Cheskel Schwimmer pays $4.9M for likely dev site in Williamsburg

Cheskel Schwimmer through the entity Ffn9 LLC paid $4.9 million to James Ife through the entity 55 N. 9th St LLC for industrial building (F5) at 55 North 9th Street in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
The deal closed on September 29, 2022 and was recorded on October 11, 2022.The property has 5,000 square feet of built space and 5,000 square feet of additional air rights for a total buildable of 10,000 square feet according to PincusCo analysis of city data. The sale price per built square foot is $978 and the price per buildable square foot is $489 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 James Ife was James Ife. The signatory for Cheskel Schwimmer was Cheskel Schwimmer.

Prior sales and revenue

Prior to this transaction, PincusCo has no record that the buyer Cheskel Schwimmer had purchased any other properties and has a record Schwimmer sold properties in Mott Haven for $107.5 million, over the past 24 months.
The seller James Ife had not purchased any other properties and had not sold any properties over the same time period. The 5,000-square-foot property generated revenue of $97,501 or $20 per square foot, according to the most recent income and expense figures.

The property

The 55 North 9th Street parcel has frontage of 50 feet and is 100 feet deep with a total lot size of 5,000 square feet. The zoning is M1-2 which allows for up to 2 times floor area ratio (FAR) for manufacturing The city-designated market value for the property in 2022 is $461,000.

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 Williamsburg, the bulk, or 39 percent of the 50 million square feet of commercial built space are elevator buildings, with walkup buildings next occupying 25 percent of the space. In sales, Williamsburg has the 7th highest sale turnover among other neighborhoods in the city with $1.9 billion in sales volume in the last two years. For development, Williamsburg is the 9th most active neighborhood among other neighborhoods. It had 4.6 million square feet of commercial and multi-family construction under development in the last two years, which represents 9 percent of the neighborhood’s built space. There was one pre-foreclosure suit filed among other industrial buildings in the past 12 months.

The block

On this tax block, PincusCo has identified the owners of two of the seven commercial properties representing 13,218 square feet of the 184,964 square feet. The two identified owners are Ninenorth61 LLC and Robert Barouh.
There are no active new building construction projects on this tax block.

The majority, or 93 percent of the 184,964 square feet of built space are industrial buildings, with mixed-use buildings next occupying 5 percent of the space.

The buyer

The PincusCo database currently indicates that Cheskel Schwimmer owned at least 18 commercial properties in New York City with 680,340 square feet and a city-determined market value of $85.3 million. (Market value is typically about 50% of actual value.) The portfolio has $274.1 million in debt, with top three lenders as Prime Group Holdings, Valley National Bank, and IceCap Group respectively. Within the portfolio, the bulk, or 89 percent of the 680,340 square feet of built space are elevator properties, with walkup properties next occupying 11 percent of the space. The bulk, or 62 percent of the built space, is in Bronx, with Brooklyn next at 37 percent of the space.

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