Chetrit Group pays $19.3M to Peter Kulka for 359-unit dev site, air rights in Jamaica

The Chetrit Group through the entity Archer 147 Development LLC paid $19.3 million to Peter Kulka for a development site composed of three industrial parcels at 147-27 Archer Avenue in Jamaica, Queens, and air rights transferred from the Kulka-owned property at 147-28 Jamaica Avenue. Chetrit paid $10.3 million for the three parcels and $9 million for the air rights.
The deals closed on May 18, 2022 and was recorded on June 7, 2022. The three properties have 3,400 square feet of built space and 171,187 square feet of additional air rights for a total buildable of 174,636 square feet according to PincusCo analysis of city data. The sale price per built square foot is $3,037 and the price per buildable square foot is $59 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 Peter Kulka was Peter Kulka and David Rosenblum. The signatory for Chetrit Group was Joseph Chetrit. The Chetrit Group previously filed plans for a building on this lot. 

Because multiple properties have been transacted, some of the following sections will follow the property with the largest assessed value, which in this case, is the property on 92-11 147th Place.

Prior sales and revenue

Prior to this transaction, PincusCo has records that the buyer Chetrit Group purchased two properties in two transactions for a total of $92.9 million and sold two properties in one transactions for a total of $43.2 million over the past 24 months.
The seller Peter Kulka had not purchased any other properties and had not sold any properties over the same time period.

The property

The 92-11 147th Place parcel has frontage of 80 feet and is 138 feet deep with a total lot size of 10,640 square feet. The zoning is C6-3 which allows for up to 6 times floor area ratio (FAR) for commercial and up to 7.52 times FAR for residential with inclusionary housing. The city-designated market value for the property in 2022 is $243,000.

Violations and lawsuits

There were no lawsuits or bankruptcies filed against the properties since September of 2020. In addition, according to city public data, the properties have not received any significant violations in the last year.

Development

On these lots, there is one active new building construction project for a 359-unit, 306,454-square-foot R-2 building. The project was developed by the Chetrit Group with plans filed February 17, 2022 and it has not been permitted yet.

The neighborhood

In Jamaica, the bulk, or 33 percent of the 46.7 million square feet of commercial built space are 1-4 family buildings, with residential elevator buildings next occupying 20 percent of the space. In sales, Jamaica has had very little sales volume relative to other neighborhoods with $164 million in sales volume in the last two years. For development, Jamaica has 3.7 times the average amount of major developments relative to other neighborhoods and is the 3rd highest in Queens. It had 3.3 million square feet of commercial and multi-family construction under development in the last two years, which represents 7 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

There is one active new building construction project totaling 306,454 square feet. It is a 359-unit, 306,454-square-foot R-2 building developed by Meyer Chetrit with plans filed February 17, 2022 and it has not been permitted yet.

The majority, or 88 percent of the 28,000 square feet of built space are mixed-use buildings, with industrial buildings next occupying 12 percent of the space.

The buyer

The PincusCo database currently indicates that Chetrit Group owned at least 27 commercial properties with 3,624,908 square feet and a city-determined market value of $674.1 million. (Market value is typically about 50% of actual value.) The portfolio has $1.6 billion in debt, with top three lenders as Starwood Mortgage Capital, Bank of Montreal, and Starwood Capital Group respectively. Within the portfolio, the bulk, or 34 percent of the 3,624,908 square feet of built space are office properties, with elevator properties next occupying 27 percent of the space. The bulk, or 60 percent of the built space, is in Manhattan, with Queens next at 33 percent of the space.

Surrounding

Within a 400-foot radius of 92-11 147th Place, Pincusco identified five commercial real estate items of interests occurred over the past 24 months.

Of those five items, four were loans above $5 million totaling $75.3 million. The most recent of the four was Robin Eshaghpour which borrowed $6.5 million from Dime Community Bank secured by the 5,080-square-foot, one-unit mixed-use building (K2) on 90-69 Sutphin Boulevard and two other properties on April 25, 2022.

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