Four Winds looks to nearly double money on Gotham Court flip

Four Winds Real Estate, in partnership with Nathan and Josh Halegua of Jonis Realty and investor Martin Newman, listed a pair of Lower East Side rental buildings on a single lot yesterday for $35 million total — nearly double what they paid for them last year.

The properties at 152 Ludlow Street and 149-151 Essex Street are known as Gotham Court. The former is a five-story walk-up with two duplex rentals and the bar/cafe and independent music venue Cake Shop. The latter is a seven-story elevator building with 20 rental units and two retail spaces. A Mexican-Asian fusion restaurant Tijuana Picnic replaced the Laugh Lounge, which closed in 2010. Each retail space is about 2,000 square feet.

In April 2013, Four Winds, which was launched in 2012 by David Schneiderman and Joshua Landau, made its first multi-family, fee-interest acquisition when it paid $19.1 million for the buildings, then owned by 149-151 Essex Street Associates LLC.  The owners proceeded to renovate some of the units by upgrading kitchens and adding extra bedrooms.

A Jones Lang LaSalle team of Glenn Tolchin, Yoav Oelsner, Anthony Ledesma, Jason Gold and Richard Baxter has the listing. The brokers are marketing the site as a repositioning opportunity. Tolchin said he expects the net operating income to increase by 70 percent in the first years of new ownership, if renovations were to continue.

“The market has improved pretty significantly,” Tolchin said.

The properties, built in 2004, sit next to the 1.65-million-square-foot, $1.1 billion mixed-use Essex Crossing development.