Barone Management as tenant signs $10.5M ground lease for Williamsbridge dev site

Barone Management as tenant through the entity Bmad Bartholdi LLC signed a 99-year ground lease valued at $10.5 million with Peter Cascino as landlord through the entity 801 Bartholdi, L.L.C. for the specialty building (W8) at 801 Bartholdi Street in Williamsbridge, Bronx.
The deal closed on August 15, 2022 and was recorded on August 31, 2022. The property has 50,365 square feet of built space according to PincusCo analysis of city data. The lease price per built square foot is $208 per the PincusCo analysis. (The price per square foot analysis is the transaction price divided by square feet as reported in public records and assumes no air rights have been sold.)
The signatory for Peter Cascino was Peter Cascino. The signatory for Barone Management was Scott Barone. This is a 99-year ground lease.

Prior sales and revenue

Prior to this transaction, PincusCo has records that the buyer Barone Management purchased four properties in four transactions for a total of $26.4 million and has no record it sold any properties over the past 24 months.
The seller Peter Cascino had not purchased any other properties and had not sold any properties over the same time period.

The property

The 801 Bartholdi Street parcel has frontage of 120 feet and is 240 feet deep with a total lot size of 28,805 square feet. The zoning is R5 which allows for up to 1.25 times floor area ratio (FAR) for residential. The city-designated market value for the property in 2022 is $3 million.

Violations and lawsuits

There were no lawsuits or bankruptcies filed against the property since September of 2020. In addition, according to city public data, the property has received two DOB violations and $1,000 in OATH penalties in the last year.

Development

There are no active new building construction projects or major alteration projects with initial costs more than $5 million on this tax lot.

The neighborhood

In Williamsbridge, the bulk, or 40 percent of the 6.8 million square feet of commercial built space are walkup buildings, with elevator buildings next occupying 25 percent of the space. In sales, Williamsbridge has the 24th highest sale turnover among other neighborhoods in Bronx with $48.1 million in sales volume in the last two years. For development, Williamsbridge has had very little major development activity relative to other neighborhoods.It had 804,732 square feet of commercial and multi-family construction under development in the last two years, which represents 12 percent of the neighborhood’s built space.

The block

On this tax block, PincusCo has identified the owners of two of the three commercial properties representing 620,629 square feet of the 670,994 square feet. The two identified owners are City of New York and Lightstone Group.
There are no active new building construction projects on this tax block.

The majority, or 81 percent of the 670,994 square feet of built space are specialty buildings, with elevator buildings next occupying 19 percent of the space.

The buyer

The PincusCo database currently indicates that Barone Management owned at least nine commercial properties in New York City with 438,891 square feet and a city-determined market value of $40.4 million. (Market value is typically about 50% of actual value.) The portfolio has $70.1 million in debt, with top three lenders as Metropolitan Commercial Bank, Berkshire Group, and Castellan Capital respectively. Within the portfolio, the bulk, or 61 percent of the 438,891 square feet of built space are elevator properties, with office properties next occupying 23 percent of the space. The bulk, or 61 percent of the built space, is in Brooklyn, with Queens next at 35 percent of the space.

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