L3 Capital has landed a $90.5 million loan to refinance 11 retail properties in Williamsburg spanning 85,000 square feet.
The portfolio includes 81-83, 85-87, 89, 91, 111, 113 and 115 North 6th Street, 104-106 and 108 North 7th Street, 168-170 Wythe Avenue, 51 North 6th Street and 129-133 Kent Avenue, according to JLL, which brokered the deal. Tenants include a Madewell pop-up and Rosarito Fish Shack.
L3 began putting the mixed-use portfolio together in 2015 and has since repositioned most of the properties. The loan came from Ladder Capital.
Representatives for Ladder and L3 Capital did not respond to requests for comment.
A JLL team led by Geoff Goldstein, Rob Rizzi and Brett Rosenberg arranged the deal.
L3 is based in Chicago, where it recently bought three Fulton Market properties at 932 West Randolph Street, 1020 West Randolph Street and 1020 West Lake Street for $19 million.
Retail rents in Williamsburg — specifically along Bedford Avenue between Grand Street and North 8th Street — have been going down since peaking at an average of $393 per square foot during the summer of 2017, according to figures from the Real Estate Board of New York. Average asking rents dropped 17 percent last summer to hit $326 per square foot.
The decline hit home for Williamsburg’s biggest retail landlord RedSky Capital last year, when JZ Capital Partners, RedSky’s partner on its $1 billion portfolio, wrote down the value of their real estate by as much as a third.
Meanwhile, the area’s office market got a recent boost. Rubenstein Partners and Heritage Equity Partners inked a lease with the fashion brand Kith at the end of 2019 to be the first tenant in the nearby 25 Kent, the first ground-up commercial building in Williamsburg in more than 40 years.