Invesco has purchased the vast majority stake in the retail condominium at 1466 Broadway for $195.8 million, city records show. Crown Acquisitions and Highgate Holdings will continue to hold minority stakes of the Times Square property, with Crown continuing to operate a part of the retail space, The Real Deal has learned.
As Crain’s reported last week, Walton Street Capital sold its majority stake to Invesco for upwards of $100 million. Crown Acquisitions was part of an investment group that purchased the property, and then sold the upper portion of the building to Highgate Holdings.
Adam Spies and Doug Harmon of Eastdil Secured arranged the deal.
The purchase comes with air rights, making it ripe for further retail development. There is currently 12,000 square feet of vacant retail space in the building. In addition, the Gap’s below-market-rate lease on 28,000 square feet of the 40,000-square-foot retail space is set to expire in three years, with no option to renew, suggesting the possibility of higher rents.
The building at 1466 Broadway, formerly known as the Knickerbocker Hotel, is located on 42nd Street between Sixth and Seventh avenues, in an area that has become increasingly enticing to retailers. Clothing retailer H&M recently signed a nearly $20 million lease at 4 Times Square, and Vornado Realty Trust signed a 20-year-lease for retail space beneath the Marriott Marquis Times Square hotel, and will invest as much as $140 million to develop it. “What’s interesting is this is part of a whole regentrification between Sixth Avenue and Broadway,” Spies said. “It’s always been a little quiet, now that’s changing.”
The Dallas, Texas-based Invesco’s recent deals include a $300 million purchase of the 48-story Madison Belvedere building on behalf of a client, and a April 2011 $57.5 million purchase of Arias Park Slope, a 95-unit condominium-turned-rental building at 150 Fourth Avenue. In November, Invesco said it would bring the Brill Building, a historic Times Square office building, to market early next year.