1880 Bartow Avenue in the Bronx
The largest property sale in the Bronx since the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holding Company has closed, according to records filed with the city last week. The property, a storage facility at 1880 Bartow Avenue in the Baychester section of the Bronx, sold for $59.27 million, the records show. [more]
John Reinertsen of CBRE Group
Low rents, easier transportation access and a large supply of low-wage workers for adding jobs have contributed to a trend of industrial tenants signing leases in the Bronx, Crain’s reported. The recent moves have even gained support from the city, who is asking industrial tenants in Manhattan and Queens to go to the Bronx and asking those that have already moved there to stay put.
Beyond the Hunts Point Produce Market, which will remain in the Bronx, and Fresh Direct, there are new tenants popping up around the borough. They include Dufour Pastry Kitchens, which is a bakery, and Smith Electric Vehicles, which assembles clean technology trucks. [more]
From left: the exterior of Via Verde and a rendering of the interior
Income-restricted co-op units are now available to the public at Via Verde (Spanish for “the Green Way”), a mixed rental and co-op green building located in the Melrose section of the South Bronx, according to a press release from the building.
The 35 available co-ops at 700-704 Brook Avenue, at East 156th Street, are all 872 square feet with two bedrooms and one bath. They feature Energy Star appliances, balconies and in-unit laundry machines. Their prices are set at $146,000 and sales are being handled in-house. [more]
The Bronx led the city in multi-family sales in October 2011 with 25 buildings sold, totaling $96.6 million, or 37 percent of the city’s multi-family sales for the month, according to a report from Ariel Property Advisors.
Fifty multi-family buildings, totaling $256 million, traded in 28 transactions in the city in October overall, compared to 47 multi-family buildings totaling $402.9 million that traded in 41 transactions in September.
“The Bronx is poised to rebound out of the many restructurings that took place in the last 24 months,” said Shimon Shkury, president of Ariel. – Katherine Clarke [more]
The city’s Department of Buildings does not have the staff and resources
required to keep the Bronx safe, having collected $164.9 million in
fines and fees in fiscal year 2011, but spent only
$99.6 million, according to the New York Daily News.
Far fewer buildings inspectors are assigned to the borough than is
necessary, leading to Bronx fires linked to illegal subdivisions last year, said Jeremy Warneke, district manager of Community Board 11.
“The dearth of inspectors is shameful,” Warneke said. “The agency has
a great staff, but they can’t keep up with the work.”
The department employs 324 inspectors in total and regularly moves
them around between the five boroughs “according to need,” said agency
spokeswoman Ryan Fitzgibbon.
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A New York State Senator believes that the city is not enforcing a
2009 state law requiring the owners of foreclosed properties to
maintain them, WNYC reported. State Senator Jeff Klein, who wrote the law, said that enforcing the legislation could have prevented a fatal fire in April
in the Bronx, the borough he represents, along with Westchester. A 12 year old boy and his parents
died in the fire, at 2321 Prospect Avenue, on April 25, and now the
house is boarded up with garbage on the sidewalk, and the two
neighboring houses are uninhabited. [more]
The Department of City Planning will be holding a public hearing on former City Council Speaker Gifford Miller’s Bronx real estate project later this month, the Wall Street Journal reported.
As previously reported, Miller and longtime friend Robert Frost, a partner at Signature Urban Properties, are planning to transform a derelict section of the Bronx near the Sheridan Expressway with 10 new “affordable” apartment buildings, they said.
The $400 million Bronx project is the pair’s first ground-up venture, the Journal said; the area is currently home to a strip of car repair shops and smaller residential buildings. Signature, founded in 2007, is currently working to have it rezoned to allow for the development. [more]
Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz has accused the Bloomberg administration of misleading the federal government and abusing the process that it uses to find productive uses for former military sites in order to place a homeless shelter in a former military base in the Wakefield section, the New York Times reported.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg was set on opening a shelter at the site of the Sgt. Joseph E. Muller Army Reserve Center at the corner of 238th Street and Nereid Avenue, Diaz said, despite opposition and the neighborhood already having its share of shelters.
“Its total disrespect, total mistreatment and a flat out lie to the people of Bronx,” he said, “and it doesn’t surprise me one bit; it’s the Bloomberg administration’s m.o.” [more]
After nearly seven years in the Manhattan office of Massey Knakal Realty Services, David Simone said that he’s left the firm to start Yellow Brick Realty, which will focus exclusively on commercial sales in the Bronx and Northern Manhattan in the near-term.
During his tenure with Massey Knakal, and his two and a half years with Marcus & Millichap Real Estate Investment Services before that, Simone said he brokered more than 100 deals in the Bronx and believed the time had come for him to do something on his own and something specific to the Bronx and Upper Manhattan. [more]
A 75-block segment of the Central Bronx could face a broad rezoning
plan, aimed at revitalizing the area’s lackluster commercial and retail
activity, according to NY1. The proposed region, which runs along
Tremont and Third avenues, has seen massive vacancies, local experts
say. By rezoning the neighborhood, allowing for mixed-use development
and increased residential development, the problem could be solved,
according to Carol Samol, the Bronx director for the Department of City
Planning. “The goal is to revive [the area], to attract affordable
housing, create jobs and improve the services here in the heart of the
Bronx,” Samol said. “The zoning is outmoded and needs to be updated to
meet today’s needs.” [NY1]
