From left: Charles Brophy, Elliman executive and former owner of Charles G. Brophy Real Estate, and Elliman President and CEO Dottie Herman

[Updated at 5:30 p.m. with comments from Elliman CEO Dottie Herman and Charles Brophy]

Prudential Douglas Elliman marked the grand opening of its second Riverdale office, a two-level space located at 6048 Riverdale Avenue at West 261st Street, with a ribbon cutting last week, home to residential firm Charles G. Brophy Real Estate, with whom Elliman merged in September 2011. The office has been operating under the Elliman name since the merger.

A total of eight agents currently work in the office, said Charles Brophy, the office’s new executive vice president and former head of Charles G. Brophy Real Estate, and the plan is to hire up to 25. The office spans 500 square feet on the street level and 700 on the second level. Only one agent from Brophy’s former firm crossed over, five Elliman agents previously with other offices made the move to the new Riverdale office and two others were recruited from other firms. [more]

In some of the city’s most desireable neighborhoods, prospective buyers are eschewing bargains and hedging their bets on rentals till the market returns.

In Riverdale, an affluent residential neighborhood in the northwest portion of the Bronx, listings have skyrocketed, but sales have dropped, the New York Times reported, with available properties having increased by 80 percent over two years.

In fact, it would take approximately two years for buyers to absorb the current sales inventory in Riverdale, according to data from Streeteasy.com, more than double the time it might have taken even two years ago. [more]

A home on the Delafield EstatesNow on its fourth development attempt, the Delafield Estates in Riverdale could finally become what developers first envisioned for the 10.4-acre Bronx site back in 1980, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The estates, once owned by early Bank of America President Edward Delafield who resided in a mansion on the property, before donating it to Columbia University in 1965 in hopes it would become a botanical gardens. But facing budget shortfalls a decade later, the university put it on the market and a buyer got approval for a gated community of 33 compact houses clustered together on about three of the acres, with the remaining seven left for shared woodland. [more]

Riverdale’s Stella D’oro cookie factory will be sold to developers Metropolitan Realty Associates and Angelo, Gordon & Co. to build a shopping center, the Wall Street Journal reported. The new 162,000-square-foot center will most likely be anchored by a BJ’s Wholesale Club, sources said.
The bakery is being sold by Brynwood Partners, a private equity fund based in Greenwich, Conn., which purchased Stella D’oro in 2006 in a futile effort to turn the manufacturer around. The bakery’s operations ended about two years ago, putting about 150 employees out of work.
Terms of the sale were not immediately available but the facility was listed in the low $20 million range, the Journal said. [more]

From left: Diane Ramirez and Susan Goldy

Halstead Property acquired longtime residential Riverdale brokerage Susan Goldy Real Estate, the firm announced today, marking its second office in the upscale Bronx community. Both sides refused to disclose the terms of the deal, but Susan Goldy’s 12 agents will remain in their Moshalu Avenue office while joining the Halstead Property brand, as of today.

Halstead already has a 20-agent office at 3531 Johnson Avenue, but Diane Ramirez, president of the firm, said she coveted Susan Goldy’s “incredible reputation in the community and great client base” along with the added depth and marketshare the firm immediately provides Halstead.

Susan Goldy, who founded the eponymous firm 34 years ago and maintains an office at 5626 Mosholu Avenue, said that merging with Halstead offered her firm the opportunity to keep pace with a changing real estate landscape. [more]

Three non-profit organizations have signed full-floor leases at 147 West 24th Street between Sixth and Seventh avenues, according to landlord the Moinian Group. Meanwhile, the city began a $266 million remediation project on a Staten Island landfill today, and a Riverdale, N.J. shopping center welcomed Best Buy as a new tenant. Click here for more. TRD [more]

Sales at new condo developments in Riverdale have been slowly
sputtering along since the boom in 2006. But now, after introducing a
few more options and incentives to potential buyers, two of the
neighborhood’s projects — Arc Development’s Solaria Riverdale and
Q-Real Estate Partners’ Latitude — have seen a recent increase in
interest. Since introducing two new incentives — free home assurance and a tuition credit — in April, six of Solaria’s units have
gone into contract. Also, over the past two months Solaria has rented
four other units. The project, at 640 West 237th Street, still
has a long way to go, however, because it only has 10 closed deals, 10
in contract (including the six since April), and the four being rented,
out of the 64 units in the building, since sales began in 2006. [more]

After years of lawsuits and delays, two homes designed by Robert A.M.
Stern in Riverdale opened to prospective buyers last week. The homes
are the first in the Villanova Heights community, a 16-acre property
developer John Fitzgerald bought from Manhattan College in 1990.
Fitzgerald disputed with a property owners association and community
board over the size of the planned mansions, which resulted in federal
lawsuits and years of delays. Fitzgerald gained the right to build on
the property in 2004. The two homes designed by Stern are both more
than 11,000 square feet, priced at $11.95 million and $11.2 million,
and include fireplaces, a three-car garage, double staircase, pool,
elevator and wine cellar. In addition to the two houses on the market,
three more homes are under construction and there are plans for 10 more. [more]