Rockfeld Group to buy One Madison retail condo for $21.5M

A family-run real estate firm is in contract to pay more than $20 million to purchase the 6,700-square-foot retail condo in the One Madison residential tower at the edge of Flatiron’s main shopping corridor, The Real Deal has learned.

The Rockfeld Group went into contract earlier this month to purchase the retail property at the bottom of the 60-story residential tower developed by the Related Companies and HFZ Capital Group in partnership with the CIM Group, sources familiar with the deal said.

The sponsors reportedly won the property in a foreclosure auction last month with a $3 million bid, the only offer submitted.

Daniel Rahmani of Venture Capital Properties represented Rockfeld and Dan Myers of Kassin Sabbagh Realty worked on behalf of the sellers.

The $21.5 million purchase price for the vacant condo, which has 4,700 square feet on the ground floor and another 2,000 square feet in the cellar, works outs to roughly $4,574 per square foot of prime, first-floor selling space. That figure is about $425 less per square foot than the amount private equity firm Savanna Group paid earlier this year when it snapped up a retail condo across Madison Square Park for $60 million.

That 20,676-square-foot space, at the foot of the Witkoff Group’s condo conversion at 10 Madison Square West, has about 12,000 square feet on the ground floor and sits one block away from the Lego Company’s flagship store in a 7,700-square-foot space that had been asking $500 per square foot.

Rockfeld principal Abe Feldman said that with the new tenants in the residential part of One Madison and upcoming projects like Ian Schrager’s Edition hotel steps away at 5 Madison Avenue, he expects to see retailers looking east across the park.

“I definitely think rents will be rising,” he said. “With all the action in the neighboring area … it’s going to bring tenants and people.”

In recent years, Rockfeld partnered with Aurora Capital and the Adjmi family’s A&H Acquisitions to develop a 100,000-square-foot retail project at 125th Street and Frederick Douglas Boulevard. That property is now anchored by a 30,000-square-foot DSW shoe store alongside Party City and Joe’s Crab Shack.

The company is now working on a 100,000-square-foot mixed use project near Jeff Sutton’s Development On 125th Street and Lenox Avenue, where he signed a Whole Foods in 2012. It is also working to reposition a mixed-use Meatpacking property as a flagship retail location.