Moinian puts block of 32 resi units at W Downtown on market

CushWake says rooms could be combined into apartments beginning 2016

From left: 123 Washington Street and Joseph Moinian
From left: 123 Washington Street and Joseph Moinian

UPDATED, 5:26 p.m., Feb. 24: A mixed-use Lower Manhattan tower with a checkered history is looking to sell four floors of residential units currently in use as extended-stay hotel apartments.

The Moinian Group has put on the market a block of 32 units spanning a little over 19,000 square feet at the W Hotel & Residences, the mixed-use glassy tower at 123 Washington Street that chewed through at least four different sales teams before setting a condo price record for the Financial District.

Located on the 23rd through 26th floors, the units, eight each to a floor, are currently under lease through 2016 to a Los Angeles-based management firm that rents rooms for extended stays of 30 days or more. They include a dozen studios averaging slightly more than 400 square feet and 20 one-bedrooms ranging from about 600 to 900 square feet.

“This lease allows an investor to receive significant cash flow with virtually no management given the nature of the tenant,” read the listing from Cushman & Wakefield. Bob Knakal, the firm’s chairman of investment sales, said that the property allows a buyer to combine the units into larger residential apartments, and that Moinian was fielding proposals.

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Below the units on offer are 22 hotel floors and above them are 30 residential floors with 191 apartments, both rentals and condos. The condos on the lower floors of the residential section were asking in the range of $2,300 to $2,400 per square foot, according to StreetEasy. At that price the total offering could fetch somewhere in the high $30 million to low $40 million range, factoring in a discount brokers said packages like this usually receive over individual units.

Representatives for the Moinian Group declined to comment.

The building took quite a journey to where it is today. After construction started in 2006, the process was plagued with stop-work orders and stalled by the recession. By 2013, the building was on its fourth sales-and-marketing team. The following year, however, Moinian set a Financial District record by selling a pair of penthouses for north of $2,400 per square foot.

Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly identified the unit types. They are residential units, currently in use as extended-stay rooms.