Chaochun Chen pays $7.8M to Pembroke for UWS retail

UPDATED, 9:40 a.m., October 10, 2024: Chaochun Chen through the entity Blue Moon Investors LLC paid $7.8 million to Pembroke through the entity 175 West 95 Commercial Owner LLC for the retail condominium unit at 175 West 95th Street in the Upper West Side, Manhattan.
The deal closed on October 7, 2024 and was recorded on October 9, 2024. The property has 11,112 square feet of built space according to a PincusCo analysis of city data. The sale price per built square foot is $701 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 Pembroke was David Goldban. Starrett Companies and Pembroke share some executives and are both located on the same floor of the same office building. The signatory for Chaochun Chen was Chaochun Chen. The contract date was December 29, 2024. The transfer has an apparent typo, with the contract date written as 12/29/2025, which is after the closing date.

Prior sales and revenue

Prior to this transaction, PincusCo has no record that the buyer Chaochun Chen had purchased any other properties and has no record it sold any properties over the past 24 months.

The property

The specialty condo in Upper West Side has 11,112 square feet of built space according to a PincusCo analysis of city data. The parcel has a total lot size of 11,112 square feet. The city-designated market value for the property in 2022 is $722,468.

Violations and lawsuits

There were no lawsuits or bankruptcies filed against the property for the past 24 months. In addition, according to city public data, the property has not received any significant violations in the last year.

Development

For the tax lot building, it received its initial certificate of occupancy on December 29, 2015. There are no active new building construction projects or major alteration projects with initial costs more than $1 million on this tax lot. On the tax lot, the most recent condominium plan was filed by 175 WEST 95 COMMERCIAL OWNER LLC to create 229 residential units and 3 commercial units in a building at 175 West 95th Street in Upper West Side, Manhattan, called 175 West 95 Condominiumthat has a $319.3 million sellout, according to an August 15, 2013 submission to the New York State Attorney General.

The neighborhood

In Upper West Side, The majority, or 59 percent of the 52.9 million square feet of commercial built space are elevator buildings, with walkup buildings next occupying 23 percent of the space. In sales, Upper West Side has the 9th highest sale turnover among other neighborhoods in the city with $1 billion in sales volume in the last two years. For development, Upper West Side has 2.9 times the average amount of major developments relative to other neighborhoods and is the 8th highest in Manhattan. It had 3.3 million square feet of commercial and multi-family construction under development in the last two years, which represents 6 percent of the neighborhood’s built space. There was one pre-foreclosure suit filed among other specialty buildings in the past 12 months.

The block

On this tax block, PincusCo has identified the owners of seven of the 15 commercial properties representing 112,155 square feet of the 390,041 square feet. The largest owner is Weinreb Management, followed by Scharfman Organization and then Zan Ng.
There are no active new building construction projects on this tax block.

The majority, or 80 percent of the 390,041 square feet of built space are elevator buildings, with walkup buildings next occupying 18 percent of the space.

Correction: An earlier version of this post incorrectly identified the seller as Starrett Companies, which shares management and offices with Pembroke. However, the seller was an affiliate of Pembroke.

Direct link to Acris document. link