Inwood site goes for twice what seller paid last year

FBE had acquired site last year for $26M

4650 Broadway (Credit: Google Maps)
4650 Broadway (Credit: Google Maps)

The Arden Group has closed on its purchase of a 47,350-square-foot development site at the edge of a rezoned section of Inwood.

The deal for 4650 Broadway closed earlier this week between Philadelphia-based Arden and Abraham Fructhandler’s FBE Limited for $54 million, according to a person familiar with the transaction.

Arden did not immediately return a request for comment. A person who answered the phone at FBE’s office said she had no information. Capital Property Partners’ Daniel Rahmani was the sole broker on the deal. He declined to comment.

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The price is more than twice the $26 million FBE paid to Acadia Real Estate Trust in April 2018 for the development site, which is in an Opportunity Zone. (Adam America Real Estate was brought in as a tenant in common later that year.) Plans were filed in August 2018 to take down a two-story parking garage there.

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To finance its purchase, Arden secured $44 million from Scale Lending, Slate Property Group and Carlyle Group’s lending division. Commercial Observer first reported the loan, which was brokered by Newmark Knight Frank’s Dustin Stolly and Jordan Roeschlaub.

Arden intends to build a mixed-use development spanning 300,000 square feet and including market-rate and affordable rentals, community space and parking, Commercial Observer reported.

The site last year was in contract to be sold for roughly the same amount to Eli Karp’s Hello Living. That firm also had planned to build a mixed-use complex.

Acadia, a prior owner of the site, also had envisioned affordable housing for the plot, situated near Fort Tryon Park. Working with Washington Square Partners, it planned a 15-story building that would have been the first development constructed under the city’s mandatory inclusionary housing program. But it was shot down amid City Council opposition.

A large section of Inwood was rezoned a little over a year ago to make it easier to build residential projects in the Upper Manhattan neighborhood, though this development site appears to sit just outside the rezoned area. The new zoning has raised gentrification concerns among residents.