Thor snaps up Phillip Lim location for $16M

Joe Sitt, 115 Mercer Street and David Schechtman
Joe Sitt, 115 Mercer Street and David Schechtman

UPDATED, Dec. 2, 3.25 p.m.: Thor Equities’ Soho spending spree continues. The company has paid $16.4 million for a retail condominium at 115 Mercer Street, The Real Deal has learned.

The 7,088-square-foot condo, between Prince and Spring streets, houses the clothing boutique 3.1 by Phillip Lim, the designer’s first ever store which opened in 2007. The seller of the property was Javeri Capital, which purchased it for $7.8 million in 2010 and whose holdings include 93 Crosby Street and 23-25 Greene Street, public records show.

Investor Yaron Jacobi, who heads Premier Equities with Scoop founder Uzi Ben Abraham, was an investor in the deal, he said. David Schechtman, Lipa Lieberman and Gary Meese of Eastern Consolidated represented the seller. Schechtman confirmed that the transaction had closed last week.

The property consists of 4,201 square feet of retail space on the ground floor and an additional 2,877 square feet on the basement level, according to marketing materials. Lim has 3,988 square feet in total, while the other tenant, consignment store Roundabout, has 3,100 square feet.

Lim’s lease expires in 2017, while Roundabout’s expires in 2020, Atit Javeri, a principal of Javeri Capital, told TRD.

Sign Up for the undefined Newsletter

“We owned the units for about two years and would not typically exit an investment in such a short time period, but saw an opportunity to take advantage of a strong market for well-located retail in the area,” he said. “Nonetheless, we remain big believers in Soho, as we maintain significant investments in the area and continue to pursue new deals there as well.”

Jacobi declined to comment on the deal. In a statement, Sitt said Thor, which has vast retail holdings in the neighborhood, was proud to have become one of the “forerunners” in the area’s retail boom.

For Jacobi, who has previously partnered with Thor, the purchase is the latest in a string of retail-driven deals in Soho.

Last year, Thor nabbed a 27,750-square-foot mixed-use retail and residential property at 21 and 25-27 Mercer Street, where the retail tenant is Nike, from East End Capital for $34 million. The company also bought a 13,700-square-foot condo at 57-63 Greene Street, which houses Bang & Olufsen, for $17.25 million, and the basement and first two floors of 151 Wooster, just south of Houston Street, in an off-market deal for $25 million. Jacobi was an investor in all three of those deals, Thor said.

Meanwhile, Javeri Capital has bagged another 10,054-square-foot retail condo at 20 Greene Street for $9.9 million, Javeri told The Real Deal. That property was previously owned by James MacGregor, vice chairman of public relations firm Abernathy MacGregor. MacGregor had owned the property since the early 2000s, when he picked it up in two parts for a total $2.85 million, he told The Real Deal. It had previously housed the nonprofit company Location One. Schechtman was the broker on the deal, MacGregor said.