A new, glass-encased boutique office and retail project on the Lower East Side has landed an anchor tenant.
San Francisco-based Solana Labs, has agreed to lease the top four floors of 141 East Houston Street, a ground-up project by East End Capital, Grandview Partners and KPG Funds. The firms acquired the site by buying the Sunshine Theater in 2017 for $31.5 million.
In announcing the lease, the firms identified the tenant only as “a global leader in the blockchain space,” but it was revealed to The Real Deal by other industry sources.
“We built 141 East Houston with the vision of attracting leading companies in tech forward industries,” said Jonathon Yormak, East End’s founder and managing principal.
A spokesperson for Solana Labs said it was sold on the combination of the building and the location, where Soho, the East Village and the Lower East Side converge.
“The building is the same high-quality new construction you see in other parts of the city, but located in a vibrant neighborhood with good public transit accessibility,” the spokesperson said. “Because this office space will, in part, be used to incubate teams building on the Solana blockchain, we wanted a location that gave teams a quintessential New York experience, which being in The Bowery provides.”
Good bike lane infrastructure was also a factor, based on employee feedback. Solana leases a floor in EmpireDAO, a web3 co-working space at 190 Bowery.
Besides the sixth through ninth floors at the 63,000-square-foot, Class A office project designed by Roger Ferris + Partners, Solana will have the 1,935 square-foot rooftop patio. Its sixth floor also has a private, L-shaped terrace. Solana is expected to take occupancy before the end of this year after the space is built out by the owners.
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The nine-story building has floor-to-ceiling glass with eight column-free office floors, each with individualized temperature controls and access from touchless elevators.
The tenant was represented by a JLL team including John Roskos and Brett Harvey, while the ownership venture was represented by JLL colleagues including Howard Hersch and Sam Seiler.
The remaining four office floors are each just under 7,000 square feet and sources revealed they have an asking rent of $140 per foot.
The landlords are looking for $225 per square foot for the ground-floor retail space, which can include outdoor seating in an adjacent planted courtyard. Two below-grade levels with high ceilings are also available. Ripco is marketing the space.
The developers of 141 East Houston Street funded construction with a $67 million loan from Capital Source and Canyon Partners Real Estate in 2019.
Solana was co-founded by Ukrainian-born Anatoly Yakovenko and Raj Gokat in 2017 as a fast platform for crypto, blockchain and NFT developers.
In April, Solana sponsored Hacker House in the artsy Miami neighborhood of Wynwood to catch the eye of startups and venture capital investors. The event was disrupted by a threat that turned out to be unfounded.