Sprayregen son sells self-storage for $56M payday

Knickpoint Ventures co-founder appears to exit Brooklyn, Queens markets

Knickpoint Ventures' Matthew Sprayregen with 160 John Street and 37-19 Crescent Street (Knickpoint Ventures, Google Maps)
Knickpoint Ventures' Matthew Sprayregen with 160 John Street and 37-19 Crescent Street (Knickpoint Ventures, Google Maps)

A second-generation real estate investor is poised to tuck away a big check and leave Brooklyn and Queens behind.

Companies connected to the Sprayregen family’s defunct self-storage company, Tuck-it-Away, sold two self-storage buildings to Invesco Real Estate this month for $56.3 million, records show.

A storage building spanning 99,000 square feet at 160 John Street in Vinegar Hill, Brooklyn, traded for $43.5 million, and a 47,000-square-foot building at 37-19 Crescent Street in Long Island City sold for $12.8 million. Extra Space Storage manages the properties.

Matthew Sprayregen, whose father, Tuck-it-Away founder Nick Sprayregen, battled the state in court for using eminent domain to expand the Columbia University campus before dying in 2016, signed the sales documents.

Nick Sprayregen’s Tuck-it-Away bought the Queens property in 2013 for $6.1 million and the Brooklyn building in 2007 for $10.8 million, according to real estate records.

Matthew co-founded Knickpoint Ventures, whose website claims it owns 15 self-storage properties including a pair resembling those sold by limited liability companies Tuck-it-Away Associates Dumbo and Astoria Rising. The firm did not return a request for comment.

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Having grown out of the Sprayregen family’s Harlem-born storage company, Knickpoint has sought fortune in Chicago, where it took out a $50 million mortgage to buy a majority stake in a 1.5 million-square-foot, mixed-use development, and looked for investment in a $200 million production studio last year.

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Invesco, a subsidiary of the Atlanta-based asset management firm, has meanwhile expanded its presence in the New York market substantially over the past decade, from owning no assets in the city in 2011 to regularly making large deals.

It spent $65 million this year on a shopping center in Westchester and partnered to buy a portfolio of multifamily buildings in the Bronx worth $350 million.

A Facebook page last updated in 2015 still showcases Tuck-it-Away’s local charity and paint color recommendations (“warm gray”), although the company’s website no longer loads, its voicemail is full and its customer service email bounces messages back.