Isaac Khafif’s MKF Realty is planning to a develop an office building spanning at least 250,000 square feet near the Hell’s Kitchen waterfront after having recently finalized an assemblage, sources told The Real Deal.
Over the past five years, Khafif quietly gathered three adjacent properties — and their development rights — with frontage along West 46th and 47th streets and West Side Highway. He spent a combined $69 million in three separate deals, property records show.
Khafif began the assemblage in 2012 with the $11 million purchase of the home to the last H&H Bagels store in the city, after the New York City Marshals shut the shop down. (The H&H Bagels that opened on the Upper West Side last year is not affiliated with the New York institution.) That property at 639 West 46th Street, which now houses event space Metropolitan West, would be razed along with the others to make way for a new, large building.
Khafif then paid $36.5 million in 2015 for a limousine garage at 636 West 47th Street with 95,000 buildable square feet. He finalized the assemblage in late July this year by paying $21.5 million for a building at 638 West 47th Street with a car wash and a popular Underwest Donuts. The 2015 and 2017 acquisitions were all-cash deals, sources said.
Sources said the three parcels collectively offer about 250,000 buildable square feet. Khafif, who declined to comment, is interested in further expanding the site with neighboring air rights, sources said.
Given the site is zoned for a commercial or manufacturing use, the developer has ruled out a residential project but is still weighing its plans for the offices and has not yet hired an architect, sources said.
MKF Realty, a Midtown East-based firm which develops multifamily and office properties in New York City, has also redeveloped the Long Island City condo Ten63 and has active projects in Bushwick and Harlem. Khafif’s family runs a major development firm in Argentina known as RAGHSA, for which he also serves as a director and real estate manager.
Elsewhere in Hell’s Kitchen, Taconic Investment Partners and Silverstein Properties are planning a $20 million redevelopment of a former industrial building at 619 West 54th Street into a life sciences center.