Delaware-based retail real estate investment trust Acadia Realty Trust snatched up the ground-floor retail space at 868 Broadway — currently leased by British footwear brand Dr. Martens — for $13.5 million, according to property records filed with the city today.
Acadia, best known as the developer of the City Point development in Downtown Brooklyn, has no plans to renovate the 3,400-square-foot space at this time. In September 2012, Dr. Martens signed a 10-year lease at the base of the four-story Union Square office building between West 17th and West 18th streets, as previously reported.
The building’s landlord – and seller of the retail condo – appears to be Douglas Dey, controlling owner of Calverton, N.Y.-based clothing supplier South Bay Apparel. In 2012, Dey pleaded guilty in federal court to bribing an Aeropostale executive in exchange for supplying clothing to the chain.
Andrew Epstein of Brokerage Easy Street Properties, which represented the landlord in the 2012 lease deal, could not immediately be reached for comment.
“We had much more interest in the ground floor than the rest of the building,” Christopher Conlon, executive vice president and chief operating officer at Acadia, told The Real Deal. “Wherever we can aggregate properties in a subsection of New York, that’s what we do.”
The broker who represented Acadia in the deal was undisclosed.
Acadia also owns 640 Broadway, 654 Broadway and the back portion of Barnes & Noble at 33 East 17th Street, Conlon said. Asking rents run about $300 per square foot in the area, Crain’s reported.
Acadia’s City Point megadevelopment was the largest project to receive permit approvals from the Department of Buildings in November, as The Real Deal reported. The 1.8 million-square-foot City Point residential and commercial development is being built on city-owned land and received a government subsidy for the project’s affordable housing component, as The Real Deal reported. The developer has also been criticized for its hiring of nonunion workers.
Dr. Martens also has a store in Soho, at 148 Spring Street, and a U.S. headquarters in Portland, Ore.