Savanna nears deal to buy Falchi Building for $255M

Savanna is finalizing a deal to purchase the historic, 658,000-square-foot Falchi Building in Long Island City from Jamestown Properties for north of $255 million, or nearly $400 per square foot, sources told The Real Deal.

Sources familiar with the negotiations said the five-story office building at 31-00 47th Avenue is expected to go under contract by the end of this week.

The property is 91 percent leased and houses tenants such as Lyft, Astoria Distilling Company, Webline Designs and retailers Doughnut Plant and Juice Press. Lyft’s ride-share rival, Uber, signed an 11-year lease for 11,000 square feet on the ground floor in August.

The floor plates span about 145,000 square feet, and asking rents average $37.50 per square foot, according to the building’s website.

The Falchi Building [TRDataCustom] was constructed in the early 1920s as a storage and distribution facility for the Gimbels department store and was converted into offices in the 1980s. Jamestown bought it from the Chetrit Group for $81.2 million in 2012, and then extensively renovated it.

Adam Spies, who left Eastdil Secured earlier this month for Cushman & Wakefield, was marketing the property for sale this summer.

A spokesperson for Jamestown declined to comment. Spies and Savanna, a Midtown-based private equity firm led by Chris Schlank and Nicholas Bienstock, could not be immediately reached.

Savanna also owns One Court Square, a 1.5 million-square-foot office tower in the neighborhood. The firm dropped plans to sell it last year after initially putting it on the market. Instead, Savanna refinanced the tower’s $315 million mortgage.

In other notable Long Island City office deals, Westbrook Partners and Andrew Chung’s Innovo Property Group paid about $300 per square foot for a 656,000-square-foot warehouse at 23-02 49th Avenue in March, while 60 Guilders paid about $190 per square foot for a stake in the Feil Organization’s 1.2 million-square-foot Queens Atrium office complex at 30-20 Thomson Avenue in 2014.