From left: Adelaide Polsinelli, Megu restaurant and David Schechtman

The market for retail condominiums downtown remains robust, with two properties trading or hitting the market in the $17 million range today, sources told The Real Deal.

A 13,700-square-foot condo at 57-63 Greene Street, which houses Bang & Olufsen, a high-end video and audio products purveyor, and the furniture sellers Cyrus Co. and Raul Carrasco, has sold for $17.25 million. The seller’s broker, David Schechtman of Eastern Consolidated, confirmed the sale but not the price. [more]

Italian fashion house Ter Et Bantine is expanding in Soho, moving its showroom one block south to a second-floor loft at Zar Property’s 50 Greene Street that’s more than double the size.

The label, which only just opened its 1,076-square-foot 76 Greene Street showroom last February, signed a long-term lease this week for its new, 3,500-square-foot space, David Zar, a principal at his family’s firm, told The Real Deal. The asking rent was $45 per square foot.

Cast Iron Real Estate represented Ter Et Bantine, while the landlord was represented in-house.

Meanwhile, Zar is still looking for a new tenant at its corner, multi-level retail space down the street, at 38 Greene, which hit the market in the fall…. [more]

Dario Zar, president at Zar Property NY, and 349 Fifth Avenue (Building photo source: PropertyShark)

The Midtown-based real estate firm Zar Property NY bought the JPMorgan Chase building at 349 Fifth Avenue at 34th Street across from the Empire State Building, for just under $20 million, David Zar, a vice president at Zar Property NY, told The Real Deal today. The purchase closed Dec. 15, Zar said, but he did not immediately provide an exact sale price. The sale has not yet appeared on the city’s public property Web site Acris. The price of about $300 per square foot for the 64,000-square-foot building was far higher than the bank received for a 1.1 million-square-foot property it is selling Downtown. JPMorgan Chase is in contract to sell 4 New York Plaza at Water Street for $108 million, or about $99 per square foot. The building was part of a nearly two-dozen-building portfolio that was put on the market earlier this year. The Fifth Avenue building merited the $300 price per foot, he said, because of the location across from the Empire State Building and the quality of the space, which was turned over fully furnished.  More

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The pop-up shop at 50 Greene
Street featuring small designers and artists from Italy
for a week-long period will close today. David Zar, of Zar Property, leased the ground-floor,
3,800-square-foot space to the Milan Chamber of Commerce, which filled
the store with Italian retailers who have yet to break into the United
States market. The pop-up opened last Tuesday. Zar wouldn’t disclose the rent for the week, but did say it was a
“price we couldn’t refuse,” and that initially, he wasn’t interested
in putting a pop-up shop in the space because it’s being marketed with Sinvin
Realty for a full-time tenant. The asking rent for the Soho space is $100 a foot. Zar is currently in negotiations with another European city who wants to
open a pop-up with a similar concept in the space. TRD… [more]