Silverstone, RWN pay $72M for Kips Bay package: sources

Silverstone Property Group and RWN Real Estate Partners have ponied up $71.5 million for seven adjacent properties at 33rd Street and Third Avenue, their second big purchase in Kips Bay, The Real Deal has learned from insiders.

Silverstone, a real estate investment firm headed by Martin Nussbaum, and RWN, a real estate private equity fund led by Ari Shalam, closed on the purchase yesterday from a company owned in part by Darryl Mallah, an executive with Icon Parking Systems.

Neither Nussbaum nor Shalam responded immediately to TRD’s request for comment; Mallah declined to comment, although a person with ties to the seller confirmed the sale.

The properties include 146 residential apartment units and eight stores, and wrap around the corner with 103 Feet On Third Avenue and 217 feet on 33rd Street. The addresses of the buildings are 489, 493 and 495 Third Avenue, and 203, 205, 207 and 211 East 33rd Street, the insiders said. The deal also includes about 60,000 square feet of air rights, they said.

Last year, Silverstone and RWN spent $53 million for a 128-unit apartment tower called the Grayson, at 247 East 28th Street.

GFI Realty Services represented both the buyers and seller in yesterday’s deal. Yosef Katz, a director and salesperson, represented Silverstone, and salesperson Barak Jacobov represented the seller, Katz told TRD.

“Martin [Nussbaum] was my first and only phone call,” Katz said, of the off-market transaction.

The package traded at about 15 times the rent roll but Silverstone and RWN expected to rehabilitate the units and raise the rents, sources familiar with the deal said.

The building’s residential units are about 60 percent free market; retail tenants include a nail salon and a restaurant, Pizza 33.

The retail “is more ‘mom and pop’ now,” Katz said. “I think that is a big part of the [potential] upside as well.”