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Vanbarton sells UWS retail condo, topping midsize i-sales

5 deals for commercial properties worth $10M to $40M hit records

235 West 75th Street, Vanbarton Group’s Justin Kleinman and Waterfall Asset Management’s Kenneth Nick (Getty, Google Maps)
235 West 75th Street, Vanbarton Group’s Justin Kleinman and Waterfall Asset Management’s Kenneth Nick (Getty, Google Maps)

Manhattan was the lone borough with mid-market investment sales recorded last week.

All five commercial property sales between $10 million and $40 million to hit city records last week occurred in New York County. Two were for retail properties, two were for multifamily buildings and one was for a religious site.

Below is more information on each deal, ranked by dollar amount.

  1. An entity tied to the Vanbarton Group sold the retail condominium at The Astor, 235 West 75th Street on the Upper West Side, for $38.7 million to an entity connected to Waterfall Asset Management.

The sale represents a significant loss for Vanbarton, which paid almost $104 million in 2016 for the 31,200-square-foot retail condo. The space was once home to Barney’s New York and Lululemon.

  1. An entity connected to Optimum Properties bought a retail property at 603 Fifth Avenue in the Diamond District for $16.3 million from 603 Fifth Avenue LLC. The four-floor, 9,400-square-foot building is home to an Aldo footwear store and was last sold in 20016 for an undisclosed amount.
  1. The Archdiocese of New York sold the former Church of St. Benedict the Moor at 338, 340 and 342 West 53rd Street in Hell’s Kitchen for $16 million to an entity tied to Los Angeles-based nonprofit JMM Charitable Foundation.

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The sale includes the 154-year-old church, parish building and rectory, all of which are empty, Bisnow reported. Denham Wolf Real Estate Services brokered the transaction for the seller, while Compass represented the buyer.

The foundation is run by Walter Wang, a billionaire philanthropist who serves as the CEO of plastic and PVC pipe manufacturing firm JM Eagle. While it’s unclear what the charity’s plans are, it has agreed to keep the church building for at least 20 years and not make any exterior renovations.

However, such restrictions do not apply to the parish building and rectory. The site also has about 19,000 square feet of excess development rights.

Built in 1869 as Second Evangelical Church, it was purchased in 1896 by the Archdiocese. The other two properties were built in 1967. The Archdiocese deconsecrated the church in 2017 and deemed the site eligible to be sold.

  1. An entity tied to Targo Capital Partners bought a pair of five-floor multifamily properties at 225-227 West 20th Street in Chelsea for $13.8 million from 225 West 20th Street LLC. The two buildings consist of 32 units across 16,700 square feet.
  1. An entity connected to Great Neck-based landlord Bahram Hakakian’s Allied Realty and Development bought an apartment building at 20 East 22nd Street in the Flatiron District for $10.3 million from an entity tied to Carol Mae Matzel. The 10,500-square-foot building consists of 23 units across six floors. It was last sold in 2016 for an undisclosed amount.

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