Morgan Stanley buys Soho retail building for $70M

Sitt and Centurion Realty paid $32.5M for 113 Spring Street in 2012

From left: 113 Spring Street, Ralph Tawil, Doug Harmon and Adam Spies
From left: 113 Spring Street, Ralph Tawil, Doug Harmon and Adam Spies

Morgan Stanley Real Estate Investing bought the retail and office building 113 Spring Street in Soho for $70 million, sources told The Real Deal, paying more than double what the sellers laid out when they acquired it in 2012.

Ralph Sitt’s Status Capital and Ralph Tawil’s Centurion Realty are the sellers in the transaction, which closed Wednesday.

Sitt and Tawil bought the property for $32.5 million in November 2012. 

The large increase in the property’s value is tied to a spike in Soho retail rents over the past three years, which is driving owners to make a handsome profit on their holdings. This is the first of several Soho retail transactions expected to close in the coming months.

The five-story building at 113 Spring has about 16,500 square feet above ground, including some 6,000 square feet of retail over two stories, according to sources. The ground-floor retail space is leased until 2021 to shoe retailer Frye at a below-market rent, insiders said. Office tenants include post-production firm Lost Planet.

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Eastdil Secured’s Adam Spies, Doug Harmon, Shannon Ching and Doug Middleton represented the sellers, sources said. Eastdil and the sellers declined to comment, while Morgan Stanley didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Morgan Stanley is paying about $4,240 per square foot for the property. One block west, Invesco is in contract to buy nearby 131-137 Spring Street, a 65,000-square-foot retail and office property, for the same per-square-foot price, about $4,240, from SL Green Realty. Eastdil’s Spies and Harmon are also brokering that deal.

In addition, their team is marketing the retail cooperative across the street at 106 Spring Street, which has about 9,000 square feet on the ground and another 3,000 square feet on the lower level.