Blackstone Group and Link Logistics pays $81.7M to BNS Real Estate for industrial in Unionport

Blackstone Group through its Link Logistics pays $81.75 million to BNS Real Estate for two industrial buildings in Unionport in two separate transactions.

In the larger, Blackstone Group and Link Logistics through the entity B9 Commerce Owner LLC paid $75.8 million to BNS Real Estate through the entity Three Boroughs L.L.C. for the midblock industrial building at 1170 Commerce Avenue in Unionport, Bronx.
The deal closed on April 28, 2022 and was recorded on May 17, 2022. The property has 103,000 square feet of built space and 36,140 square feet of additional air rights for a total buildable of 139,000 square feet according to PincusCo analysis of city data. The sale price per built square foot is $735 and the price per buildable square foot is $544 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.)
At the smaller property, Blackstone Group and Link Logistics through the entity B9 Commerce Owner LLC paid $6 million to BNS Real Estate through the entity Commerce Two LLC for the midblock industrial building at 1174 Commerce Avenue in Unionport, Bronx.
The deal closed on April 28, 2022 and was recorded on May 17, 2022. The property has 16,965 square feet of built space and 15,600 square feet of additional air rights for a total buildable of 32,500 square feet according to PincusCo analysis of city data. The sale price per built square foot is $353 and the price per buildable square foot is $184 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 BNS Real Estate was Bradford S. Barr. The signatory for Blackstone Group and Link Logistics was Brendan McIntee.

Brendan McIntee is a managing director for Blackstone Group.  This is a purchase by Blackstone’s Link Logistics division, formerly known as Gramercy Property Trust. Blackstone acquired Gramercy in 2018 and refashioned it as Link in 2019.

Prior sales and revenue

Prior to this transaction, Pincusco has records that the buyer Blackstone Group purchased six properties in five transactions for a total of $100.5 million and sold one properties in one transactions for a total of $2 million over the past 24 months.
The seller BNS Real Estate had not purchased any other properties and sold two properties in one transactions for a total of $3.9 million over the same time period. The 103,000-square-foot property generated revenue of $2.3 million or $23 per square foot, according to the most recent income and expense figures.

The property

The 1170 Commerce Avenue parcel has frontage of 445 feet and is 360 feet deep with a total lot size of 139,000 square feet. The lot is irregular. The zoning is M1-1 which allows for up to 1 times floor area ratio (FAR) for manufacturing. The city-designated market value for the property in 2022 is $9.9 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 not received any significant violations 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 Unionport, the bulk, or 41 percent of the 12.2 million square feet of commercial built space are 1-4 family buildings, with residential elevator buildings next occupying 19 percent of the space. In sales, Unionport has had very little sales volume relative to other neighborhoods with $125.8 million in sales volume in the last two years. For development, Unionport has had very little major development activity relative to other neighborhoods.It had 122,145 square feet of commercial and multi-family construction under development in the last two years, which represents 1 percent of the neighborhood’s built space.

The block

On this tax block, PincusCo has identified the owners of six of the 19 commercial properties representing 53,779 square feet of the 291,096 square feet. The largest owner is City of New York, followed by Seagis Property Group and then Michael Lavallie. There is one active new building construction project totaling 7,230 square feet. It is a 7,230-square-foot storage (S-1) building developed by Andrew Schwartz with plans filed December 24, 2014 and permitted May 18, 2018.

The majority, or 88 percent of the 292,312 square feet of built space are industrial buildings, with office buildings next occupying 11 percent of the space.

The buyer

The PincusCo database currently indicates that Blackstone Group owned at least 52 commercial properties with 15,777,295 square feet and a city-determined market value of $2.7 billion. (Market value is typically about 50% of actual value.) The portfolio has $857.1 million in debt, with top three lenders as Morgan Stanley, TIAA, and PNC Bank respectively. Within the portfolio, the bulk, or 91 percent of the 15,777,295 square feet of built space are residential elevator properties, with industrial properties next occupying 5 percent of the space. The bulk, or 80 percent of the built space, is in Manhattan, with Queens next at 16 percent of the space.

Surrounding

PincusCo has not identified any commercial real estate items of interest within a 400-foot radius of 1170 Commerce Avenue that occurred over the past 24 months.

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