Two properties once owned by Brandon Miller are turning a corner, seven months after the developer’s tragic death.
Leasing has begun at an East Village office property developed by Miller’s company, Real Estate Equities Corporation, or REEC. And a vacant lot in Chelsea where Miller once envisioned another office building is up for sale.
Both projects had been plagued by debt and other complications before Miller died by suicide on July 3.
At the East Village property, Miller’s vision of a boutique office project has come to life. Construction of the nine-story building with wraparound terraces and a curved brick and glass facade is in the final stages, and pre-leasing has started.
Asking rents at 1 St. Mark’s Place are $135 to $190 per square foot, according to a LinkedIn video posted by JLL’s Peter Michailidis.
REEC bought the leasehold on the property in 2017 for $29 million from Edward Gabay. In 2018, the firm filed plans to build a 53,000-square-foot office building, but progress was slow. Before foundations were even dug, Madison Capital Realty tried foreclosing on the property in 2021.
Parkview Financial rescued the project with a $70 million refinance the following year, but REEC later fell behind on loan payments at the project, which was built entirely on spec. It appears that REEC is the developer that saw the project through to completion. Miller’s partner, Mark Seigel, has remained silent since his death.
In Chelsea, Benny Barmapov is selling two adjacent properties on 10th Avenue near the High Line, where Miller had hoped to build a 10-story, 100,000-square-foot office building with ground-floor retail.
Adirondack Capital Partners has the listing for the 12,000-square-foot undeveloped parcel, which was first reported by the Commercial Observer. The firm will start to accept offers next month, Adirondack’s Michael Coghill said. The property will most likely be developed into condos instead of the offices that Miller once imagined.
“I think the highest and best use today is a residential condo,” Coghill said. “The response thus far from the market has been predominantly from condo developers.”
REEC bought the leasehold for 118 10th Avenue in a January 2017 deal valued at $21 million. But their office project was never built and the leasehold changed hands again two years later when an entity tied to GDS Development Management and Swedish real estate firm Klövern AB took it over.
Plans for an office building were again derailed by Covid and the leasehold was transferred back to Brandon Miller in December 2023. But Miller stopped paying the ground lease just a few months into 2024.
Before his death, Miller had pledged his equity interests in the entity controlling the property to a company called DIA Family Holdings, which later filed for bankruptcy protection. Barmapov took back property and collapsed the ground lease and is now selling the property outright.
“It’s obviously a long and traumatic history with the site, but ownership is eager to make a deal,” Coghill said.
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