%. Manhattan had the highest distress rate of the five boroughs at 29.8%, followed by Queens (7.5%) and Brooklyn (3.2%).

While slowing leasing activity and higher interest rates have provided a bleak outlook for some classes of commercial real estate, the New York City industrial scene is proving to be a welcome bright spot in the market.

Industrial leasing in NYC hit a five-year high with more than 1M SF of volume in the first quarter, surpassing the pandemic-era boom from 2020 to 2021. This trend is most noticeable in the outer boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens, which saw 83% growth from 2023. 

One of the companies capitalizing on this boom is NYC-based real estate development and investment firm Turnbridge Equities, which acquired its 807 Bank Street site in 2021.

Turnbridge Equities Managing Principal Ryan Nelson said the property is one of only two distribution warehouses on the East Coast that is LEED Platinum, the U.S. Green Building Council’s highest sustainability rating. The company turned the property into a 172K SF last-mile industrial warehouse in the Canarsie submarket in Brooklyn.

“The continuation of a decades-long trend in the decline in industrially zoned land in the city makes development opportunities for true Class-A products increasingly scarce,” he said. “Additionally, a newly contemplated special permit process by the city of New York poses a new potential challenge for investors.”

Turnbridge Equities believes the story of 807 Bank Street provides a great data point for the city as it debates the implementation of a new special permit process for last-mile facilities as part of Mayor Eric Adams’ City of Yes proposal.

“If the new special permit process was in place when we were deciding whether or not to pursue the development of 807 Bank Street, we wouldn’t have been able to convince investors or lenders to take the risk of building on spec, nor would we want to take the risk ourselves,” Nelson said. “The city would have missed out on hundreds of new jobs during construction and with tenant operations today. Instead, there would still be two dilapidated warehouses requiring environmental remediation that were built in the 1930s and 1940s.”

Turnbridge Equities discovered 807 Bank Street through a long-term relationship with a legacy NYC industrial brokerage, and the property was bought off-market, Nelson said. The property was originally two adjacent lots totaling 90K SF with two different owners. It features 80K SF of warehouse space and 92K SF of parking on the warehouse rooftop, in addition to housing and a 670-kilowatt rooftop solar carport.

Nelson said Turnbridge was attracted to the immediate submarket, which already houses the New York Department of Sanitation, UPS, FedEx and Amazon. Properties like 807 Bank Street provide new space for new-to-market and legacy tenants, many of which are looking to relocate and modernize. 

Construction of 807 Bank Street began in mid-2022, and while in an established industrial node of the city, it still presented a set of challenges the project had to overcome. Nelson said one of the large challenges was having to “coordinate intensely” with the New York City Metropolitan Transportation Authority. 

“Given we’re across the street from an above-ground portion of Brooklyn’s L line, we were required to manage a significant coordination effort, including vibration monitoring, alteration of our ground improvement specifications to minimize vibrations, in addition to other construction logistics, including managing crane picks,” Nelson said.

The project received a temporary certificate of occupancy in May from the NYC Department of Buildings. While the project was 65% preleased by that date to two tenants, it signed its third tenant in July and is now 100% leased. 

The last tenant is Charlotte-based waste container manufacturer Otto Environmental Systems, which won a 10-year contract with DSNY as the exclusive provider of refuse, recycling and organics bins for all residents in one-to-nine-unit buildings.

Nelson said he believes Otto Environmental chose 807 Bank Street because it met all of the company’s requirements, including convenient highway access and a location near arterial streets to facilitate last-mile deliveries. 

“We were able to do what a lot of landlords are reluctant to do, which was move very quickly on a lease that met Otto’s requirement of needing to secure a location quickly to help meet their ambitious goals of its DSNY rollout,” he said. 

In addition to the space it provides to its private tenants, Nelson said the project has served the public in numerous ways, including sustainable features such as a vast solar array on the roof and a massive visual improvement to the neighborhood, including redone sidewalks. Also, it features repaved streets and crosswalk improvements in coordination with the New York City Department of Transportation and environmental remediation of two dilapidated and polluted projects.

“The construction itself was a major source of employment for construction workers, most of whom are local NYC and Long Island residents,” Nelson said. “By bringing three new tenants to the property, we’re supporting Brooklyn’s and NYC’s local economy for long-term, good-paying jobs in a state-of-the-art facility.”

This article was produced in collaboration between Studio B and Turnbridge Equities. Bisnow news staff was not involved in the production of this content.

Studio B is Bisnow’s in-house content and design studio. To learn more about how Studio B can help your team, reach out to studio@bisnow.com.

NYC office demand has decreased 22% since March, equivalent to 3 million square feet, but it is still above the 2021-2023 monthly average, according to the latest data from VTS.  

Small tenants (<10k square feet) have shown positive momentum, while the tech and legal sectors experienced declines. The average size of tenants rolling in for 2027-2028 is larger than those rolling in near term (2025-2026). Trophy assets saw the biggest rent increase in April, followed by Class A and Class B properties. 

Institutional investors, including Boston Properties, Brookfield, Blackstone, and others, are signaling a shift towards capital deployment this year. VTS’ Leasing Prediction Outlook for 2024 suggests a 17% increase in leasing compared to 2023. 

Courtesy of CBRE

25-01 Queens Plaza North, where Grubb Properties plans to build a 317-unit building.

A new-to-New York developer just dropped $63M on a Long Island City property. 

Charlotte, North Carolina-based Grubb Properties, known for its workforce housing development, picked up its first property in the Big Apple: a 54K SF development site at 25-01 Queens Plaza North, according to CBRE, which brokered the deal. Grubb plans to build housing and take advantage of the opportunity zone program. 

The seller is Estia Realty LLC, an Astoria-based family real estate firm. The family has owned the property — located in an opportunity zone in Long Island City — since 1984, property records show. CBRE’s Dan Kaplan and Elli Klapper brokered the deal for Estia Realty. 

Grubb Properties, helmed by Clay Grubb, filed plans with the city for a 317-unit housing complex at the address last month, The Real Deal reported. In an interview with Multi-Housing News in June, Grubb said the coronavirus pandemic prompted the company to start building in New York. 

“We found that the pandemic opened the drawbridge to certain gateway markets, such as Los Angeles and New York,” he told MHN. “In fact, we recently opened an office in San Jose and continue to build our presence in New York to seize these opportunities.” 

New buyers — particularly ones that would have been priced out in New York before the pandemic — have become increasingly common in New York City’s investment markets as the city reckons with the pandemic fallout.