Joel Gluck to flip LIC site to Shibber Khan for $40M

Investor Joel Gluck plans to flip a Long Island City development site with 253,000 buildable square feet to developer Shibber Khan’s Criterion Group in a $40 million deal, The Real Deal has learned.

The deal is slated to close by the end of this month, at which time Criterion would acquire a total of five parcels at 31-08 and 31-16 Northern Boulevard, according to sources familiar with the deal. Gluck entered contract on the parcels earlier this year for an undisclosed price.

The site includes several vacant lots and a two-story, 14,500-square-foot taxi garage occupied by cab company Wailing Management.

Steven Newman, a local investor affiliated with Howling Wolf Realty LLC, paid $3.6 million for the site in 2004.

Criterion is planning a long-term hold, sources said.

Venture Capital Properties’ Lubna Abbassi is the broker on the transaction.

Newman and Khan declined to comment, while Gluck and Abbassi could not be reached.

Gluck, a Williamsburg-based investor who runs Spencer Equity and Park Management Inc., is in the midst of a dispute with Toby Moskovits of Heritage Equity Partners on joint venture projects in Long Island City and Williamsburg, as TRD reported earlier today.

Late last year, Criterion sold a 214-unit apartment building in Astoria for $88 million and picked up a development site in the neighborhood for $57 million.