New York REIT sells first retail property in liquidation

HUBBNYC picks up retail-and-parking garage for $25M

New York REIT sold the first standalone retail property in the liquidation of its multibillion-dollar portfolio to HUBB NYC for $25 million.

HUBB paid $25.1 million to buy the retail condominium unit and parking garage spanning roughly 43,000 square feet at the base of the Orion condo-and-rental building at 350 West 42nd Street, sources told The Real Deal.

Jesse Terry, HUBB’s director of acquisitions, confirmed the deal and said the property was attractive due to the area’s high pedestrian traffic and proximity to the burgeoning Far West Side.

“This location benefits from its close vicinity to Port Authority, Times Square, office [population] and a growing residential population to the west,” he wrote in an email.

Retail tenants Starbucks and grocery Merci Market are on long-term leases covering nearly 8,000 square feet of retail on the ground floor, while the Orion condo leases about 1,000 square feet on the lower level as storage space.

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New York REIT paid $20.7 million in 2012 to buy the retail and garage units from the Orion’s developer, Extell Development, property records show.

The troubled real estate investment trust, which brought CEO Wendy Silverstein on board in 2016 to dissolve its 4.4 million-square-foot portfolio, hired an investment-sales team at RKF led by Jeff Fishman last year to market seven standalone retail properties in Manhattan.

Along with the Orion condo that HUBB bought, the properties include a pair of condos in Tribeca and properties in Greenwich Village, mostly on Bleecker Street. Fishman could not be immediately reached for comment.

New York REIT, meanwhile, has been busy selling off its collection of large office buildings. The company went into contract in November to sell the 25-story office building at 1440 Broadway to CIM Group for $520 million just a few weeks after selling a 49 percent stake in One Worldwide Plaza in a deal valuing the 2.1 million-square-foot tower at $1.7 billion.

HUBB recently picked up five retail condos on West 33rd Street from 60 Guilders and the Carlyle Group for $24 million.