Long Island Cheat Sheet: Mineola multifamily complex trades for $150M, JLL scales bank Ronkonkoma arena plan… & more

<em>Clockwise from top left: Friedkin Realty Group buys a multifamily complex in Mineola for $150M, Jones Lang LaSalle scales back a$1B arena project in Ronkonkoma and ditches National Hockey League hopes, composer John Philip Sousa's former Sands Point home gets a $400K price cut and pending home sales in Nassau and Suffolk counties are up 5 percent.</em>
Clockwise from top left: Friedkin Realty Group buys a multifamily complex in Mineola for $150M, Jones Lang LaSalle scales back a$1B arena project in Ronkonkoma and ditches National Hockey League hopes, composer John Philip Sousa's former Sands Point home gets a $400K price cut and pending home sales in Nassau and Suffolk counties are up 5 percent.

Friedkin Realty buys Mineola multifamily complex for $150M
The Allure and Hudson House apartments in Mineola have been sold for $150 million to the San Francisco-based Friedkin Realty Group, according to The Real Deal. Friedkin Realty bought the properties from J.P. Morgan Asset Management. JLL’s Thomas Walsh, Joseph Garibaldi, Kelly Gaines, Ray Ruiz, Katelyn Brovsky and Heather Lombardi facilitated the sale and brought in the buyer. The brokerage told TRD the transaction is the second priciest sale of a multifamily property on Long Island within the past five years. JPMorgan Chase had co-owned the properties with with Mill Creek Residential, but bought out the latter about two years ago. Finished in 2015, the Allure, located at 140 Old Country Road, has 275 rental units across five stories, a fitness center, a golf simulator and two courtyards. Hudson House, at 104 Front Street, is a senior living facility with 36 income-restricted units located next to the Allure. The two properties join a cross-country portfolio at Friedkin Realty that includes the Point at Pine Ridge, a 450-unit building in the Suffolk County hamlet of Coram. [TRD]

Developers ditch $1.1B Ronkonkoma arena plan to recruit NHL
The so-called Ronkonkoma Vision Project, a partnership between former National Hockey League star Pat LaFontaine and Chicago-based real estate investment management and services firm JLL, has dramatically scaled back its plans for a $1.1 billion arena development on 86 acres between Long Island MacArthur Airport and Ronkonkoma’s Long Island Rail Road station, according to Newsday. JLL had hoped to build a 17,500-seat arena that would be home to an NHL team, but in a revised plan released last week said it would now seek to construct a 7,500-seat arena for a minor league hockey team and a 6,000-seat stadium for a minor league soccer team. In 2018, JLL beat out three other developers for the Suffolk County project in Ronkonkoma, which will also include offices, a convention center and medical facilities. But local residents voiced their concerns about increased traffic and overcrowding, while the grand athletic visions attached to the development were dashed when officials with the NHL and the league’s New York Islanders said there weren’t interested in it. LaFontaine, a Hockey Hall of Famer, used to play for the Islanders, who in December returned to Long Island, albeit as they prepare to move into a new arena at the Belmont Park development in Nassau County. Long Island Business News reported that LaFontaine and JLL now hope to bring an American Hockey League team in as an anchor tenant for the project, which also hopes to recruit a United Soccer League franchise. The two serve as feeder leagues for the NHL and Major League Soccer, respectively. [Newsday]

Nassau and Suffolk pending home sales rise 5 percent
Pending home sales in Nassau and Suffolk counties climbed by 5 percent in February over the same period in 2018, according to Long Island Business News. In both counties, pending sales jumped from 2,177 in February 2018 to 2,285 last month. In Nassau alone, there were 958 homes contracted for sale last month, a 1 percent uptick from the 949 a year prior. In Suffolk county, 1,327 homes went into contract this past February, an 8 percent increase from the 1,228 in February 2018. During the first two months of this year, a turbulent time for the U.S. housing market, pending home sales are up nearly 8 percent across Long Island when compared to the same period last year. Inventory has also risen to 10,953 homes listed for sale in both counties, roughly 6.6 percent higher than the 10,273 homes that were listed in February 2018, according to the Multiple Listing Service of Long Island. [LIBN]

Euro Properties to list Sands Point estate after condo sale
Hong Kong-based developer Euro Properties, which last week sold its stake in a stalled Manhattan condo project for $26 million, is also preparing to unload a waterfront estate at 24 Hicks Lane in Sands Point, the company said in a statement. The 21-acre property with 628 feet of water frontage was just approved for subdivision into six different plots. On the property is a 5,800-square-foot brick colonial main house with a tennis court, gunite pool and a running track. The estate, which can be sold together or as six lots, also has a brick barn, two cottages, a 400-foot permanent deep water dock and a floating dock. Herb Hirsch and Joseph Masini of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices New York Properties have the listing. The announcement of the proposed Sands Point sale came as Euro Properties divested its stake in a stalled condo tower at 118 East 59th Street. The company was supposed to be the first Chinese developer to build a condo tower in Manhattan, but the 29-unit project lost steam amid Chinese government reforms cutting back on outbound capital flows from the mainland into foreign markets. [TRD]

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Famous composer’s Sands Point home gets a $400K price cut
The price of Wildbank, the former Sands Point home of late American composer John Philip Sousa, has dropped by $400,000, down to $9.45 million, said a Douglas Elliman spokeswoman. The 6,000-square-foot waterfront home at 12 Hicks Lane has six bedrooms, five-and-a-half bathrooms, a gym, fireplaces, a loggia, an upper balcony and Zuber scenic wallpaper. Both the main house and nearby cottage have their own wine cellars and generators. It also has a deep-water dock on a sandy beach with sunset-facing views. The home, added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1966, came on the market last summer. Sousa, the composer behind “The Stars and Stripes Forever” and many other military marches, reportedly lived in the Sands Point home from 1915 to 1932, the year he died at 77. Maggie Keats of Douglas Elliman has the listing. [Douglas Elliman]

Long Island’s office market holds relatively steady in 2018
The office market on Long Island remained relatively stable last year with landlords closing deals at a rate that outpaced a sluggish 2017, as noted by The Real Deal in its inaugural Tri-State issue last month. Many of the new leases, however, were either renewals or restructurings. TRD noted that transactions involving new tenants were the minority when looking at the top Long Island office market leases of 2018, with none of the new tenant deals exceeding 100,000 square feet. A report released this week by the Melville-based Rochlin Organization found that a single-digit vacancy rate of 9.6 percent and average asking rents of $24.47 per square foot in 2018 were mostly on par with a year prior. Rochlin and TRD noted that one of the largest new “Class A” available spaces to come on the market is CLK Properties’ 275 Broadhollow Road in Melville, where Capital One Financial vacated all four floors at the end of 2018. Rochlin noted that single vacancy pushed Suffolk County’s office vacancy rate to 11.5 percent last year, up from 9.7 percent in 2017. [TRD]

Newsday to keep Farmingdale distribution space amid HQ move
Long Island’s largest newspaper, Newsday, has renewed its lease on a 38,600-square-foot warehouse and distribution space at 360 Smith Street in Farmingdale, Long Island Business News reported. The newspaper has leased the space for the past two decades and asking rent for the property was $12.50 per square foot, according to GlobeSt. The property’s landlord, Syosset-based Milvado Property Group, represented itself in the renewal, while Avison Young’s Frank Pagano took the lead for Newsday. “Newsday is an amazing tenant. Its company is crucial for news delivery throughout Long Island and we are pleased to be able to accommodate their residency for the future,” said a statement from Milvado regional director David Hercman. The renewal comes as Newsday prepares to leave its current 530,000-square-foot headquarters at 235 Pinelawn Road in Melville and move to a more modest 120,000-square-foot space nearby at 2 Corporate Center Drive. The property at 235 Pinelawn Road, which spans 48.5 acres, was owned by the Tribune Media Company until it was sold late last year to New Jersey-based Hartz Mountain Industries for $54.5 million. [LIBN]