Carmel Partners pays $73.5M to Chou family for corner dev site in Lenox Hill

Carmel Partners through the entity CP VII 78th Street Owner, LLC paid $73.5 million to Regina Chou, Rita Chou, and Rachel Chou through the entity C3d E78 LLC for a corner development site composed of the six-unit mixed-use building at 1487 1st Avenue in Lenox Hill, Manhattan, seven-unit residential walkup building at 1493 1st Avenue in Lenox Hill, Manhattan, and development building at 1489 1st Avenue in Lenox Hill, Manhattan. The cross street is East 78th Street.
The deal closed on January 6, 2022 and was recorded on January 20, 2022.
The Real Deal reported on the sale earlier this month, and identified Bob Knakal and John Hageman of JLL as the brokers. The site that includes air rights transfers from neighboring parcels has development rights of 153,000 square feet, or $480 per square foot.
The four properties have 10,937 square feet of built space and 89,569 square feet of additional air rights for a total buildable of 100,500 square feet according to PincusCo analysis of city data. The sale price per built square foot is $6,720 and the price per buildable square foot is $731 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 Regina Chou, Rita Chou, and Rachel Chou was Regina Chou, Rita Chou, and Rachel Chou. The signatory for Carmel Partners was Matthew Golden.
Carmel Partners recently closed on the purchase of 15 Cliff Street at a $115 million valuation, in a deal originally reported in 2018.

Out of the four properties, two with a total of 10,937 square feet of built space generated revenue of $803,995 per year.

In Lenox Hill, the majority, or 56 percent of the 91.2 million square feet of built space are residential elevator buildings, with specialty buildings next occupying 17 percent of the space. In sales, Lenox Hill has the 3rd highest sale turnover among other neighborhoods in the city with $2.2 billion in sales volume in the last two years. For development, Lenox Hill has had very little major development activity relative to other neighborhoods.It had 436,108 square feet of commercial and multi-family construction under development in the last two years, which represents 0.48 percent of the neighborhood’s built space. There were two pre-foreclosure suit filed among other mixed-use buildings in the past 12 months.
On the tax block, the majority, or 46 percent of the 468,657 square feet of built space are residential walkup buildings, with residential elevator buildings next occupying 38 percent of the space.
The former owners according to the Department of Housing Preservation and Development included Katherine Chou, head officer and Ming Hui, site manager. The business entity was Chou’ 3d Llc.
Within a 400-foot radius of 1487 1st Avenue, PincusCo identified nine commercial real estate items of interests occurred over the past 24 months.
One of those nine items was a sale which Tissa Management, HF Capital, and Howard Hershkovich bought the 15,935-square-foot, 20-unit rental (C5) on 423 East 77th Street and one other property for $11.1 million from Caporusso family on October 4, 2021.
Of those nine items, eight were loans above $5 million totaling $153.1 million. The most recent of the eight was Vincent Q. Giffuni which borrowed $7 million from JPMorgan Chase secured by the 63,862-square-foot, 84-unit rental (D6) on 1470 1st Avenue on December 14, 2021.

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