Just months away from wrapping up the conversion of a Long Island City office building into 124 rental apartments, Meadow Partners is in contract to sell it to the World Wide Group for about $70 million, sources told The Real Deal.
The 111,000-square-foot property at 42-15 Crescent Street, near Queens Plaza South, would more than triple in value by March, when the deal is expected to close for about $630 per square foot.
Meadow, a Midtown East investment firm led by Jeffrey Kaplan, paid $19 million for the nine-story office building on the site in 2012. The following year, Meadow filed conversion plans and secured a $30 million senior loan for the project.
Upon closing on the purchase, World Wide, a Midtown East development firm led by James Stanton, will take over construction and then lease the apartments and the ground-floor retail. Leasing is yet to launch.
Avinash Malhotra, whose Flatiron District-based firm Avinash K. Malhotra Architects is designing the project, said the building is on pace to be completed later this year.
Rosewood Realty Group’s Aaron Jungreis, who is brokering the sale, declined to comment, as did a representative for Meadow Partners. World Wide could not be reached.
The market-rate rental building will be the latest in a string of new rental properties cropping up in Long Island City, particularly in the hamlet of Hunters Point. Earlier this month, developer Chris Jiashu Xu filed plans for a 79-story, 774-unit residential tower at 23-15 44th Drive, set to be the area’s tallest tower.
Across the street, Meadow is at work on the ground-up construction of a 13-story, 48-unit rental project at 42-14 Crescent Street. And Weiss Realty recently bought a 130-unit rental at 41-17 Crescent Street for $97 million, or nearly $700 a foot.
World Wide and Meadow have done deals before. In January, World Wide bought a 130-unit rental in Greenpoint from Kaplan’s firm, paying $103 million in the priciest-ever acquisition of a residential asset in the neighborhood.