Bonjour Capital, a New York City-based investment and development firm, has tapped residential brokerage MNS to lead leasing efforts at the Westbourne, a five-building rental complex located at 601-611 West 137th Street in Manhattanville, The Real Deal has learned. Bonjour and MNS are gradually revamping the building with renovations and a new marketing campaign that targets value-conscious tenants from outside the neighborhood.
The campaign, which will include a new website for the property, aims to attract Downtown dwellers by “showing them how much more they can get for much less,” MNS CEO Andrew Barrocas said. “We feel that it’s really an area that’s undergoing a lot of change and becoming a very popular area,” he said of Manhattanville, which spans roughly from the upper West 120s to West 135th Street.
Among the changes is Columbia University’s redevelopment of a 17-acre site between 129th and 133rd streets and Broadway and Twelfth Avenue.
For its part, Bonjour is renovating the Westbourne apartments, as well as building entrances, walkways and hallways, Barrocas said. The goal is to take advantage of the improvements and the more bustling neighborhood to fetch higher rents, according to Barrocas.
Bonjour did not return requests for comment.
The 181-unit complex is made up of one studio, four one-bedrooms, 68 two-bedrooms, 72 three-bedrooms, 30 four-bedrooms and six five-bedrooms. They span 510 to 1,685 square feet and $2,000 to $4,000 per month in rent. The Westbourne is a recent acquisition for Bonjour, which bought the complex from Extell Development in December for $66 million.
Leasing began in February, and the majority of those units have already been rented, though an exact figure was not available, Barrocas said. However, additional units will hit the market as they are renovated.
So far, MNS has the bones of a website put together, but has not yet set a date for the site to go live, Barrocas said.
Four Westbourne apartments are currently available, including a 942-square-foot three-bedroom asking $3,000 per month and a 1,412-square-foot four-bedroom asking $3,650 per month, StreetEasy shows.