I-sales recap: Brookfield, Slate, Wavecrest, Benchmark, Hidrock close deals

Bespoke Living unloaded a commercial unit in a luxury condo redevelopment that’s been the subject of drama.

In 2018, then-owner Hans Futterman accused its lender on what was then a development site on West 122nd Street property, Ari Shalam’s RWN Real Estate Partners, of holding a “sham” bankruptcy auction that suppressed potential buyers. Futterman defaulted on a $36 million loan from RWN in 2016, then declared bankruptcy — accusing RWN of a “loan-to-own” strategy.

RWN, the real estate arm of Apollo Global Management, was one of two bidders in the 2017 auction, and won with a $48.6 million offer. A few months later it sold the property for $69 million to Bespoke, then known as Happy Living, which was the other bidder.

The 13-story, 166,000-square-foot project at 300 West 122nd Street was eventually built with 170 apartments and three commercial units.. The one that sold last week fetched $18 million for Bespoke Living from KBI Realty.

That was a highlight of last week’s deals in the city’s middle market, defined as sales between $10 million and $40 million. Below are the rest of them, ordered by price.

1. Brookfield Properties sold a Queens apartment building to Slate Property Group and Settlement Housing Fund for $39 million. Located at 54-39 100th Street in Corona, the building has 296 units over eight floors and 266,000 square feet. Brookfield bought it in 2019 for $27.2 million.

2. Wavecrest Equities bought the Belmont-Venezia Apartments in the Little Italy section of the Bronx for $28 million. The project-based Section 8 development has five buildings within a quarter mile of each other, with 180 apartments and two commercial units. The addresses are 2404-2416 Crotona Avenue, 2476 Hughes Avenue, and 2423-31 Belmont Avenue. Wavecrest assumes a $15.7 million mortgage. Rosewood Realty's Ben Khakshoor and Alex Fuchs represented both Wavecrest and the undisclosed seller.

3. Benchmark Real Estate Group purchased a mixed-use development at 146-150 10th Avenue in Chelsea for $26.8 million. The trio of addresses combine for 46 residential and three commercial units over 15 floors and 26,000 square feet, with about 20 percent of the residential units being rent-regulated. The seller was Jack Hidary’s Hidrock Properties, which acquired the property for $35.5 million in 2015. In 2020, the company refinanced existing debt on the buildings with a $26.5 million floating-rate loan from Ladder Capital.

4. Kenneth Horn’s Alchemy-ABR purchased an eight-unit, five-story, 7,500-square-foot walkup apartment building on the Upper East Side for $26.3 million. Denver-based Air Properties is the seller of the property, located at 1691-93 Second Avenue between East 87th and East 88th streets. The company purchased the property for $2.1 million in 2004.

5. Bahar Corporation sold the Giorgio Hotel in Long Island City for $17 million. The buyer is Best Western Plus Plaza, which also owns a hotel on 21st Street in Queens. The Giorgio hotel, located at 38-60 13th Street, has 72 rooms over 10 floors and 31,000 square feet. Bahar bought the hotel from Yip Brothers Realty in 2014 for $2.6 million. Bahar assumes a $9.9 million mortgage in the deal from Metro City Bank.

6. Lourdes Zapata’s SoBro Local Development Corporation bought a sextet of neighboring manufacturing buildings in the Morrisania neighborhood of the Bronx for $16 million. The properties — 1004 Brook Avenue, 1014 Brook Avenue, 412 East 165th Street, 414 East 165th Street, 416 East 165th Street and 422 East 165th Street — were sold by Tiffany Lumber Company. SoBro took out a $12.2 million loan from Metropolitan Commercial Bank to fund the purchase. SoBro plans a development called New Roads Plaza with 95 low-income housing units.

7. The Calhoun School sold off its five-story campus at 160 West 74th Street on the Upper West Side for $14 million to UWS Partners, which took out a $9.6 million mortgage from M&T Bank to complete the purchase.

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