Orbach Group Pays $70M for Manhattan Portfolio; Extell Sells Retail Condo at the International Gem Tower

By Veronica Grecu, Associate Editor

The Orbach Group, a New York-based real estate management and investment company, has expanded its New York City apartment portfolio with three new acquisitions totaling around $70 million. The seller, Dermot Company, was represented in the transaction by Andrew Scandalios of HFF.

The newly acquired buildings are 210 and 230 W. 107^th St. on Manhattan’s Upper West Side and include a mix of one-, two-, and three-bedroom units totaling 178 high-end apartments with market rents ranging from $2,400 to $5,000 per month. With these new additions, Orbach’s multifamily assets in the city reached almost 1,000 units, while the company’s entire East Coast portfolio is more than 5,000 units.

In commercial real estate highlights for this week, Extell Development sold a three-story retail condominium at 50 West 47^th Street in Manhattan’s Diamond District. The 12,000 square feet of space span three levels in Extell’s International Gem Tower—a $750 million skyscraper that opened in October 2012 and was designed by renowned architectural firm Skidmore, Owings and Merrill exclusively for the global diamond, gem and jewelry industry.

The buyer is The Gulaylar Group, a leading gold and diamond retailer and investor based in Turkey. According to Hurriyet, the company paid $10 million for the property and plans to create a state-of-the-art jewelry exchange in the new space.

“This building brings tremendous prestige to Manhattan’s Diamond District, and The Gulaylar Group’s new jewelry exchange will benefit greatly from the prestigious address and exposure to our owners and their guests,” said Mehmet Gulay, vice president of the Gulaylar Group, in a press statement.

Property closings at the International Gem Tower continue steadily, and Extell Development estimates that the first companies may start moving into the new spaces in mid-2013. Some of the most important players in the diamonds and gem industry—such as the Gemological Institute of America (GIA), A.S. Diamonds, Eurostar and Kuperman Bros. Diamonds USA—have already acquired space in the 34-story building.

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Rendering of the International Gem Tower via www.internationalgemtower.com

Construction Breaks Ground on 925-unit Multifamily Project in Long Island City

By Veronica Grecu, Associate Editor

March 4 marked the official groundbreaking of the initial phase of Hunter’s Point South, the biggest affordable housing project in New York City in 40 years. A $332 million joint venture between Phipps Houses, Related Companies and Monadnock Construction, the project is located on a 30-acre site on the Long Island City waterfront in Queens.

Phase I of the Hunter’s Point South project was designed by SHoP Architects and Ismael Levya Architects to achieve LEED Silver certification and consists of two residential buildings—32 and 37 stories each—with 925 permanently affordable apartments targeted to low-, moderate- and middle-income families.

The project also includes 17,000 square feet of retail space, a five-acre waterfront park and a new school with 1,100 seats which, according to The Epoch Times, is under construction and should be open by September.

Both buildings will feature public terraces, a fitness center, tech center, play space for children, recreational space and bike storage. The 37-story Building A, which will be located at 1-50 50^th Ave., will consist of 165 studio, 205 one-, 214 two- and 35 three-bedroom units; 13,739 square feet of retail space; and a 220-space parking garage. Located at 1-55 Borden Ave., the 32-story Building B will include 100 studios, 82 one-, 101 two- and 23 three-bedroom units and around 3,000 square feet of retail space.

The first residents are expected to move in the two buildings in 2014, with construction fully compete in 2015.

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Rendering via NYCEDC

Harlem’s Victoria Theater to Be Reborn as Mixed-Use Cultural Venue

By Veronica Grecu, Associate Editor

Harlem’s historic Victoria Theater on 125^th Street will undergo a $142 million renovation spearheaded by Danforth Development Partners and Exact Capital. Designed in 1917 by famous architect Thomas W. Lamb for the Loew’s Corporation, Victoria Theater opened as a luxury vaudeville and motion picture theater with 2,394 seats.

In 1977, the venue was acquired by the Harlem Community Development Corporation and, a decade later, expanded with five movie theaters that replaced the large auditorium, stage areas and mezzanine.

The theater shuttered in 1989 and was designated a city landmark in 1993. Its status remained uncertain until 2004, when the Harlem Community Development Corporation started looking for redevelopment proposals. According to The Uptowner, the contract was awarded to Danforth Development Partners LLC but the project stalled because of the recession.

After many years of bureaucratic and financial efforts, the Danforth/Exact Capital joint venture will finally break ground under design plans by Aufgang & Subotovsky Architecture and Planning. Apart from restoring and upgrading the theater’s original lobby and façade, the development team will add two 26-story towers above the existing building.

The new structures will include a 210-room hotel operated under the Cambria Suites flag, a 5,000-square-foot ballroom, and a 25,000-square-foot arts center for cultural organizations, Real Estate Weekly reports.

The project also includes a residential component—206 apartments atop the hotel, half of which will be affordable—and 24,000 square feet of street level retail space that will feature a large restaurant, jazz club and small stores. Designed to achieve LEED Silver certification, the development will create around 700 construction jobs and 373 permanent jobs. It is estimated that the project will generate more than $9 million in state and city tax revenue.

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Rendering credits to Aufgang & Subotovsky Architecture and Planning

Green Affordable Housing Building Opens in the Bronx

By Veronica Grecu, Associate Editor

A new low-income, eco-friendly residential building in the Bronx was officially opened on February 21 during a ribbon-cutting ceremony hosted by the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA).  Located at 770 East 166^th St. at Tinton Avenue in Morrisania, the nearly $38 million project was built by Blue Sea Development on land that was purchased from NYCHA at below market value.

The Arbor House development is part of the New Housing Marketplace Plan (NHMP), a multi-billion dollar program initiated by the Bloomberg administration to finance 165,000 units of affordable housing in New York City by the close of the 2014 fiscal year.

Already boasting a LEED Platinum certification and National Green Building Emerald rating, Arbor House was also recognized by the American Cancer Society as a “Healthy High-Rise” thanks to the building’s 100 percent smoke-free policy and the use of low and zero VOC materials for improved air quality.

Besides the 8,000-square-foot rooftop greenhouse that will be overseen by a full-time farmer and a living green wall in the lobby, the building’s design promotes physical fitness through indoor and outdoor exercising areas and encourages stair use.

The eight-story structure totals 120,000 square feet and 124 units of affordable housing (16 studios, 33 one-bedroom units and 75 two-bedroom units) and one apartment reserved for a superintendent. Since the apartments were designed for low-income households earning less than 60 percent of the area median income, which is $49,800 for a family of four or $34,860 for an individual, rents will range from almost $700 for a studio to a little over $900 for a two-bedroom unit. Though the building was just inaugurated, residents will start moving in starting next month.

What’s really green and eco-friendly about this development is that the rooftop hydroponic farm is expected to yield 100 tons of fresh, pesticides-free produce throughout the year. According to DNAInfo.com, the rooftop farm will be able to feed 450 people; 40 percent of the expected annual yield will be distributed to nearby schools and markets.

Images courtesy of New York City Housing Authority’s Facebook Page

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Long-Anticipated Senior Living Center Coming to Staten Island

By Veronica Grecu, Associate Editor

A 15-acre site located on Brielle Avenue between Walcott Avenue and Rockland Avenue in Staten Island’s Willowbrook neighborhood will be transformed into a state-of-the-art, private-pay residential center, SILive.com reports. An almost two-decade effort initiated by the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty (known as the Met Council), the project is backed by $36 million in tax exemptions through the city’s BuildNYC Resource Corporation—a NYCEDC-administered organization whose main goal is to facilitate access to tax-exempt bond financing for non-profit institutions—and a $45.2 million capital grant from the city council.

Developed by Leewood-Seaview LLC under design plans by locally based MHG Architects, the Seaview Senior Living Center will be licensed to operate by the New York State Department of Health. Once open in 2014, it will be operated and managed by the FilBen Group, a private organization that builds, owns and operates senior housing and healthcare facilities in the New York metropolitan area.

The 103,000-square-foot assisted living and memory care facility will provide 188 rooms for senior individuals and couples, who will receive a full spectrum of residential and healthcare services. According to Crain’s New York Business, rents at the new campus will average around $3,400 a month, almost half the amount charged by similar facilities in the area. The campus will also include an 11,500-square-foot building designed for social and recreational activities, as well as a director’s residence and an administrative building.

According to Crain’s, after the Seaview Senior Living Center is complete, the project will go on with the second phase—a $50 million investment calling for a separate condo building for seniors that will be built next to the assisted living center.

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Rendering of Seaview Senior Living Center credits to MHG Architects

Long Island City Building Gets $120M Financing; The Edge Is Top Selling Building in NYC

By Veronica Grecu, Associate Editor

One of the leading commercial real estate finance companies in the U.S., Walker & Dunlop LLC of Bethesda, Md., recently announced that it provided $120 million financing for a high-rise apartment building in Long Island City, N.Y. The financing team lead by Walker & Dunlop’s Steven Heller arranged a 10-year loan through Fannie Mae with a 5-year interest, followed by a 30-year amortization period.

Owned by TF Cornerstone Equities, the multifamily building located at 45-40 Center Blvd. is part of Stage Two of a master plan called Queens West Development. When completed, the development will include seven mixed-use residential buildings, 3,000 apartment units abd 1,825 parking spaces and retail spaces.

45-40 Center Boulevard includes 345 luxury residential units with spectacular views of the Manhattan skyline. The upscale amenity package includes a concierge valet, a rooftop terrace and a full-service restaurant on the ground level.

In further residential real estate news, The Edge in Williamsburg was the top selling building in New York City for the second year in a row, according to a PropertyShark market report. With 272 units sold in 2011 and 167 units sold in 2012 at a median price of $804,418, the property is now completely sold.

The next top selling buildings include the Sheffield in Midtown West—with 102 units sold at a median price of $1,453,231, followed by 99 John Deco Lofts in the Financial District—where 84 units were sold in 2012 at a median price of $675,000. The fourth-top selling building on PropertyShark’s list is One Brooklyn Bridge Park in Brooklyn Heights that saw 82 units sold in 2012 with a median price of $965,000.

Chart courtesy of PropertyShark

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Micro-Housing to Solve Apartment Crisis in NYC?

By Veronica Grecu, Associate Editor

The lack of inventory and skyrocketing rent prices have forced many New Yorkers to reconsider their housing options or look for solutions to transform their notoriously tiny apartments into multifunctional homes.

Following the relatively new “micro-housing” concept, which has been gaining more and more followers in several major U.S. cities such as San Francisco or Boston, Mayor Michael Bloomberg recently announced the winner of the adaptNYC Competition—a city-sponsored pilot program launched in July 2012 to develop innovative micro-apartments that would respond to New York City’s housing problems.

The development team composed of Monadnock Development LLC, Actors Fund Housing Development Corporation and nARCHITECTS, the latter of whom was chosen to design, construct and operate the city’s first standalone micro-unit apartment building. Named “My Micro NY,” the project will occupy a vacant, city-owned parcel at 335 East 27^th St. in Manhattan.

The $15 million pilot investment will include 55 prefabricated rental micro-apartments measuring between 250 and 370 square feet, with 40 percent of the units already designated as affordable. City officials estimate that the building will accommodate 70 to 100 residents, who are expected to move in by September 2015.

Each unit at My Micro NY will consist of two distinct zones—one including a kitchen, bathroom and storage room, and the other one designed as a canvas area providing flexible space and serving as the primary living and sleeping area. The micro-housing building will also feature a rooftop garden, a community room on each floor, a lounge area, a laundry room and storage room.

Meanwhile, local entrepreneur and trained architect Graham Hill seems to have found an ideal solution to living (and working) in super-tiny apartments. According to Yahoo! News back in 2009, Hill acquired two studios in a 100-year-old building in Manhattan’s SoHo neighborhood and, after launching an international design competition, chose two Romanian architecture students—Cătălin Sandu and Adrian Iancu—to renovate a 420-square-foot apartment into a chameleonic housing unit that can be quickly converted from one room to two and from main living area to office, dining and kitchen space.

Apart from the sliding walls, a telescopic dining table, stackable chairs, fold-down bunk beds and well-integrated office equipment, the micro-unit called LifeEdited also incorporates several environmental design features such as photovoltaic cells and energy-efficient appliances.

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Rendering of My Micro NY project courtesy of NYC Mayor’s Office

Video presentation of the LifeEdited project from Gizmodo on Vimeo.

Brookfield Breaks Ground on $4.5 Billion Manhattan West Development

By Veronica Grecu, Associate Editor

The first phase of Brookfield Office Properties’ newest and largest development project in New York City kicked off on January 15 with a groundbreaking event in the presence of Mayor Michael Bloomberg and other city and real estate officials.

Manhattan West is a $4.5 billion development project on a Brookfield-owned vacant site at Ninth Avenue between West 31st and West 33rd Streets. When opened in 2016, the project designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill in partnership with SLCE Architects will have 5.4 million square feet of space, including two 2-million-square-foot office towers, a residential high-rise, new shops and restaurants, and 1.5 acres of public space serving as a bridge between Chelsea and the Midtown CBD.

During Phase I, which is scheduled to be completed in 2014, the development team will install a 120,000-square-foot platform made up of a series of 16 bridges over the Hudson rail yards that lead to Penn Station. According to a press release from Brookfield, locally-based Turner Construction—who will install the deck—will utilize post-tension, pre-cast, segmental bridge technology to minimize disturbance to trains running under the platform.

The Manhattan West deck will cost $680 million. Funding for this part of the project has been secured with a five-year, $340 million construction loan from a bank group that includes banks such as HSBC, Wells Fargo and U.S. Bank. The rest will be covered by private funds coming from Brookfield’s own capital.

More than 600 construction jobs will be generated during the platform installation process. The project will generate $52.7 million in employee compensation and $4.7 million in tax revenue for New York City.

Renderings of Manhattan West master plan and platform via Brookfield Office Properties

Work Imminent on Mixed-Use Tower in Meatpacking District

By Veronica Grecu, Associate Editor

Property Group Partners and landlord Romanoff Equities have joined forces to replace a former meat processing facility in New York’s Meatpacking District with a mixed-use complex that would stand as a prominent structure in the neighborhood. Designed by James Carpenter Design Associates architectural firm in cooperation with Gerner Kronick & Valcarcel Architects, the project is set to begin development immediately, with a delivery date tentatively set for 2015.

As previously reported by DNAinfo.com, the development plans were approved by the city in 2009, when the Board of Standards and Appeals unanimously voted for the zoning exemptions required to build the 10-story building.

The project, located between the iconic Standard Hotel and the High Line Building, is called 860 Washington Street and will consist of 120,000 square feet of office, retail and showroom space divided into floor plates of 11,000 to 13,000 square feet. According to a project description on the official website, the development team will use a combination of recycled building materials such as terracotta, concrete and glass, as well as state-of-the-art technologies to save both daylight and water, which will make the structure LEED-certifiable.

The Real Deal reports that the transaction between Property Group Partners and Romanoff Equities was brokered by Douglas Harmon, Adam Spies and Josh King of Eastdil Secured.

Rendering via www.860washington.com

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Developer Announces $67M Mixed-Income Rental Building in Greenpoint

By Veronica Grecu, Associate Editor

The Domain Companies, a real estate investment and development firm based in New Orleans, officially announced last week that it has secured financing of a new mixed-income development in Greenpoint, Brooklyn’s northernmost neighborhood, through a mix of loans at below-market interest rates from the New York City Housing Development Corporation (NYCHDC) and Goldman Sachs.

Work on the $67 million rental building will start this month, according to the developer’s press release. The project will be developed under Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s New Housing Marketplace Plan (NHMP)—a 10-year program aimed at creating and preserving 165,000 units of affordable housing for New Yorkers by the end of 2014.

Dubbed 1133 Manhattan Avenue, the development involves cleaning a disused brownfield site and creating a combination of 210 market-rate and affordable rental units ranging from studios to two-bedroom. The development will also include a resident lounge, media room, game room, fitness center, rooftop terrace and parking garage.

“1133 Manhattan Avenue will serve as a catalyst in this neighborhood to meet Greenpoint’s growing housing demand,” said Marc Jahr, president of HDC. “The City of New York is committed to creating affordable and sustainable homes for New Yorkers.  This silver LEED project will contribute to achieving that goal.”

Located on Manhattan Avenue between Clay Street and Box Street on a former railroad repair facility, the project is designed to achieve LEED Silver Certification and meet Enterprise Green Community standards. 1133 Manhattan Avenue will also seek to achieve Energy Star certification by featuring high-efficiency HVAC and hot water systems, low-flow plumbing fixtures, low-emission windows, fluorescent lighting and Energy Star-rated appliances, as well as by utilizing green building materials.

With a completion date anticipated for late 2014, 1133 Manhattan Avenue will offer 42 housing units available for families earning at or below 50 percent of the Area Median Income (or $29,050 per individual), 63 apartments for families earning at or below 175 percent of Area Median Income (or $101,675 per individual), and 105 market-rate units.

Rendering of 1133 Manhattan Avenue courtesy of The Domain Cos.

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