Vanbarton pays $104M for the Astor’s retail on UWS

Tenants include Barneys New York and Lululemon Athletic

The Astor at 235 West 75th Street on the Upper West Side
The Astor at 235 West 75th Street on the Upper West Side

UPDATED: July 12, 9:35 a.m.: The Vanbarton Group dropped $103.5 million for valuable retail space at the Astor condominium on the Upper West Side.

The Gary Tischler and Richard Coles-led investment firm snagged the retail condo unit at 235 West 75th Street, Also Known As 2139 Broadway, from Madison Capital [TRData] and PGIM Real Estate, formerly Prudential Real Estate Investors, according to property records filed with the city Monday.

Vanbarton also took out a $67.5 million loan from Mesa West Capital, records show. Steve Kohn, Alex Hernandez and Alex Lapidus of Cushman & Wakefield represented Vanbarton in obtaining financing.

At roughly 31,210 square feet, the retail space has 210 feet of frontage along the west side of Broadway, and frontage on West 75th and West 76th streets. Tenants include Barneys New York, Lululemon Athletic and L’Occitane.

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The average asking rent for retail space in the area is $385 per square foot, according to Cushman & Wakefield’s first-quarter Manhattan retail report.

A joint venture between Madison Capital and Prudential Real Estate Investors paid $84 million for the ground-floor retail space in 2014, when it purchased the condo from Westbrook Partners in a deal that involved Ziel Feldman’s HFZ Capital Group.  HFZ bought the Astor and the Metro, a 264-unit rental tower at 301 West 53rd Street, for $610 million in 2014, but before the deal closed, Feldman arranged for Westbrook to sell the buildings’ retail condos to Madison and Prudential.

HFZ subsequently converted the Astor’s rental apartments into luxury condos. The 12-story, roughly 200,000-square-foot building holds 99 apartments.

Last year, Vanbarton, formerly known as Emmes Asset Management, bought a ground lease at 31 Penn Plaza for $270 million from Savanna. The firm later picked up Riverdale Crossing, a shopping center in the northwest Bronx, for $133 million.