Gea Elika, founder of Elika Associates

Just two weeks after launching a commercial division, Elika Associates said it will open a residential property management division. The buyer’s brokerage intends to focus on management of individual apartments, townhouses or multi-family properties of up to 20 units purchased by their commercial clients.

The management services include responding to maintenance requests and hiring repairmen, screening tenants, preparing applications and payment collection. Helen Elika will head the new management division. – Adam Fusfeld [more]

Elika Associates, a Manhattan-based residential buyer’s brokerage, will launch a commercial arm focused on buyer and tenant representation, the firm announced today.

The division is named Elika Commercial and will consult and guide clients towards the most efficient location for office and retail space leases and purchases and investment purchases. The firm has hired one new agent for the commercial side, and in the short-term will transfer some of its residential agents to that side, bringing the total head count to three. Elika has brokered two small retail leases thus far, although they are both pending, according to the firm’s founder and principal broker, Gea Elika. – Adam Fusfeld [more]

Another school is coming to the Financial District, following a unanimous vote from the Panel for Education Policy last month. The Greenwich Village Middle School, which currently enrolls 215 students, will relocate in the fall to 26 Broadway, an office building near the Bowling Green. The two-floor space will give the school a new library and computer lab (though, as parents have lamented, no gymnasium) and will allow it to increase its attendance to up 361 students. The school currently shares a space on Hudson Street with P.S. 3, leading to overcrowding. Parents and local politicians had originally opposed moving the school out of their neighborhood, arguing for a move to a state-owned building at 75 Morton Street, instead. But city negotiations to buy the Morton Street property stalled, and 26 Broadway was the remaining option. Private school Claremont Preparatory Academy, based at 41 Broad Street, has also announced plans to expand this year into a 200,000-square-foot space at office building next door, at 25 Broadway. [Downtown Express]

The Chetrit Group paid $34.925 million to buy a leasehold interest on a
portion of the ground under the former Standard Oil Building at 26
Broadway in Lower Manhattan, a building it bought two years ago. Midtown-based
property investment company Chetrit Group bought the 31-story office
building at the corner of Broadway and Beaver Street — as well as two
out of three parcels of land under the building — in March 2007 for
$225 million. But the third parcel, known as the Smathers Parcel,
remained under separate ownership through a long-term lease, city
property records show. Chetrit Group closed on the purchase of
the Smathers Parcel Dec. 30, after going into contract in March 2007,
city records published yesterday show. [more]

The Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, a marquee tenant at the
Silverstein Properties-owned 112 Wall Street, could be signing a lease
with another landlord for nearly 50,000 square feet at 26 Broadway,
seven blocks west of the non-profit’s current headquarters, the New
York Observer reported. The building was purchased by the Chetrit Group
for $225 million in April 2007. Studley’s Howard Nottingham and Adam
Singer are representing the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, and
Newmark Knight Frank’s Howard Kesseler is representing the landlord in
the transaction. [more]

The Department of Education plans to convert the former Sports Museum
of America space in 26 Broadway into a school. The museum went bankrupt
and closed earlier this year. The city has not signed a lease yet for
the 45,000-square-foot space, but a spokesperson said it is “very close
to an agreement.” The space could become a home for the Greenwich
Village Middle School, which needs to move out of its current building
in fall 2010 due to overcrowding. The new space would provide seats for
1,000 students, but it is unclear when it would be ready. [more]