Chestnut Holdings buys Bronx-centric 19-building retail portfolio

Jonathan Wiener’s Chestnut Holdings picked up a 19-building Bronx-centric retail portfolio for $55.2 million, The Real Deal has learned.

The package consists of low-rise retail properties and one vacant lot, which are located throughout the Bronx, Brooklyn and Yonkers, according to Marcus & Millichap’s Mark Gjonbalaj, who brokered the deal.

The buildings collectively span 106,700 square feet but offer a whopping 600,000 buildable square feet. Most of the tenants are mom-and-pop grocery stores; one exception is the C-Town outpost at 1434 Jerome Avenue in the Bronx.

The leases are largely short-term, allowing for several of the sites to be developed in the near future. It’s unclear if Chestnut Holdings, a Bronx-based landlord, has any development plans.

The price per square foot was about $520.

There are 13 buildings in the Bronx, four in Brooklyn and two in Yonkers. The addresses include 191 York Street, 416 Crescent Street, 578-584 Rockaway Avenue and 104-15 Glenwood Road in Brooklyn and 300-312 East 194th Street, 2609 Marion Avenue and 1544 East 174th Street in the Bronx. The Yonkers buildings are located at 268-274 and 417-433 Riverdale Avenue.

The deal marked the end of real estate ownership for a longtime but little-known retail investor family in the city. The seller, the Berkovits family’s Scarsdale-based B&K Realty Management Corporation, opted to liquidate all of their assets, said Gjonbalaj.

The family owned the buildings for more than three decades, property records show.

Neither B&K Realty nor Chestnut could be immediately reached for comment.

Chestnut Holdings is an active Bronx investor, but almost exclusively for multifamily buildings. The firm bought 19 rental buildings in two separate deals in 2016 for a combined $87 million.

“They weren’t my first choice for something like this,” said Gjonbalaj. “But they certainly know what they’re doing.”