Checo Acquisitions pays $14.5M for two properties with 36 units in UWS

Josef Chehebar’s Checo Acquisitions through the entity Checo 476 Columbus LLC paid $14.5 million to Bruce Haley through the entity 472-476 Columbus Ave. LLC for adjacent walkup buildings with a total of 36 units at 472 and 476 Columbus Avenue in the Upper West Side of Manhattan, according documents reviewed by PincusCo.
The deal closed on May 20, 2024 and has not been recorded as of publication. The properties on the corner of West 83rd Street, have 31,140 square feet of built space, according to the records, equating to a price of $465 per square foot. There are five store units.

Bruce Haley has owned the properties since 1979.

The signatory for Checo Acquisitions was Josef Chehebar. The contract date was March 1, 2024.

The properties

476 Columbus Avenue has 20,746 square feet of space in two buildings with frontage of 50 feet and is 100 feet deep with a total lot size of 5,066 square feet. The zoning is C1-8A which allows for up to 2 times floor area ratio (FAR) for commercial and up to 7.52 times FAR for residential with inclusionary housing. The property is in the Upper West Side / Central Park West Historic District. The city-designated market value for the property in 2022 is $4.3 million.

472 Columbus Avenue 10,400 square feet of built space. The parcel has frontage of 26 feet and is 100 feet deep with a total lot size of 2,600 square feet. The zoning is C1-8A which allows for up to 2 times floor area ratio (FAR) for commercial and up to 7.52 times FAR for residential with inclusionary housing. The property is in the Upper West Side / Central Park West Historic District. The city-designated market value for the property in 2022 is $2.3 million.

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 7th highest sale turnover among other neighborhoods in the city with $1.3 billion in sales volume in the last two years. For development, Upper West Side has near average amount of major developments among other neighborhoods and is the 11th highest in Manhattan. It had 3.1 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.

The block

On this tax block, PincusCo has identified the owners of 12 of the 31 commercial properties representing 114,073 square feet of the 449,518 square feet. The largest owner is Arlene Brooks, followed by Brusco Group and then Charles Nagle. On the tax block, there was one new building construction project filed totaling 30,053 square feet. It is a seven-unit, 30,053 square-foot residential (R-2) building submitted by Ralph Braha, Isaac Jemal, Buhm Roe and John Roe and filed by Robert Roe with plans filed November 25, 2015 and permitted January 16, 2019.

The owner

The owners according to the Department of Housing Preservation and Development includes Bruce Haley, head officer and Larry Cuipak, officer. The business entities are Tri-Hill Management Llc and 474 Columbus Avenue.

The surrounding

Within a 400-foot radius of 474 Columbus Avenue, PincusCo identified two commercial real estate items of interests occurred over the past 24 months. Of those two items, two were loans above $5 million totaling $11.3 million. The most recent of the two was Abro Management in which borrowed $5.5 million from Northfield Bank secured by the 19,303-square-foot, 21-unit rental (D6) on 465 Columbus Avenue on June 6, 2023.

Direct link to the property’s ACRIS page and link to DOB NOW portal.